And don't forget the interest.

It's the Principal of the Thing

By Rick Horowitz

This is how long I've been around: I remember when Paula Jones said she wasn't in it for the money.

Step right up, ladies and gentlemen, and feast your eyes upon Paula & Her Amazing Anti-Gravity Lawsuit! The weaker it gets, the higher it climbs! It's astounding! It's astonishing! It's positively appalling!

Once upon a time, she was Plucky Paula, the good girl wronged. The governor of her very own state, she claimed -- a hyperactive sort named Clinton -- turned rude and crude one afternoon in a hotel room. She turned him down, but her name got out; her reputation was shot.

Woe.

She wanted her name cleared, Plucky Paula did. She wanted an apology from that governor (who had since moved on to bigger and better things), an acknowledgement that she'd done nothing improper in that hotel room. The $700,000 she was asking in damages was almost an afterthought; the apology was the key. When Clinton's lawyers offered to pay $700,000 to charity, Plucky Paula said no deal -- not without an apology. She had to have her good name back.

Then her case got tossed. A judge looked at all her arguments and said no dice. "Even if everything you say happened happened just the way you say it happened -- " I paraphrase -- "it may be ugly, it may be boorish, but it isn't sexual harassment." Paula's career hadn't gone off track after spurning her governor. A lack of flowers does not a lawsuit make, the judge decided, not even on National Secretaries Day.

Oh.

Now, having been told she had, legally speaking, zero, you'd think Plucky Paula would go off somewhere and lick her wounds. Nothing doing -- she vowed to fight on. And then, the big break: the prez admitted he'd danced around his relationship with Monica Lewinsky, danced around it in his deposition in Paula Jones' case!

Never mind that the evidence about a (consensual) relationship with Lewinsky seemed perfectly irrelevant to a case dealing with unwelcome sexual advances on Paula Jones. Team Paula saw its opportunity. They would try to get their case reinstated, the better to make life miserable for that miscreant at 1600 Pennsylvania.

Of course, they were still willing to settle this case that was no longer a case, this case that might never again be a case. They wouldn't even insist on an apology, a sincere written statement from Bill Clinton being worth precisely as much by this time as a good-behavior pledge from Slobodan Milosevic. The public had already discovered what kind of a bounder Bill Clinton was. They'd know Paula Jones had been telling the truth all those years ago.

So forget the apology -- but now Paula wanted a cool million.

How about $500,000? said Clinton's lawyers. No deal, said Team Paula.

How about $700,000? said Clinton's lawyers. You're not listening, said Team Paula.

Finally, some wealthy New York real-estate developer (is there any other kind?) said, "Enough!" He wanted the whole thing over with, he said. He'd pay Paula the million dollars just to be done with it. Did Paula say thanks? Did Paula say yes?

No.

Paula said she wanted two million. She still wanted a million from Clinton -- plus she wanted the million from the real-estate guy!

When did this become a game show? ("I'll take Door No. 2 and Door No. 3, Monty...") Or is Paula suddenly noticing the multi-millions apparently heading Monica's way any time now, noticing and thinking, "Wait a minute -- I'm a bigger victim than she is! Why should I get the short end of the stick?" So to speak.

Look -- anybody who's had to put up with Susan Carpenter-McMillan for all these months deserves some compensation. But it's starting to sound just a bit greedy, a bit over the top, don't you think? Plucky Paula isn't so Plucky anymore. Plucky Paula is going for the gold.

Two million dollars for a crude suggestion? Hey, for that kind of money, Bill Clinton can drop his pants for me anytime.

Posted 10/20/98. Fresh stuff right here twice weekly!