Friday, February 19, 1999 -- New York -- With the dust from the defeat of the impeachment coup barely settled, the angry right wing is making a final, last-gasp attempt to get Clinton.

The means: the media. The tools: women. It seems there's nothing they like better than using women to denigrate women -- it gives a whole new meaning to the word "sexual harassment."

Last Friday, Linda Tripp began an attempt to "rehabilitate" her image and gave an interview on NBC's Today; Monday, she was on Larry King Live, doing he best to resurrect the specter of now-discounted Filegate charges and the "body count" myth, about how "threatened" she felt. Threatened? As a political appointee from a Republican administration, she should have felt lucky to still have a job in the White House.

She lied repeatedly during both interviews. She claimed she was trying to get Monica Lewinsky to end her relationship with Clinton -- yet her own self-wiretapped words betray her, as she can be heard egging Monica on. She also talked about Monica's "suicide threats" as if they were anything but the emotional hyperbole of a broken-hearted young woman.

During the Larry King interview, she described Vince Foster as " a great man, he was a decent man," but Larry failed to ask if she was the source of leaks to the media, especially The Wall Street Journal, concerning Foster. Instead, she tried to spin it as a suspicious death: "immediately, it was called a suicide. And I remember thinking, well, how do you know that?"

Maybe she should ask Ken Starr -- he concluded it was a suicide.

Meanwhile, another of Clinton's alleged women, Dolly Kyle Browning, has teamed up with arch Clinton-hater and Judicial Watch boss Larry Klayman (the guy who loves the civil court system so much he sued his own mother) to announce that she plans to sue Clinton for "emotional distress." The interesting spin on the Browning story -- she has penned a "reality"-based "novel" that is going to market soon.

This morning, The Wall Street Journal is running an interview with "Jane Doe No. 5," Juanita Broaddrick, in which she resurrects a 20-odd-year old claim that Clinton "raped" her -- a claim that she took back on repeated occasions. NBC refused to air an interview that Lisa Myers had with Broaddrick a few weeks back because they had serious doubts about her story. But the Journal, a relatively reliable source for financial news, has not shied away from politically-motivated stories concerning Clinton that are based on rumor or hearsay (an embarrassing number of which have turned out to be untrue), and this appears to be no exception.

And the ubiquitous Paula Corbin Jones, whose sworn complaint against William Jefferson Clinton was revealed to be a sham after she had her memory "refreshed" under questioning by Bob Bennett, will be on Larry King Live tonight.

And there you have it -- the media being played like a fiddle by the handlers of these women, who claim that they're "sticking up for women's rights."

Don't believe a word of it -- this is an element of what some are calling the "culture wars," in which women are not independent but eternal, dependent "victims." The cultural Luddites would have you overlook the more obvious motives of these women -- greed, selfishness and opportunism -- in their effort to mask their own motive: get Clinton by any means.

It isn't over. Not by a long shot.

-- David J. Gonzo