Girl Talk
The Lewinsky Tapes Join the Pantheon of Backfiring Evidence "Against" the President
Tuesday, June 23rd, 1998 --- New York (APJP) -- While I don't wish to sound like the male chauvinist swine I've consciously tried not to be for the last few decades, the newest Lewinsky tape to have been leaked to the press is an egregious bimbo eruption that has critics of Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr laughing with delight and his supporters stunned in slack-jawed incredulity.
Word of the tape hit the political talk circuit over the weekend, when U.S. News & World Report revealed it would run an article in their Monday edition outlining the contents of one of the notorious tapes made by Linda Tripp. The article was quickly made available on their web site before "hard copies" hit the newsstands, resulting in a huge spike in hits to the USN&WR web site.
Content of the newly-emerged tape contradicts much of the buzz that circulated when small portions of another tape were provided to Newsweek (which much of the DC press corps cynically refers to these days as Newsleak). The info-nuggets printed in Newsweek generated a tsunami of speculation about the possible content of the remaining tapes, the speculation being that the evidence would be damaging to Clinton.
But the selective facts Newsweek published were not based on a direct, let alone a thorough, review of the tapes' contents --- but on what might have been on the tapes. Moreover, Newsweek's sources -- reportedly ultraconservative book agent and unabashed Clinton-basher Lucianne Goldberg and "sources" close to the Independent Counsel (maybe Starr himself?) -- "can hardly be considered unbiased," in the words of the USN&WR article's author, Elise Ackerman.
Hardly unbiased to say the least, Elise!
Nevertheless, these leaks -- which, though vague, seemed to contradict certain of President Clinton's claims -- were dissected by media and press pundits and used to slam Clinton by right-wing spokespeople for months, most notably by those Stepford pundits foisted by the Scaife-funded Independent Women's Forum on cable and network news programs.
But in this case, the full contents of a second tape nearly two hours in length have emerged. The tape, made in October 1997, was among the earliest made by Tripp. The entire contents, provided to Ackerman, paint a far different picture than those of the Newsweek leaks:
Instead, the girl talk has boomeranged back on Tripp -- and her patron Kenneth Starr.
The tape is ambiguous in the extreme on the matter of whether Lewinsky claimed she had engaged in sex with Clinton, and it provides no insight into the origin of the now disputed "talking points" that Lewinsky allegedly gave Tripp -- nor any clues as to the multiple provenance of this controversial document.
In related Starrgate news, Lewinsky's new lawyers, Jacob Stein and Plato Cacheris, have decided to throw Kenneth Starr a bone in the form of allowing his office access to sales records of Ms. Lewinsky's book purchases. This will save Starr the embarrassment of a likely second court ruling against him in the matter of strongarming book stores for sales records.
Given the way things have gone against Starr for the last couple weeks, the press has framed this story as if it's something of a victory for Starr -- but this is a completely erroneous assumption.
The only winners are Lewinsky and her new and very shrewd lawyers, who see this as a public relations move that telegraphs "continued cooperation" -- while Starr looks the fool by continuing to stubbornly insist Lewinsky plead guilty to something that will somehow implicate President Clinton in some kind of massive criminal wrongdoing.
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