A Work of Fiction --Believe It or Not

“Welcome to Arianna’s excellent adventure,” reads the jacket blurb on “Greetings From the Lincoln Bedroom” (Crown, $23), Arianna Huffington’s slashingly satirical take on a White House where Socks is a talking cat with ESP, impeachment is the “I word” and Vice President Al Gore is a statue stashed in a gloomy basement room.

The adventure begins as Republican Huffington, having given $300 to the Democratic National Committee, arrives for her White House weekend. Awaiting her is a message from Monica Lewinsky, asking that Huffington pick up a copy of “Catcher in the Rye” that she left in the Oval Office, where she and the president were reading together.

In this, her first work of fiction, Huffington--who wrote satirical columns for Punch and London’s Daily Mail before penning biographies of Pablo Picasso and Maria Callas--sinks her literary claws into not only Bill and Hillary, but also Newt, assorted bimbos and a virtual army of wealthy Asians whose largess earned them entree to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

As Huffington pulls up in her car, she observes a sign: “This portion of the White House driveway paid for by Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen.”

Kent of the White House domestic staff welcomes her to the Lincoln bedroom, explaining that he is at her service except when on “bimbo control,” or B.C., which was established to keep tour groups out of “sensitive” areas after some school kids walked in on the president while he was “right in the middle of not having an improper relationship. . . .”

Opening a drawer, Huffington finds not a Bible from the Gideons but etiquette rules for guests, who are advised that, in narrow corridors, “process servers and federal investigators have the right of way.” Should the president fail to recall her name, she’s further advised, she should not take offense, but for $100,000 he will “remember your birthday and remind you a week in advance about your biannual teeth-cleaning.”

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Prowling the dark halls, Huffington comes upon a candlelit room where Hillary Clinton is summoning the spirit of Rosalynn Carter, hoping to learn how to be a less accomplished lawyer and a more Southern belle.

“Hillary, honey,” Carter tells her, “your problem is that you’re all steel and no magnolia.”

In search of a late-night snack, Huffington finds President Clinton and Newt Gingrich eating Twinkies--and striking a deal: Gingrich will show Clinton a passage in the Bible explaining that telephone sex is not adultery; Clinton will give Gingrich Sharon Stone’s phone number.

Finally, Huffington is visited by Abraham Lincoln. He’s come to discuss the character thing: “Dick Morris told me I’d lose 20 points off my favorability rating for signing the Emancipation Proclamation.”

In a “Dear Arianna” letter in the back of the book, Crown Vice President Steve Ross writes: “I think you need a long rest. I was expecting a serious book on the state of American politics, not the ravings of a madwoman. . . . It’s just impossible to believe that you really met a talking cat and a living statue--never mind that the White House is run by a bunch of immoral lunatics.”

But Huffington has the last word, telling Clinton, Gore and the whole cast, “Thanks, guys, I couldn’t have made you up.”