For Lewinsky, Silence Could Be Golden

Monica S. Lewinsky, insecure girl from Beverly Hills turned most notorious woman in the world, is trolling for a new life, and by many accounts the options could be limitless if she chooses carefully.

From book deals to centerfolds, from onetime television interviews to modeling gigs, offers apparently are pouring in to Lewinsky as she begins calculating how to market her unsought notoriety. For whatever the resume-poor 25-year-old chooses to do now is likely to shape her entire future, say public relations and entertainment experts who invariably compare her to past “it girls”--the Judith Campbell Exners and Donna Rices who had the chance to turn their 15 minutes into a career.

As Lewinsky’s spokeswoman, Judy Smith, says after the former White House intern’s final appearance before the grand jury investigating her liaison with the president, the young woman is “looking forward to beginning the process of rebuilding her life.”

But the reconstruction process has to be hampered by all that the world has come to know about her sex life--with even more excruciatingly intimate details expected today and the possibility that she could become known as the woman who helped destroy an American president.

Still, the notoriety that has shattered Lewinsky’s life also has put her in a league of her own. Right now her best commodity is her scarcity. The world has yet to even hear her voice or evaluate her unedited story. And that apparently is purposeful.

Since cutting an immunity deal with independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr, Lewinsky has been legally constrained from publicly discussing her entanglement with the president. But her silence is more a strategy than a muzzle, according to sources. She has decided to wait out the hysterical political climate and legal wranglings, including possible impeachment hearings, so that when she does break her silence her voice won’t be lost in the partisan din and will work to further her best interests.

In the meantime, she and Smith are pitching and entertaining offers--including lucrative bookdeals and made-for-TV movies.

They are also fending off a daily barrage of calls, sometimes 25 or 30, about rumors, disinformation and outright lies concerning what Lewinsky is up to. One day she is vacationing in Australia. (Not true.) The next day she is going on the soap opera “Days of Our Lives.” (Not true.) And then Friday an Italian designer in Milan announced that Lewinsky would make a runway appearance wearing a blue two-piece suit at the October fashion shows and give half of her $470,000 pay to cancer research. (No truth to any of it, and the publicity stunt of this designer’s last show was a “condom dress” in tight, skin-color latex.)

It is true, however, that Lewinsky wants to write a memoir and that Smith approached at least one top publisher unsuccessfully. Smith refused Friday to discuss any specifics about Lewinsky’s life or future prospects. “I’m just not commenting on any rumors or speculation,” she says.

Carol Schneider, a vice president at Random House, says she understands why at least some publishing houses, including her own, might be reluctant to get involved with Lewinsky.

“How much more is there to tell if you’ve read the Starr report in detail?” she asks. “Books by people who are not admired don’t do well. Plus, if I read an excerpt or coverage of the book, why would I want to buy it?”

A Time / CNN poll released over the weekend suggests that Schneider is correct in assuming that Lewinsky is not held in high esteem by most Americans: 77% of all respondents saw her not as a “victim” but as an “opportunist.”

In an interview, Schneider, like several publishing types contacted for this story, let it be known that the woman whose book she would love to publish and read is Hillary Rodham Clinton’s.

“We really don’t know what is going on in her mind,” Schneider says of the first lady.

But others, such as Washington literary agent Rafe Sagalyn, think a memoir told in Lewinsky’s voice but filtered through the right collaborator could be compelling and command a seven-figure advance if published by this spring--or at least before the president leaves town.

“This is a woman who will be famous forever, and if she finds the right voice will have a story to tell,” says Sagalyn, who brokered a $3-million book advance for O.J. Simpson’s girlfriend Paula Barbieri that was a commercial disaster.

How does a publisher not get burned handling a book with highlights that will be disseminated instantly in the media so that no one need buy it, as Schneider suggests?

Michael Viner, head of the L.A.-based media company that published five O.J. Simpson books, says a publisher would have to sell serial rights, book club deals and excerpts to overseas tabloids to break even. He estimates Lewinsky could get $2 million.

However, the search for a willing publisher or entertainment company is also fraught with political pitfalls common to Washington: A publisher who wants to bid on, for example, Hillary or President Clinton’s memoirs won’t want to associate with Lewinsky; and a media company that lobbies on regulatory issues might not want to pay her for a made-for-TV story.

“She is too hot right now to touch,” says one television executive who, like many, asked to remain anonymous for those very political reasons. “But that isn’t stopping anyone from scheming to get her story. Everyone will just wait.”

For now, everybody has a version of who Lewinsky is. The Starr report and media accounts have left most Americans--55% according to one poll--with an unfavorable view of her. And her image could suffer more damage if the public ever hears her tape-recorded phone conversations, foul language and all, with former confidant Linda Tripp.

Indeed, to many she is a Gen-X courtesan who became obsessively infatuated with the president. She has become the girl in the tailored suits whose weight people love to calculate and joke about.

But several people who know her well insist that Lewinsky is distinctively charming and more a mixed-up kid than a sexual predator. “She’s the most misunderstood woman in the world,” one close associate says. “Everybody has her wrong.”

One sympathetic talent-marketing expert thinks Lewinsky could turn around her toxic image--and would be better served by the small screen than a book.

“I think she goes on TV with a Barbara Walters and if she doesn’t have a lisp and her tape looks good, well, she could very possibly create a persona that has legs,” he says. “She’s not cerebral; she’s not a 500-page book. But she might have a good sense of humor. She might engage the camera in a way that we can feel for her. And then she’s golden.”

If that’s the case, this industry insider lists a slew of possibilities: She could start her own full-figure clothing line; she could be a semi-regular on “Politically Incorrect,” a fashion commentator with Joan Rivers or host of an E! special on sex in Washington; she could go on the “how-I-coped” lecture circuit or have a radio show about young Hollywood or young Washington.

“She could cash in big,” he added, “if she’s got talent or has talented people working with her.”

A public relations expert who has managed several prominent Republicans advises Lewinsky to avoid being exploited or “used up.” Back when the scandal first broke, she was offered $2 million to pose semi-nude in Penthouse--and a magazine spokesman says the offer stands.

“She goes on the Howard Stern show or does something cheap and she’s finished,” says this expert, suggesting that Lewinsky’s first public appearance be on the Oprah Winfrey show. “Monica needs an emotional setting to gain sympathy and emerge thoughtful.”

However if Lewinsky goes public, it is unlikely she’ll be able to resume a so-called normal life of dignity with an office job, paparazzi-free vacations or hopes of marriage proposals.

At least one screenwriter envisioned her future this way: “She’ll marry some older guy who will be rich enough to be able to laugh at” the nature of her relationship with the president. “And we’ll never hear from her again.”

Certainly, her prospects for marriage have been poisoned for now: A Time / CNN poll released over the weekend showed that 85% of male respondents would not consider dating Lewinsky.

Of course, there is always the chance that Lewinsky will try to disappear from the spotlight for several years, like Donna Rice did, or forever, like Megan Marshack has.

Donna Rice Hughes, the “other woman” in the Gary Hart scandal in the late 1980s, turned her life around after retreating for many years and becoming more religious. An aspiring actress who had made a dozen commercials, she at first went on with her career by making an ad for No Excuses jeans.

“I realized after that, everything I did would seem exploitative,” she says. Then she had buck-teethed dentures made as a disguise and moved to a small Virginia town where she spent years trying to recover.

“It was a day-to-day journey that took me seven years underground and walking away from millions of dollars and many opportunities,” says Rice Hughes, who a few years ago married and began working for a group that fights pornography on the Internet.

Marshack is, perhaps, also a model for Lewinsky. Marshack, then a 22-year-old journalist, made the front pages in 1979 by being with former Vice President Nelson Rockefeller at his New York townhouse the night he died of a heart attack. She has never spoken publicly of the event. She lives quietly in New York City, today a news writer at a local television station, forever labeled the woman who kept silent.

Lewinsky, who blabbed of her affair with the president to at least 11 people, already has closed off that route. But whatever she does, Donna Rice Hughes advises caution.

“We are all responsible for our own choices. Monica Lewinsky will figure that out.”