Two Monica Shows, Each With Tears and Angel

Dueling Monicas.

Each was attractive. Each had experience with a higher power. Each was renowned for touching others. Each was on television Wednesday night.

So much for the striking parallels between Monica S. Lewinsky and the Irish-bred angelic Monica of the hit series “Touched by an Angel,” which CBS counter-programmed against the second half of Barbara Walters’ two-hour interview with Lewinsky in hopes of putting a dent in ABC’s expected huge audience.

Adding to America’s stockpile of useless data that get mislabeled as news, Lewinsky/Walters turned out to be an extravaganza of footnotes and factoids the likes of which are usually available for browsing at grocery checkouts.

ABC rolled it out as titillatingly as possible, with Walters alternately acting as Lewinsky’s confessor and slumber party girlfriend. (“Did you worry about somebody coming in and finding you?”) At first you wondered if something this intimate should be on TV. After a while you wondered if something this tedious should be on TV.

Yet big ratings were a given, although moves were afoot to block the Lewinsky/Walters juggernaut on Wednesday, the last day of one of those crucial ratings sweeps periods that determine TV advertising rates.

Just as NBC deployed a Fox-like “World’s Most Amazing Videos” against the first hour of the interview, so did CBS hope to counter ABC by moving in that highly emotional rerun of “Touched by an Angel,” which normally airs Sunday nights.

It was Good Monica versus Bad Monica, a battle of the brogue and the rogue that appeared close on paper.

The angel Monica was there to fulfill the dreams of a young mother named Audrey and her terminally ill son, Petey, just as this edition of “20/20” was expected to fulfill the dreams of both ABC and Monica Lewinsky.

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The angel Monica was expected to have the advantage of tears. “Touched by an Angel” takes a back seat to no series when it comes to requiring hankies. And as expected, Monica’s own eyes grew watery when she and her colleagues, angels Tess and Andre, taught Audrey that embracing God would help her get through 8-year-old Petey’s impending death from cystic fibrosis.

But that advantage was neutralized when the crafty Walters, never to be underestimated, made Monica Lewinsky tear up several times and got some genuine weeping out of her in the last 20 minutes.

Both programs were about rewards, with the angel Tess remarking about Petey: “That sweet baby has the gift of love.” But business is business in Hollywood, and Petey’s gift paled against the gift of Nielsen ratings that Lewinsky bestowed on ABC, and the gift of publicity and exposure that she received in return on the eve of the publication of her book, “Monica’s Story.”

Although Lewinsky was not paid money for her ABC interview, who was Walters Wednesday if not Lewinsky’s angel?

In fact, what was all of this about if not vested interests on the part of everyone involved?

Although more spectacle than usual, Walters/Lewinsky was television as it’s always practiced, a celebration of form and process over content, with what Lewinsky said (Just how beneficial was it learning Monica no longer loves Bill?) being much less newsworthy than the fact that she had decided to say it.

And say it to Walters. In this scheme of things, saying nothing may not be important, but to whom you say it is. And so is how you say it, apparently, for KABC’s “Eyewitness News,” once more getting in touch with its inner child, promised Wednesday to have someone on its 11 p.m. newscast analyzing Lewinsky’s body language.

Lewinsky and Walters that night were essentially just a couple of celebrities on the stump for themselves. Lewinsky didn’t have a movie or record--yet. But she had her book coming out, the program’s promotion of it affirming that there are many more ways to pay an interviewee than with cash.

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Meanwhile, Walters did everything but go door to door Wednesday on behalf of advertising her Lewinsky interview.

Perhaps never have a TV personality and a network, abetted by the entire journalistic establishment, so relentlessly hawked a program as ABC and Walters did this one. That included releasing those cozy Aunt Babs and Monica glossies creating the impression that they were joined at the hip and partners in this venture. And of course, they were.

“God loves you, Audrey,” the angel Monica told little Petey’s mother Wednesday night.

And Barbara loves you, Monica Lewinsky.