Quoth the Columnist, Nevermore

I cross my heart. I raise my hand. I hereby promise to never mention Monica Lewinsky again, never never never never ever.

Read my lips. This is it. I am Lewinsky’d out. I will not bring up her name again! (Unless she runs for senator in New York.) I don’t care if she moves to Palm Springs, opens a tattoo parlor, sleeps in Kato Kaelin’s guest house, shoots a 59 in the Bob Hope Desert Classic, co-stars in a remake of “The Flintstones” as Betty Rubble and convinces Brad Pitt to leave Jennifer Aniston for her, I am done with the woman. Bye-bye. Hasta la vista, baby.

My final word[s] on the subject will address Wednesday night’s sun’ll-come-up-tomorrow, bet-your-bottom-dollar TV interview with Barbara Walters, in which she sat there in that chair, looking all goggle-eyed, saying all kinds of childish and foolish things.

(Walters, I mean.)

I know that customers were lining up Thursday morning at bookstores all over America to buy Lewinsky’s new autoerotic biography, the title of which is either “Monica’s Story” or “Women Are From Venus, Presidents Are From Mars,” I forget. I wish it would be a worst-seller, but it won’t be. As a popular American literary figure, Monica will probably be bigger than Dilbert.

It doesn’t matter. I won’t buy it. I won’t buy it if Andrew Morton reveals that Lewinsky and Princess Fergie once ate the same macaroni-and-cheese Lean Cuisine. I won’t buy it if Chapter 2 begins with the time Queen Elizabeth pulled some strings to find Monica a job in the palace.

No more. No more Monicamania.

She was the biggest thing dressed in blue since Hideo Nomo, but enough’s enough.

We have all watched a whole year’s worth of There’s Something About Monica, but the time has come to get her out of our hair. Cut. Print. Fade to black. Let this woman ride off into Sunset, the boulevard.

*

But first--that TV interview.

It began innocently enough, with Walters poised there in her pinky ring, ready to expose the deepest, darkest Lewinsky secrets (she dated somebody besides Bill!), and to get to the bottom of that all-important thong issue, and to ask Monica the biggest question of them all:

“You’ve always had a weight problem, haven’t you?”

(This is just a hunch, but I think Barbara probably wouldn’t have asked Ted Kennedy or Madeline Albright that one.)

Anything you’d like to say to the people of the United States of America, there, girlfriend?

“Yes!” replied Lewinsky, with lip gloss bright as a rocket’s red glare.

“I’ve waited a long time to be able to express to the country how very sorry I am for my part in this past year’s ordeal.”

She waited a long time?

Well, excu-uuuuse ME. I guess I must have missed something. I must have missed the part where Lewinsky was under orders from the U.S. government, for which it stands, not to say she was sorry until March 3, 1999, or face 25 to life in a maximum security federal penitentiary for violating the justice system’s cruel three-apology law.

I never realized that Monica was refused permission to call a news conference to say “I’m sorry,” to spray-paint on a wall “I’m sorry,” to send a Candygram to say “I’m sorry,” to pause between her hotel’s door and her car’s door to say “I’m sorry,” to take off her baseball cap and spit out tobacco juice that spelled out “I’m sorry,” or to tell Cokie Roberts to tell Ted Koppel to tell Peter Jennings to tell America that she was sorry.

No, apparently the poor dear couldn’t say I’m sorry until she could sit down with Color Me Barbara for two hours of prime time, on the eve of her biography’s hitting the shelves.

Well, you know what they say:

Love means never having to say you’re sorry, at least until your book comes out.

*

Other Lewinskyisms included:

* “I know I never will have an affair with a married man again.” (Good. Me, either.)

* “She (Linda Tripp) is just a disgusting, despicable, venomous and evil human being.” (How dare she? The nerve, referring to Linda Tripp as human.)

* “I come from a generation whose mothers burned their bras and said, ‘Make love, not war.’ ” (How ironic. This was also Gov. Bill Clinton’s campaign motto.)

* “Sometimes, I have warm feelings, sometimes I’m proud of him still, sometimes I hate his guts.” (How ironic. These very words could become a New York senatorial candidate’s motto.)

Bye bye, Monica. Good luck with the book.

(Who’ll play you in the movie?)

*

Mike Downey’s column appears Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Write to him at Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles 90053. E-mail: mike.downey@latimes.com