The Media Wink, So These Two Don’t Go Away

Scrubbing hard won’t erase all blemishes forever. From Jerry Falwell to Monica Lewinsky, some disappear short term only to resurface later, courtesy of the media.

That also includes James Carville, who along with Paul Begala next month will permanently succeed Bill Press on CNN, splitting duties as the lefty component of a remodeled, expanded “Crossfire” opposite conservatives Tucker Carlson and Robert Novak.

As if “Crossfire” weren’t predictable and mindlessly shrill enough, the annoying Carville is such a relentless knee-jerk liberal Democrat that he’d seem to be a candidate for knee replacement. As for fundamentalist preacher Falwell, the Religious Right’s Beavis and Butt-head rolled into one? You’d think that he would lie low after publicly:

* Outing the purple-colored Tinky Winky of the PBS kids show “Teletubbies” as a proponent of the gay “agenda.”

* Disclosing that there is a Jewish antichrist among us.

* Blaming “pagans ... abortionists ... feminists ... gays ... lesbians ... the ACLU [and] People for the American Way” for helping to bring about the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the U.S., a charge Falwell later withdrew only after a public outcry.

But him embarrassed? Him disappear? No way. Show this guy a camera, and he’ll streak across town to hug it.

So there was Falwell on Monday’s “Crossfire,” debating Ibrahim Hooper, communications director for the Council on Arab Islamic Relations, on whether TV preacher Pat Robertson went too far recently in rejecting President Bush’s assertion that Islam, despite the terrorism of some Muslims, is a religion of “peace.”

The issue here is not whether it is or isn’t, but that “Crossfire” suited up Falwell for this superficial duel with Hooper (who denounced the kidnapping and killing of U.S. journalist Daniel Pearl), affirming that appearing in a media Rolodex is as much a life appointment as the Supreme Court. Falwell came through again, of course, playing the role of ignorant stiff to perfection.

He’ll be summoned back, though, because he is famous and his media fender-benders as an arbiter of morality generate curiosity the way a crash on a freeway does.

Just as Lewinsky returned to TV via her scheduled chat with CNN’s Larry King on Thursday night, in advance of Sunday’s HBO documentary “Monica in Black and White.”

You know how it is in this business. Her people talked to HBO’s people, and voila!

Lewinsky is shamelessly profiting from her co-starring role in what became a national calamity. But so is HBO for agreeing to present this one-hour-and-40-minute video memoir, a project she proposed, and for which she has been paid an undisclosed sum.

“I would do anything to have my anonymity back,” she insists here while acknowledging the incongruity of that with seeking the camera. She can’t have it both ways.

Here’s how this works: HBO’s agenda here is to induce viewers to watch this shoddy number. To that end, it benefits from Lewinsky’s notoriety in exchange for a fee and exposure that she hopes will improve her image and surely also draw attention to her line of handbags--just as her appearance with ABC’s Barbara Walters several years ago was timed to publicize her book, “Monica’s Story.”

In other words, everyone here has a vested interest. That includes the now-entrepreneurial Lewinsky, who owes her celebrity--and everything flowing from it--entirely to getting chummy in the Oval Office with philandering Bill Clinton in an episode that disgraced him, contributed to his impeachment and wounded the U.S. He’s at least as culpable, but she’s the one with a documentary.

Much of it is a tawdry rehash of the controversy surrounding those sexual liaisons that Lewinsky had as a government intern in her mid-20s, and the near constitutional crisis that ensued. This encore also includes excerpts of those reliably titillating Lewinsky-Linda Tripp dialogues, along with bits of Clinton’s 1998 deposition before Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr.

In new footage, Lewinsky also criticizes her treatment by Starr’s office.

Taped during a three-day period last spring, her interview portions consist mostly of her answering questions from college students and others at New York City’s Cooper Union University. And the affectionate reception she gets--loud applause, someone shouting out “We’re on your side, Monica,” and even laughter when she talks about helping Clinton cheat on his wife--is as much a comment on those in the audience as on her.

Did they check their values at the door? Just what did Lewinsky do to earn their admiration and become their heroine?

She gets one of her biggest laughs as she recalls telling Clinton “I have a crush on you” when first meeting him in 1995, and him then inviting her into “the back office.”

The presentation by filmmakers Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato is in artsy black and white, and staged with 27-year-old Lewinsky sitting on the edge of a stage while pouring out her story (seemingly wanting to blame everyone but herself for her former predicament), with manipulative mood music edited in for dramatic effect. Yes, let’s make Monica a tear-jerky melodrama.

As she did with Walters, she breaks down and weeps several times, and at one point leaves the stage to regain her composure, returning seven minutes later to more applause.

If Lewinsky is contrite, she doesn’t show it. “I do have remorse,” she says at one point, but adds that her “stronger affinity” is for her family and friends, not for Clinton’s wife, Hillary, now a U.S. senator from New York, and the couple’s daughter, Chelsea. “I’m not going to take equal responsibility for his family,” Lewinsky says. “They made their own choices as well.” Choices? Which ones does she have in mind?

Similarly, Lewinsky rejects being known as “the home-wrecker who came to Washington with an agenda,” suggesting that she is the true injured party, and that if not for a previous fling with a married teacher she says exploited her, she would not have been “comfortable” being intimate with Clinton.

There are two exceptions to the adoring crowd. Lewinsky appears taken aback when a man asks how it feels to be America’s oral sex “queen.” Another says: “You made this more about you and your pain and not about your agency in having all this happen. You are not an unwitting, silent, passive person who got caught up in something much larger than you were.”

A woman defends her, telling her no one “should judge you.”

After pausing, Lewinsky gives her own response, telling her accuser, “I’m just fuming.”

Yes, sure, all the way to the bank.

“Monica in Black and White” premieres Sunday night at 10 on HBO. The network has rated it TV-MA (may be unsuitable for children under the age of 17).

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Howard Rosenberg’s column appears Mondays and Fridays. He can be contacted at howard.rosenberg @latimes.com.