Memo to spotlight seekers: Be a jerk

As combat in Iraq winds down, nothing much has changed on the home front. Being a famous jerk still pays.

Take Monica Lewinsky, who owes her celebrity, and everything flowing from it, entirely to getting chummy in the Oval Office with skirt-chasing Bill Clinton in a grimy episode that disgraced both of them, contributed to his impeachment and wounded the U.S.

But the culture is forgiving, with television, especially, known for welcoming bad actors from politics, sports and other areas of life into the fold of respectability like redeemed sinners.

That’s why you can see Lewinsky -- whose sexual liaisons with a lying, philandering president as a government intern in her mid-20s led to a near constitutional crisis -- as a chatty guest co-host of this morning’s edition of “The View” on ABC (topics to include daytime TV’s first same-sex kiss).

And tonight as host of Fox’s new seven-episode “Mr. Personality” -- a dating show -- as she continues to profit (a memoir, a line of handbags and an HBO special) from her co-starring role in a national calamity.

Yes, her resurrection is fully underway as she closes in on age 30.

It was only a year ago that she told an audience on that HBO program, “I would do anything to have my anonymity back.” And scheduled a visit with CNN’s high-profile Larry King to promote it.

Clinton has hardly shrunk from the spotlight himself, and is available on TV Sunday nights as a Democratic commentator dueling Republican Bob Dole on “60 Minutes.” To go along with his character blemishes, though, his accomplishments in public life include an Arkansas governorship and two terms as president.

Lewinsky’s only pedigree is Clinton.

Coming to mind here is “The King of Comedy,” Martin Scorsese’s memorable 1983 dark comedy starring Robert De Niro as a no-talent aspiring comic and talk show host named Rupert Pupkin who attains fame and ultimate respectability only through committing a crime, for which he goes to jail.

Before that he’s a nonentity, a hapless, emotionally unstable wannabe with an undercurrent of danger. Afterward, he’s a star.

It’s the way things often happen. Memories fade, but the green of cash doesn’t. However enormous your flaws, you’ll thrive financially if your infamy earns a profit for others. If you’re a famous face who can make someone else money, you’ll always fill a niche and earn a payday somewhere on TV, whether your best-known modus operandi is sex, deception or rage.

An example of that is former basketballer Dennis Rodman getting hired briefly as a TV pitchman for Carl’s Jr. a few years ago, based solely on his reputation as an out-of-control, head-butting bad boy. Just as the late Billy Martin and his former New York Yankees boss, George Steinbrenner, co-starred in Miller Lite commercials that played off their stormy relationship. And tennis great John McEnroe made Bic blades commercials that re-created his famed nastiness and name-calling on the court.

This Rolodex of the Reclaimed includes Jerry Falwell, the oft-misspeaking, self-impaling fundamentalist preacher whom the media continue to suit up for interviews despite his many fender benders as an arbiter of morality. And Oliver North, former Marine colonel who went on to become radio host, syndicated columnist and commentator/war-in-Iraq correspondent for Fox News Channel despite lying to Congress in the Iran-Contra affair.

So Clinton gets Bob Dole; Lewinsky, “Mr. Personality.”

Although it wasn’t available in advance, it’s as flagrantly banal on paper as Fox hits “American Idol” and “Joe Millionaire.” In “Mr. Personality,” a female contestant is courted by masked males whose looks are kept hidden from her, but not from the audience. So she has to judge them entirely on how they sound before she chooses one and gets to see all of their faces.

Although Lewinsky’s Fox Web site bio tactfully excludes her scandalous adventures with Clinton, it does include e-mails attacking her selection as “Mr. Personality” host. The connection between her and her own most famous date is obvious to all, and Fox has a vested interest in keeping it that way.

So indirectly, at least, that damaging footnote to U.S. history is now nourishing a trivial entertainment show, in the same way Lewinsky once mocked it in an appearance on “Saturday Night Live” as if it were a big joke.

A promo for “The View” crowed Friday that Monday’s show would bring more “hot” topics. “So who’s better to co-host than Monica Lewinsky?”

Well, look, she has a right to make a living and seek redemption. But who is really wearing the mask? Next up for her, what, center square on “Hollywood Squares”? A co-starring role with Dole in Viagra spots?

Although no one mentioned here comes close to being a villain of epic size, the field is virtually unlimited for commercial spokespersons, and one can envision the phenomenon leading ultimately to something like this, along the lines of those former American Express spots:

Do you know me? I’m a former ruthless dictator and elusive war criminal.

S-A-D-D-A-M H-U-S-S-E-I-N.

*’Mr. Personality’

Where: Fox (KTTV, Channel 11)

When: 9-10 p.m. Mondays, starting tonight

Who: Hosted by Monica Lewinsky; created and executive produced by Bruce Nash (“Meet My Folks,” “When Good Pets Go Bad 2”) and Robert Kosberg (“Twelve Monkeys,” “Deep Blue Sea”)

Rating: The network has rated the program TV14-DLS (may not be suitable for children under the age of 14, with advisories for suggestive dialogue, coarse language and sex).

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