Thar' She Blows!

Nosin' Around Slick Willie's Personal Bidness.

By Jeff Smith

IN A PERFECT world, men would not wag their cuties in front of women who weren't expecting it, or, if they were, would just as soon be spared the spectacle. Alas, this is not a perfect world.

In the real world men on occasion do wag their cuties at women--indeed women in moments of intemperate enthusiasm have been known to flash men--and in the majority of instances this can be passed off to high spirits and low taste.

Smith Seduction can at whiles be elevated to an art-form, as evidenced by Bogart and Bacall, but transcendent moments in human relations seldom involve the sound of a descending zipper followed by the words, "Yo, Bitch: check this out."

Which is in no way to imply that Gov. William Jefferson Clinton of Arkansas used these precise words to draw the attention of state employee Paula Jones to his groin that fateful night in a Little Rock hotel room...nor even to assert that such a sordid scene ever actually played out.

What we have here is a classic he said-she said situation, elevated to global consequence by the status of the accused, and sunk to the status of sewage by the sordid particulars of the accusation. Paula Jones says that Bill Clinton bade his bodyguard bring her to his suite one night, and there and then, to borrow the words of Jack Nicholson, "pulled the stiff one-eye" on her. Are we to accept at face value the innocence of the accused, because he is Leader of the Free World? Are we to assume mendacity on the part of the accuser because she has big hair?

Despite the temptations, so many and various and alluring, in this singular soap opera, we must not yield to the quick and easy conclusion. For one thing, Our Man Willie enjoys something of a reputation as a womanizer. As recently as last week he was accused of trifling with the affections of a White House intern. As long ago as his first term as governor of Arkansas he was accused of an extramarital dalliance with Gennifer Flowers. While none of this mud has yet stuck and dried to adobe on the presidential physiognomy, Mr. and Mrs. Clinton did at least address times of temptation and trial in their marriage, in a television interview during their first presidential campaign--an oblique admission that there were a few old flames behind the smoke.

And for another thing, Paul Jones has her own reputation as a man-izer. Besides which, there are the unavoidable questions as to what she expected to encounter in the Governor's hotel room late at night, why she agreed to go there, and how come she waited so long to work up a sense of outraged virtue, and so highly public and theatrical a demand for justice.

As stated at the outset, in a perfect world.... But everything and everybody involved in this sorry spectacle is so far from perfect it would be best if we could just forget the whole thing and get on with the business of running the world.

Want to know what I think? Too bad.

What I think is that Bill Clinton probably did pull something on Paula Jones, and that she knew what was on the agenda, only not in quite such lurid detail. I think she expected at least a bottle of blush wine and some oysters from room service, and the pretense of a quickie courtship before Willie whipped out the whitesnake. I think that with all the advantages of position and power and a fine education at the best colleges, Bill Clinton couldn't get in the pants of a trashy woman who would have liked nothing better than to ball the Big Guy and tell her girlfriends about it.

And if that sounds like I'm an anti-feminist, male chauvinist pig, you're dumber than I look. I love trashy women and I hate pious-sounding hypocritical men. I just don't think this sort of extra-curricular activity is pertinent to the conduct of presidential politics. If Bill and Paula want to fuck around, okay by me--as long as they do it on their own time. One immutable fact of life is that powerful people are drawn both to leadership and to groupies. And vice-versa. I wouldn't want to live in a nation led by eunuchs.

I think Paula Jones yielded to temptation when she went to Gov. Clinton's room that night, and discovered, to her chagrin, that he was even tackier than she. And in the process, discovered something kind of odd and interesting about the gubernatorial staff, so to speak. I think she yielded to temptation again when she agreed, at the urging of Clinton's political enemies, to make a federal case out of it. But I don't despise her for being human and fallible. The whole thing is way beyond her control now.

I also think it's pretty silly and pretty sorry for Clinton to have to run up a $3 million legal bill to defend himself against what is really a matter of small moment.

And I think it's hilarious that in the loftiest aeries of the free press and world affairs, great minds are wondering aloud what it is about the President's pecker that Paula Jones claims will be her bona fide. And why it hasn't been leaked, no pun intended.

To me it seems obvious. Discard the usual issues of size, color, huge hairy moles, birthmarks, stigmata, or tattoos that say either "Wendy" or "Welcome to Jamaica: Have a nice day." Surely Gennifer Flowers or that White House intern would have corroborated Jones' discovery, were the famous feature anything commonly recognizable. Such is not the case.

What's special about Big Willie's Little Willie must be something uniquely personal to Paula Jones and William Jefferson Clinton, revealed in that moment of epiphany when the principals met, tete a tete.

Consider Ms. Jones. Disregard the new doo, the softer shades of lip gloss and mascara, the lower hem and higher décolletage. Study the parts of her untouched by scissors or comb, brush, pencil, needle and thread or surgeon's scalpel, the phases of the makeover that decorum dictates must wait until after the trial, after the talk-shows, after the made-for-TV movie. Ponder wisely and well and you will have your own epiphany:

Bill Clinton's cutie looks just like Paula Jones' nose.

Remember, you read it here first. TW


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