A L S O+.T O D A Y

Monica's nightmare
By Charles Taylor
There's nothing balanced or objective about Andrew Morton's book. That's why it rings so true

Starring Monica Lewinsky, as herself
By Liesl Schillinger
She was universally reviled -- until the public got a chance to hear her speak and, now, to read her version of events

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"The Handyman"
Reviewed by Ruth Henrich
In this L.A. novel, an unassuming handyman muddles his way to artistic genius while repairing the lives of lonely wives and other lost souls

T A B L E+T A L K

It's almost spring, and books about baseball are a hot topic in the Books section of Table Talk

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Journey to the center of a race
By Fetzer Mills, Jr.
Randall Kenan talks about the seven-year odyssey that led him from Martha's Vineyard to Alaska in search of the truth about black life in America
(02/24/99)

Writing on Air
By Geoff Edgers
David Halberstam talks about his new book, "Playing for Keeps: Michael Jordan and the World He Made."
(02/18/99)

I know why the untuned Thunderbird pings
By Todd Lappin
Maya Angelou delivered the inspirational speech to the National Automobile Dealers Association. And guess what? It worked
(02/09/99)

Black but not like me
By Jill Nelson
A journalist slouches into a party celebrating the black elite -- whatever that is
(02/04/99)

"It's the Stupidity, Stupid"
By Harry Shearer
In this excerpt, Shearer wonders if we should hate the people who hate President Clinton
(01/29/99)

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_________the big baby

Forget "The Death of Outrage." If the right really wants to win the Culture War, it should pass out copies of "Monica's Story."

BY JOAN WALSH | For years I've read the work of Dr. Judith Wallerstein, the California psychologist whose research on the troubled children of 1970s divorces forced the nation to reappraise its divorce revolution, and I've wondered: Who are these people she writes about? Specifically, who are these boneheaded parents who divorced with so little thought for their kids? These absent, philandering fathers who, after divorce, have little or no relationship with their children, and often even refuse to pay for college? These mothers who blithely divorce those absent philanderers -- or sometimes even good husbands -- in order to "self-actualize," convinced their kids will be better off with separate households even if the pre-divorce battling continues? Due to Wallerstein's research, we know the children -- the unhappy children who become unhappy adults, plagued by addictions, eating disorders and (especially the women) problems with intimacy. But the cavalier divorces, and the brain-dead divorcing spouses, Wallerstein's work depicts bear little resemblance to the agonized un-couplings I've witnessed, coming of age in the 1980s -- and divorcing, myself, in the 1990s.

But now, thanks to Andrew Morton, I've met Wallerstein's prototype: the Lewinskys of Beverly Hills. It's impossible to read "Monica's Story" and miss the picture of an overindulged daughter of wealthy, warring parents whose world loses what little structure it had when their marriage ends. As Morton tells the story, 14-year-old Monica and her 10-year-old brother, Michael, heard the news from their mother, Marcia Lewis, over shakes and fries at their favorite restaurant, Hamburger Hamlet. "It was, Marcia thought, news that her children would welcome," Morton writes. "They would see it as the end of their unhappy family life and the beginning of a new era, an idyll starring just the three of them. She had thought they would be pleased. She was badly mistaken. Michael burst into tears, and Monica ran to the rest room, where she was promptly sick." Later, Lewis laments, "I wish I had known then what I know now about how much children suffer. At the time I thought kids were adaptable. I was very wrong."

Indeed. It gets worse: Mom rages, tells the kids about Dad's cheating and his cheapskate family-support proposals; Monica sides with Mom and won't see Dad; Dad cries, but later refuses to pay for Monica to go away to college, even though he's a wealthy oncologist. Monica gains 50 pounds, finds some solace in -- what else? -- drama, and then takes up with her high school drama teacher, who gets married to another woman and even has a baby during their affair. Mom and Dad (along with a parade of therapists and a handful of friends) urge Monica to stop, but she listens to no one. The drama is played out again when Monica moves east to escape her married boyfriend and takes up with yet another married man, whom she calls Handsome, or the Creep; others know him as POTUS: the president of the United States. And again, Marcia Lewis is alarmed, despairing, but powerless to stop her headstrong daughter: "When I realized that something not good was happening I was disappointed and demoralized. I felt it was wrong, not so much in a biblical sense, but wrong for her as a young woman."

But then, as told by Morton, nobody in "Monica's Story" does wrong in a biblical sense. Their actions and decisions, however disastrous, aren't "bad"; they're just, in Lewis' words, "not good." Everyone's a victim: Monica, Mom, Dad, even the predatory president, who was himself a fat child of a broken home just like Monica, and felt her pain. There are no villains -- except, of course, Kenneth Starr, the independent counsel whom Morton, and Monica, vilify and cast beyond redemption. Will somebody find out if Starr was a chubby child, too, so we can give him a big hug, forgive him his excesses and get beyond this scandal?

Fifty pages into "Monica's Story," I'd stopped thinking about Dr. Wallerstein and started calling for Dr. Laura. I was having disturbing thoughts: Maybe the right is right. Maybe somebody needs to reintroduce notions of shame, guilt and personal responsibility into American culture. Because despite Morton's, and Monica's, intentions, the book is less an indictment of Starr than of modern dysfunctional family life: casual divorce, consumerism, rudderless parenting, feel-good psychology, victimology. Anybody looking to convert a friend to the right-wing side of the Culture War should skip the obvious titles -- William Bennett's "The Death of Outrage," Robert Bork's "Slouching Towards Gomorrah" or Wendy Shalit's "In Defense of Modesty." The best conservative call to arms is contained in the 279 unconscious pages of "Monica's Story."

N E X T+P A G E+| Media abuse of Monica was statutory rape

ILLUSTRATION BY CHARLIE POWELL