Never Bet Against The House

A publisher is paying Bill Clinton $10 million to tell us how it feels to be bad. That's $1.5 million more than the pope got to tell us how to be good.

Belying the hackneyed expression that "you can't have your cake and eat it, too," Clinton -- with the help of Knopf Publishing Group, which is a division of Random House, which is owned by international publishing consortium Bertelsmann -- has proved every mother in America wrong. None of those "mind your Ps and Qs" homilies for Slick Willy. His story certainly won't be a cautionary tale. Clinton's publishing payoff proves that the marketplace rewards bad behavior with the only yardstick that really matters in America -- money. Lots and lots of money.
Ask Sean "Puffy" Combs, ask Monica Lewinsky -- the more you misbehave, break the rules, stick it to the establishment, the more famous you become and the more dollars you earn. What's the point of teaching old-fashioned values of hard work, honesty and the Golden Rule to a child when all they have to do to prove you wrong is turn on the nightly news, go to the movies, watch a sporting event or, soon, read a disgraced ex-president's bestseller.

Clinton's big payday proves he can lie and cheat and then get a whole lot of money to explain why he lied and cheated. And because he's Bill Clinton -- Lancelot and Mordred with a dash of Elvis thrown in -- the steely-eyed businessmen at Bertelsmann are betting $10 million-plus on the public's willingness to pay cash for trash. Why?
Sex sells. And we've always loved sinners more than saints. Who really cared about Jimmy Carter's memoir when all he did was lust in his heart? Gerald Ford's life story was about as interesting as watching grass grow, even with his version of the Nixon pardon. Tricky Dick's numerous post-White House apologias were as lively as reading gross domestic product reports.

But Clinton? Move over, Sidney Sheldon, make way, Danielle Steele. Nobody's gonna buy this book to read about Hillary's health care plan or how Robert Rubin reduced unemployment. What inquiring minds want to know is Bill's own reaction when he heard about the blue dress, his own version of the cigar story, and what really happened with Paula Jones back in Arkansas.

Knopf has assigned its most respected editor, Robert Gottlieb, to baby-sit Clinton until he gets his manuscript finished or, as Random House chief Sonny Mehta was quoted as saying the publisher will get "a thorough and candid telling of (Clinton's) life, with primary focus on the White House years." Gottlieb normally edits icons of contemporary American literature, including Nobel prize-winning novelist Toni Morrison. Now he must clean up the syntax and re-arrange the adjectives of a print version of Clinton's omnipresent quivering lower lip, defiant jaw, teary-eyed "I feel your pain" rehash of a squandered life. Seems like a waste of a good editor, doesn't it? But when you're spending $10 million you want an insurance policy.

Readers will decide whether Bertelsmann got its money's worth by paying more for Bill Clinton's story than any publisher has ever paid for a "nonfiction" book. Will they fork over $30-plus for the Clinton confessional? Or will they just visit a used book store and buy a remaindered copy of the Starr Report and a transcript of the impeachment hearings for 10 cents on the dollar?
As they say in Vegas, never bet against the house.

© 2001 The Women Syndicate

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