Death of American Virtue - Ken Gormley [465]
In the end, Tripp had abandoned the book project only because she could not negotiate a satisfactory percentage split of royalties. As one acquaintance said, it was as if Linda Tripp could not decide if she was going to make a name (and a small fortune) for herself by standing up to her enemies and declaring, “I have the truth on my side!” or crawl into a hole and die from fear and self-doubt. Said a source who worked with Tripp on the book deal until it collapsed, “Was this about writing a book and making money? Or something else? It was a combination.… She was thinking about a rainy day [fund]. But she also wanted to set the record straight.”
The source paused and delivered a frank assessment: “She’s never come clean—I hate to say that.” For whatever reason, this smart, complicated woman with a slight disposition toward paranoia had been eaten alive by a vast scandal that she herself had helped conceive. “When you’re up against the most powerful [figures] in the world,” stated Tripp’s acquaintance, “people can act like moths. They go toward where the light is. Sometimes, that impacts the truth.”
Concluded the source: “She was conflicted to the end—she thought the American public had a right to know what was going on in the White House. But she chickened out. I think she’s still chickening out.”
Tripp’s former literary agent friend, Lucianne Goldberg, added her own unvarnished postscript. “She was over her head,” said Goldberg. “I don’t think Linda had a clue about the vehemence that was going to be visited on her. If you strike the king, you must kill the king.”
PAULA Jones, the woman whose lawsuit against Bill Clinton had commenced the scandal train a-rolling, had returned to a slower-paced life in Cabot, Arkansas, liking it just fine. Here, Paula had remarried a construction worker named Steven Mark McFadden and had found a new vocation selling real estate while raising her two boys, free from the likes of Steve Jones and Bill Clinton. She had also found time to dabble in money-making ventures that capitalized on her fleeting notoriety, such as appearing in a boxing match against disgraced Olympic skater Tonya Harding (Paula was billed as “the Arkansas Pounder,” Harding was dubbed “TNT”) on television’s short-lived Celebrity Boxing show.
When it came to tabloid reports that she had raked in the big bucks from her lawsuit, Paula quickly objected, pointing out that lawyers had to be paid and expenses had to be covered. “A hundred and fifty-one thousand dollars. That’s all I got out of $850,000,” Paula said, tapping a painted fingernail against the table. “And I had to pay taxes on that money.”
In the end, Paula Jones McFadden insisted that her lawsuit wasn’t about money; it was about some loftier principle. “All the crap I’d been through, the mud they’d drug me through,” she said. “And talking about ‘trailer park trash.’ I never lived in a trailer in my life. And discrediting me and saying I’m a bimbo. Just name it, and they called it to me. That’s why they have money judgments. It’s for—what’s it called?” Her friend Debbie Ballentine interjected, “Pain and suffering.” “Yes,” Paula said emphatically, taking a quick sip of her Diet Coke. “The trauma.”
At the end of the day, despite all the jokes and cartoon artists making fun of her nose and all the “negativity,” Paula said, she was pleased that plenty of everyday people in Arkansas continued to treat her as a hero, of sorts: “They’re just excited and want autographs and [say], ‘We’re so proud of you. We knew how he [Bill Clinton]