Talking dirty to us

The Clinton-Lewinsky scandal has affected more than politics: The way that Americans communicate also is being shaped, for worse, by the sordid episode.

The relationship between President Clinton and former White House intern Monica Lewinsky definitely has left its mark. That is not a reference to the infamous stained dress which dominated headlines and airwaves when Lewinsky testified before a federal grand jury in Washington. Neither is it even a reference to the way the sordid affair has affected the national psyche, political prospects or media practices. No, "Monica" is about to become a verb.

The Associated Press, or AP, reported at the beginning of September that the term "Monica" will be added to the next (10th) edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, or OED. It is to be defined as "the sexual act that Monica Lewinsky told the grand jury" she "engaged in with Bill Clinton in a small office off the Oval" in the White House. Obviously, the president's reported concern about his administration's historical legacy has taken on a whole new dimension. The legal, ethical and sexual troubles in which Clinton has found himself already are changing the language politicians, pundits, reporters and ordinary citizens use.

Part of this is reflected in the awkwardness faced by parents and teachers who are being made to confront the curiosity of children unfamiliar with details about oral sex and bodily fluids (see "Clinton's Shame Stuns Our Kids" p. 12). In fact, the conservative Family Research Council has asked the networks to air warnings before news broadcasts that deal with the Clinton sex scandals. But while parents nervously hover over the remote-control's "mute" button when the evening news is on in the presence of children, the presidential imbroglio has cast its shadow over almost every form of public discourse.

For the first time in the 27-year history of "Doonesbury" cartoonist Gary Trudeau included a letter of explanation with the weekly panels he sent out in early February. The strips in question used the phrase "oral sex" as well as references to sexual fluids. Approximately a half-dozen newspapers declined to carry those strips. "The number would have been 60 had we not sent out the letter" the cartoonist's editor, Lee Salem, said at the time.

Trudeau cut his cartoon teeth in the early 1970s when President Nixon was brought down by the Watergate scandal. At the time, many were shocked by the transcripts of White House recordings showing that the president and his men indulged in decidedly salty language, occasionally at the expense of ethnic groups. "During Watergate, the release of the transcripts did seal Nixon's fate," Suzanne Garment, author of Scandal, tells Insight. "Before then it really was an open question."

An interesting correlation between the Nixon transcripts and the recent Clinton "apology" on national television can be made. Before the 1973 release of the transcripts, most Americans probably would not have been surprised that the president swore in the Oval Office, "but having to face the tenor of those conversations, they couldn't stomach it" says Garment. Likewise, while most Americans believed Clinton had engaged in sex

Looking for loopholes: Clinton's sexual misbehavior has reached levels that touch every American home. with Lewinsky, it took the Aug. 17 television appearance to drive home the offensiveness. Compared with 1973, "we have much stronger stomachs these days, but not infinitely strong" Garment says.

Danielle Crittenden, editor of the conservative Women's Quarterly, describes herself as a "prudish" editor. "I truly may be the last on the planet who uses `f-dash-dash-dash'" she laughs. And yet she now finds herself considering topics and language she instantly would have rejected a year ago. The current scandal "does have a coarsening effect in that it makes you think of going further in other types of stories not relating to the president" says Crittenden. And this may become obvious in the future as sexual suspicions and descriptions become par for the course in profiles of politicians, she suggests.

But it's not just Clinton's misbehavior that is bringing this about. Early in the summer, the New York Times speculated that the Lewinsky scandal, along with the introduction of the anti-impotence drug Viagra, "appears to have accelerated a change in the way many Americans speak about a subject that some would prefer be barely spoken about at all." And, in fact, while the public discussions of presidential sex organs and Oval Office sexual encounters have reached heights during the Clinton years undreamed of by past generations, the latest scandal-driven frankness also can be regarded as part of a decades-long stampede toward fewer boundaries on discourse.

"I think it's both" historian Rochelle Gurstein, author of The Repeal of Reticence, tells Insight. "It's accelerated and we have certainly reached new depths. I thought I had seen just about everything in reading about the history of reticence, but this newest scandal makes everything else pale in comparison."