Thanks, but...
by Tyler Jane Barley

I know, I know. I've been in a cave. The TV has been turned off and my mind has been wandering to places you probably don't want to read about. I admit all this so that you'll believe me when I tell you I just saw the Paula Jones tear conference.

She's appealing her case on the behalf of all the women in America. If there's not a law against whatever President Clinton did to her, well, there ought to be one.

A fascinating legal concept.

I'd just like to say, before I go any further, that the women of America need Paula Jones like any one of us needs another grope in the office supplies closet. This is a bad case, one that shouldn't have been taken to court in the first case. I said so months ago, and a judge said so three weeks ago. Jones's tearfest is about the last image a woman really wants to project.

On the other hand, I've come to a new understanding of Jones. I used the think she was a gold-digging hobag who thought it would be fun to get the jump on the president. I don't think that's true anymore. Now I'm pretty sure she's a woman of below-average intelligence who's been told by so many people that her case has legal merit that she really can't understand how the judge could throw her case out. You know, if all these guys in nice suits tell me I'm gonna win, how can a judge end the game with no do-overs?

And I think Jones really believes everything she says. She believes the latest version of her story of that night in the hotel and she believes that she's fighting for the rights of women everywhere. She believes that her case has been negated by a "liberal" judge who is in cahoots with the president.

Like I said, Paula Jones is a woman of below-average intelligence who really cannot sustain a front when under the bright glare of the cameras. Any half-bright chimp could have seen that her legal team was reaching when it submitted five tons of "evidence", saying that the literal weight of its arguments proved her case. I'm not a lawyer, but I'm guessing such a maneuver has a nickname in the legal community, something like the elephant keeper strategy. Just keep shoveling.

That many conservative commentators, male and female alike, have taken Jones to their bosom and proclaimed her a shining example of American womanhood just makes me laugh. More proof of why any sensible woman without means should keep far to the left of these fools. They gave her a makeover and pronounced her better, though she wouldn't be whole until she scored a chunk of cash from the President. Money and makeup heal all wounds. Quite the enlightened mind, indeed.

I'm simply so tired of the whole mess. Let's talk about women to admire. Start with the classics: Abigail Adams, Jane Addams, Sappho, Rosa Parks, Amelia Earhart, Mary Pickford (she ran her own movie studio), Shirley Chisholm. Add in a few tragic artistic heroines like Billie Holliday and Bessie Smith and then proceed to whatever category you like. There's plenty more where those came from. I could list another hundred off the top of my head. There's got to be at least 100 million women in this country ahead of Paula Jones in the "admirable woman" rankings.

Which, ultimately, is why I feel sorry for her. Jones is, at best, an average woman lacking in education and common sense. Not her fault, perhaps, but still nothing particularly admirable. In only one respect is she a shining example: Her experience shows why all girls should go on to college. Role models should not be subject to widespread pity. And pity is all I've got for Jones.

Tyler Jane Barley plans to watch videotapes of the current education funding debate in a couple weeks.

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