The XX Factor: What women really think.

Clinton/Lewinsky Scandal To Become HBO Movie

Just when you thought it was safe to channel surf, it turns out HBO is making a movie out of the Bill Clinton/Monica Lewinsky scandal of yesteryear. The title? The Special Relationship. Special, indeed. The casting is just plain odd. Dennis Quaid is Wild Bill. Hillary Clinton? Julianne Moore. Apparently, the film focuses less on Slick Willy's hijinks and more on the president's relationship with Tony Blair (played by Michael Sheen), which devolved purportedly due to the sex scandal. Peter Morgan, who scored with Frost/Nixon, wrote the screenplay and is set to direct. Supposedly, Quaid beat out some actual A-listers for the role—Russell Crowe, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Alec Baldwin, Tim Robbins. I wonder if he truly eclipsed them or if the actors were steered away from taking the part of a man tasked with running the country who couldn't keep his hands off the help. Who'll play Lewinsky? Mia Kirshner? Megan Fox? Jessica Simpson? Nope. "Morgan has decided to use only archive footage of her culled from TV news bulletins and video of her closed-door testimony to Congress." Well, maybe the real Lewinsky will sell a few handbags out of it.

Guess Who Came to Breakfast at the White House! (In Which We Get More Joy From Hillary's Schedule)

Noooo... it wasn't Monica.

It was the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, of course, joining Bill and Hillary for a breakfast with "religious leaders" on Sept. 11, 1998. There is a lovely photo, too.

Q.  Does this mean Bill & Hillary are closet Wright parishioners who share Wright's every opinion?!  

A.  Nope. But I think now we can all stop talking about Jeremiah Wright. If Wright was good enough to be considered a major national religious leader by the Clinton White House, then maybe Barack Obama wasn't uniquely obtuse in his decision to stay on at the church where Wright presided. And maybe Hillary Clinton's campaign should stop trying to use Wright to discredit Obama.

Just a thought.

And in case you were wondering what Bill, Hillary, the Rev. Wright, and the other religious leaders chatted about over their coffee and muffins: Bill took the occasion to repent. Even the absent Monica got an apology from Bill, at least in passing: "It is important to me that everybody who has been hurt know that the sorrow I feel is genuine. First and most important, my family, my friends, my staff, my Cabinet, Monica Lewinsky and her family, and the American people."

Hillary and Monica

Hillary Clinton released her "public schedules" from her days as first lady, and Ann Althouse has a good riff on how Hillary was a very "First Lady-y First Lady." But—and I suppose it was bound to happen—the AP went through Mrs. Clinton's schedules and apparently cross-referenced the Starr Report, and the result is a half-dozen or so incidences of Bill Clinton trysting with Monica Lewinsky while Hillary was at the White House.

I had two immediate reactions. First, I felt sorry for poor ol' Hillary. Bill is such an unrepentant philanderer that he had no qualms mocking his marital vows right under his wife's nose. Plus, Hillary's lived with this elephant in the room for the whole campaign. And now, boom, here it is out in the open. But then, a more cynical reaction: Could it be that Bill didn't worry about getting caught because Hillary was aware and lived with it because a scandal could have tainted her political future? Even when I'm feeling cynical, though, I still feel for her.

For some reason, this particular encounter really stands out for me: "Jan. 7, 1996: On a Sunday afternoon, Lewinsky and the president spent most of the afternoon in the Oval Office. The first lady and the president had a small dinner with 20 people at ‘the Old Family Dining Room' at the White House." Was that particularly daring of Bill? Wouldn't it be easy for Hillary to pop down to the Oval Office and see how Bill's doing or ask him if he wanted to serve the red wine or the white at their dinner that night, on a quiet Sunday afternoon?

So, colleagues, is my sympathy for Hillary misplaced? Or is my cynicism?