US:IT'S BEEN a rum few months for Bill Clinton. The former US president has seen his reputation as global philanthropist and do-gooder plummet with allegations of racism on his wife's campaign trail, speculation that he has an anger-management problem, and last week's outburst in which he called a Vanity Fair writer who had penned an unflattering profile of him a "sleazy, dishonest, slimy scumbag".
And things just got worse. Mr Clinton's two nemeses - Gennifer Flowers and Paula Jones - have decided to join forces.
The two women, who have hung over Mr Clinton like a bad odour for many years, have chosen this moment, when he is arguably going through the roughest patch since his impeachment in 1999, to stick the boot in again. They have produced a series of video clips for the internet of themselves reminiscing about the 1990s Clinton sex scandals in which they played central roles, under the evocative title Two Chicks Chatting.
Ms Flowers complains in the videos that her career as a singer was ruined by the notoriety she gained when she intervened during Mr Clinton's first presidential campaign in 1992 to allege a long-term relationship with him.
That said, Ms Flowers has shown a remarkable persistence pursuing a career as the woman who once slept with Bill Clinton. She wrote a book, appeared in some movies and in Penthouse.
This year she announced she was going to put up for auction the tapes of phone conversations she secretly recorded with Clinton. And now she and Ms Jones are charging $13.93 to hear the seven clips of them communing over such political issues as the size and shape of the presidential penis.
There is nothing revelatory about their deliberations, though its ability to embarrass all parties should not be underestimated.
Ms Jones recounts for the umpteenth time her disputed story about how she was summoned to a room in the Excelsior hotel in Arkansas in May 1991, when Mr Clinton was governor, and inappropriately approached by him.
It was the harassment suit launched by Ms Jones that brought to light the Monica Lewinsky scandal, and Mr Clinton's deposition in the Jones case, in which he denied having a sexual relationship with Ms Lewinsky, that led to his impeachment.
- (Guardian Service)