ROME LETTER / PADDY AGNEW: Monica Lewinsky was in town last weekend and, right now, she is probably regretting it. The former White House intern, whose relationship with US president Bill Clinton triggered a perjury probe and, de facto, left the US with a lame-duck presidency, achieved yet another quarter-hour of fame when she was shunted unceremoniously off the Italian airwaves.
Communications Minister Maurizio Gasparri, Cardinal Ersilio Tonini, the Society for the Protection of Minors and the president of state broadcaster RAI, Antonio Baldassare, were just some of those who felt that Ms Lewinsky's presence on RAI's Sunday afternoon song and dance, chat and chant show, Domenica In, would not make for suitable family viewing.
Being Italy, no one even began to think of saddling up this particular high horse, let along get on it, until long after Ms Lewinsky had arrived in Rome for her long-arranged TV appearance.
The result was that, once the dust had settled, Ms Lewinsky was on her way back to the US, reportedly $25,000 dollars the richer, for NOT appearing on prime-time Italian TV.
"We have prevented Italian families from watching something that is unnecessary and not very edifying on a Sunday afternoon," pronounced an evidently satisfied Mr Baldassare.
Those of us who have watched Italian TV over the years are tempted to argue that if the "unnecessary and not very edifying" criteria were strictly applied to all programmes, then we would be left with about 5½ hours of air time per annum (football excepted, of course, since nothing is more "necessary" in today's Italy than football).
Communications Minister Gasparri, using a tone perhaps better suited to a mediaeval inquisition tribunal, had warned gravely: "She is a person whose notoriety is linked to well-known events."
Neither the RAI president nor the Communications Minister, it would seem, were of the opinion that an interview with Ms Lewinsky could possibly restrict itself to questions of the "how do you like Rome?" or "what's your favourite food?" variety. In this they were undoubtedly correct since questions about "the affair" were sure to have been raised.
Ironically, however, Ms Lewinsky had already stipulated in her contract that she would take only one such question and that it had to be asked along lines dictated by her.
Inevitably, the Lewinsky entourage was left feeling somewhat confused and frustrated by the whole experience. "It's a family show and it would have been fine for me to have been on the show," Ms Lewinsky told Associate Press, adding: "I have a family and what happened to me also affected them. I am someone's daughter and someone's sister."
Ms Lewinsky's publicist, Barbara Hutson, accused all concerned from the Communications Minister to the RAI president and Cardinal Tonini of acting like "judge and jury".
What the hapless Ms Lewinsky and Ms Hutson did not know, of course, is that they had walked into a gigantic, grade A hornets' nest in which the Monica Lewinsky interview was just another pretext for marking out territory in an ongoing battle for control of the state broadcaster.
In the last year, the centre-right government of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has imposed both its own conservative ideology and its own conservative bureaucrats on RAI, in the process effectively banning from the airwaves authoritative, critical voices such as the current affairs journalists Enzo Biagi and Michele Santoro.
To use Ms Hutson's expression, these (centre-right government) guys have been behaving like "judge and jury" long before Ms Lewinsky flew into town.
Ms Lewinsky was not to know that. Yet she did prove that maybe she had learned a thing or two when she turned up at the studios of Porta A Porta, a highly popular, night-time current affairs show hosted by influential journalist and writer Bruno Vespa. Porta A Porta had stepped into the breach when it became clear that there were difficulties about a Sunday afternoon slot.
When she entered the studio, Ms Lewinsky reportedly noticed that the backdrop featured two huge pictures, one of her and the other of Mr Clinton. Fearing that she was going to face a lengthy interrogation re "Sexgate" she upped and left.
Now, for that, you have to admire her. Many the politician or public figure before her, under the subtle interrogation of the usually pro-government (of the day) Vespa, would have dearly liked to do the same but never dared. Perhaps Ms Lewinsky's Rome trip was not in vain after all.