My Name’s Not Fucking Linda by Carolyn Tripp

I can’t count the number of times women in my family have complained about being called “Linda” ever since the Clinton/Lewinsky debacle. Until recently, however, I always seemed to dodge that bullet, and I could never figure out why. There were plenty of people I’ve spoken to in a professional capacity: phone companies, credit card customer service agents, teachers, professors, co-workers, and friends that are old enough to remember the media circus that happened around the former president and his affair of kinky weirdness almost fourteen years ago.

When the impeachment proceedings began I was about sixteen, and the most common thing (not very smart) people thought to ask me at the time was, “Are you related?” A statement to which I would involuntarily twitch and give a very stiff reply of “No.”

Why the twitch? Was it because I was possibly being associated with Miss Linda’s physical attributes? Probably not. Though I have to say that they didn’t do her any favours come show time. It was more to do with being affiliated with someone so clearly underhanded and nasty. Taping conversations with co-workers is just so not on.

At this point, I feel compelled to rewind for those who were living under rocks or too young to remember: Linda Tripp secretly taped conversations between herself and co-worker Monica Lewinsky between 1997 and 1998. Her tapes defamed Lewinsky, who signed an affidavit swearing she hadn’t ever slept with President Clinton. Clinton was subsequently impeached, keel-hauled, and eventually cleared of wrong-doing by Congress in the biggest waste of time the six o’clock news had ever seen.* Lewinsky went on to write a book about it. I’m certain Hilary was thrilled.

So fast-forwarding to 2012, Tripp and Lewinsky’s names have just as much Googleability, but their names have been long forgotten in the headlines, both here and south of the border. Canadians news outlets will follow similar stories, but there’s nothing fresh about these two women, one impressionable and young, and another not so much. Nothing save the occasional back page mention of a graduate degree from the London School of Economics (which is far more impressive than boffing a president) and the opening of a year-round Christmas shop have made it into our homes within the past decade.

In spite all of this non-news, the names remain. So much so that a customer service agent recently phoned me up, using “Mrs. Tripp in the first sentence and “So anyway, Linda,” in the next.

So. Anyway. Linda. How had I been able to dodge that moniker all these years? But there it was. The agent didn’t notice his mistake, and kept pitching whatever phone package to me. Not like it mattered, I ceased to listen to him from “Linda” onward. I hung up the phone, disappointed not only in my lack of an appropriate customer care, but of the manner in which names and scandals, and not to mention scandals of a pretty low caliber, still occupy our collective unconscious.

The bombardment of repetition and media’s successful enterprise is a war long since won. There isn’t even spirited debate about it any more, like there may have been in 1998. People were definitely glued to the television, but only a handful of people I knew had access to the internet in their homes. But the information steadfastly remains. How else would I know key words like “cigar” and “intern” without having to Google them when trying to recall the highlights of Lewinsky’s cross examination?

That doesn’t trouble me as much as this: The sad fact that while I have a great memory for who did what to whom if I watch it on TV, I often have trouble remembering people’s names. Not those names in passing, but those with whom I’ve had lengthy, insightful and /or intelligent conversations. People who have been nice to me or made some iota of difference in my life with their insight and kindness. I cannot for the life of me remember their names because they're not fit to print. They didn’t, to my knowledge, kill, maim, or steal. They’ve never made the six o’clock news. They didn’t try to screw over their own governments from the comfy confines of their desk job at the Pentagon, either. Their names are apparently not worthy of my memory. But Clinton’s ladies? They’re indelible.

And so I live with the slander to my family’s surname with that in mind. That some unpleasant person with a Christmas fetish shares what I still think is a pretty cool last name. I have a feeling a slip of the tongue of a telecommunications rep won’t be the only time I get called something nasty.

*Keeping in mind this was before Ann Coulter went on a low calorie diet and unwisely paired it with ranting about politics in front of a microphone. The lack of nutrients and protein being the only excuse I can offer for her particular brand of character, apart from the popular argument of mental instability.

-----

Photo: Linda Tripp

Carolyn Tripp is an artist and writer based in Toronto who has written for numerous publications including Magenta Magazine, Spacing Magazine, Eye Weekly, C magazine, Mondo Magazine and several blogs and online publications. Updates on articles, essays, and visual projects can be found here.