THENEWYORKER,OCTOBER11, 2021 75
son is usually the most recognizable
actor in the Murphy troupe; there were
times throughout the series, though,
when I genuinely no longer perceived
her. Is she playing a person, or the con-
cept of desperation itself? The cancella-
tion of Paulson’s beauty, with its denota-
tion of the grotesque, oddly reflects one
goal of this period piece. Like “Physi-
cal,” on Apple TV+, “Impeachment” ex-
plores, clumsily but with ultimately righ-
teous intention, women’s dark interest
in self-loathing, especially when it comes
to the body. When Tripp and Lewinsky
begin their friendship, they gab about
dieting. The talk of Weight Watchers is
off-putting, but not inaccurate.
“Impeachment” turns Washington,
D.C., into high school, a gossip ecosys-
tem of the in crowd and the out. Tripp
decides to exact her revenge on the Clin-
tons by writing a tell-all, but her outcast
status means that she has no bombshell
to drop. She may be delusional, but she
is keen; Tripp thinks that Lewinsky, who
has also been moved from the White
House to the Pentagon, has been wronged,
too. The intern is sparkling and insecure,
the only innocent in town, and Tripp is
grudgingly fascinated by her gauche un-
worldliness. She cannot fathom that Le-
winsky has not been corrupted, and so
she draws the truth out of her—in part,
because she senses that Lewinsky could
be valuable to her vendetta. Eventually,
Lewinsky reveals that she is having an
affair with Clinton. “Linda, he’s the fuck-
ing President,” she says, in disbelief.
And so we have two women, inflamed,
in different ways, by their attachment to
the figure of the President. Their rela-
tionship is a wacky, occasionally convinc-
ing picture of predatory female friend-
ship: there’s solidarity, in Tripp’s abrasive
tending to Lewinsky’s vulnerable men-
tal state, and there’s betrayal. With the
help of the greasy literary agent Luci-
anne Goldberg (the marvellous Margo
Martindale), Tripp covertly records Le-
winsky talking about the affair. Tripp is
abusive and conniving. But she is also a
person—one who happened to be right
about Clinton. “Impeachment” is a prod-
uct of its time; the show wants to com-
plicate the Gen X villainization of Tripp,
putting her treachery in the greater con-
text of a cultural and political rot.T
ripp is the essence of the minise-
ries, the equivalent of the murderer
in this crime story with no body. When
she is not onscreen, the whole thing falls
out of balance, which is problematic,
given the density of activity that the
show attempts to address. Tripp was a
pawn; the impeachment was launched
by the machinations of the burgeoning
right wing, which was devoted to driv-
ing Clinton out of office by any means
necessary. “Idiotic American females
couldn’t wait to reëlect their fat boyfriend,”
Ann Coulter (Cobie Smulders, who is
clearly having the time of her life) says,
after Clinton’s second victory. Coulter’s
appearance, as well as that of her nerdy
hanger-on George Conway, a pompous
Brett Kavanaugh, and a scavenging Matt
Drudge, are heavy-handed presentiments
of the reactionary order that eventually
emerged from the Clinton period. But
they’re not integrated into the Tripp-
Lewinsky story line. Neither is Kenneth
Starr, or the automaton army of the F.B.I.,
led by Michael Emmick (Colin Hanks).
Bold, to treat the orchestrated decline
of democracy as a B plot.That’s the soapy argument of “Im-
peachment”: the government is nothing
but a petty human drama. The lecherous
stare of Clive Owen as Clinton, sizing
up the intern at work, gives the impres-
sion that governance is hardly ever on
his mind. Tripp has trouble convincing
Goldberg that her story is worth pub-
lishing, because everyone in Washington
already knows that Clinton is an adul-
terer, and, crucially, nobody cares—at
least, at first. In the show, the male power
of the Presidency is flexed not through
policy and war but through sex. Initially,
the Clinton character is slight, peeking
out from the door of the Oval Office,
beckoning his secret to come please him.
Once his lawyers inform him of Jones’s
lawsuit, though, he coarsens, and the
transformation is a startling evocation of
the intensity that drives a man to seek
the Presidency. It’s quite a contrast to the
mild-mannered Bill Clinton that he and
his wife sell to the American people today.
We have Camelot. We also have the
Clintons. “Impeachment” attempts to
raise the scandal to the perch of myth, a
play we might stage like Shakespeare for
eternity, rotating the actors until the orig-
inal participants are but a memory. A re-
visionist historiography, “Impeachment”
is filled with bombastic pronouncements
about the seedy nature of the American
character. But the show, so far, is also
marked by an absence. Where is Hillary
Clinton? The credits indicate that she is
played by Edie Falco, which gets us think-
ing about the suffering of Carmela So-
prano. But, in most of the seven episodes
sent to critics, the former First Lady is
just a suggestion, a name on the tip of
dirty tongues. I’ll withhold judgment
until after the season ends. THE NEW YORKER IS A REGISTERED TRADEMARK OF ADVANCE MAGAZINE PUBLISHERS INC. COPYRIGHT ©2021 CONDÉ NAST. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.
VOLUME XCVII, NO. 32, October 11, 2021. THE NEW YORKER (ISSN 0028792X) is published weekly (except for four planned combined issues, as indicated on the issue’s cover, and other com-
bined or extra issues) by Condé Nast, a division of Advance Magazine Publishers Inc. PRINCIPAL OFFICE: Condé Nast, 1 World Trade Center, New York, NY 10007. Eric Gillin, chief business
officer; Lauren Kamen Macri, vice-president of sales; Rob Novick, vice-president of finance; Fabio B. Bertoni, general counsel. Condé Nast Global: Roger Lynch, chief executive officer;
Pamela Drucker Mann, global chief revenue officer and president, U.S. revenue; Anna Wintour, chief content officer; Jackie Marks, chief financial officer; Elizabeth Minshaw, chief of staff;
Sanjay Bhakta, chief product and technology officer. Periodicals postage paid at New York, NY, and at additional mailing offices. Canadian Goods and Services Tax Registration No. 123242885-RT0001.
POSTMASTER: SEND ADDRESS CHANGES TO THE NEW YORKER, P.O. Box 37617, Boone, IA 50037. FOR SUBSCRIPTIONS, ADDRESS CHANGES, ADJUSTMENTS, OR BACK ISSUE
INQUIRIES: Write to The New Yorker, P.O. Box 37617, Boone, IA 50037, call (800) 825-2510, or e-mail [email protected]. Give both new and old addresses as printed on most recent
label. Subscribers: If the Post Office alerts us that your magazine is undeliverable, we have no further obligation unless we receive a corrected address within one year. If during your
subscription term or up to one year after the magazine becomes undeliverable you are dissatisfied with your subscription, you may receive a full refund on all unmailed issues. First copy
of new subscription will be mailed within four weeks after receipt of order. Address all editorial, business, and production correspondence to The New Yorker, 1 World Trade Center, New
York, NY 10007. For advertising inquiries, e-mail [email protected]. For submission guidelines, visit http://www.newyorker.com. For cover reprints, call (800) 897-8666, or e-mail
[email protected]. For permissions and reprint requests, call (212) 630-5656, or e-mail [email protected]. No part of this periodical may be reproduced without
the consent of The New Yorker. The New Yorker’s name and logo, and the various titles and headings herein, are trademarks of Advance Magazine Publishers Inc. To subscribe to other
Condé Nast magazines, visit http://www.condenast.com. Occasionally, we make our subscriber list available to carefully screened companies that offer products and services that we believe would
interest our readers. If you do not want to receive these offers and/or information, advise us at P.O. Box 37617, Boone, IA 50037, or call (800) 825-2510.
THE NEW YORKER IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR THE RETURN OR LOSS OF, OR FOR DAMAGE OR ANY OTHER INJURY TO, UNSOLICITED MANUSCRIPTS,
UNSOLICITED ART WORK (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, DRAWINGS, PHOTOGRAPHS, AND TRANSPARENCIES), OR ANY OTHER UNSOLICITED
MATERIALS. THOSE SUBMITTING MANUSCRIPTS, ART WORK, OR OTHER MATERIALS FOR CONSIDERATION SHOULD NOT SEND ORIGINALS, UNLESS
SPECIFICALLY REQUESTED TO DO SO BY THE NEW YORKER IN WRITING.