MONICA Lewinsky's 14 months of fame are over now. She's riding the down escalator of celebrity, medications in her purse. A Hollywood Square awaits.

She is, remarkably, the most despised public figure in modern American life. Her personal favorability rating, as measured by the Fox News/Opinion Dynamics poll, is 10 percent positive and 76 percent negative. Even O.J. Simpson, at the time of his murder trial, had better numbers than hers.

What does this say about us? Much of the past year has been given over to thrashing President Clinton for exploiting Ms. Lewinsky in the way that he did. That was fair enough. His conduct toward her was in every way irresponsible, reprehensible and inexcusable. But Mr. Clinton was hardly the only one who used and exploited Ms. Lewinsky.

Feeding frenzy

The media feasted on her. Is there a difference between Linda Tripp and Barbara Walters, really? It is true that Ms. Tripp taped Ms. Lewinsky without her knowledge or consent. It is also true that Ms. Tripp manipulated Ms. Lewinsky to do and say things that Ms. Tripp knew could only make Ms. Lewinsky's legal stance more perilous.

But on a human level, Ms. Tripp's treachery isn't really distinguishable from Ms. Walters' faux empathy. They were both after the same thing. By the time of the "exclusive" interview, Ms. Lewinsky was a young woman in desperate need of adult guidance. She needed one true friend, preferably a worldly woman, to help her get her act together. Her mother had come undone. Her 20-something friends were too young. The handlers were interested only in their billable hours. She was alone in the shark tank.

Mercenary media

Ms. Walters' interview with Ms. Lewinsky -- all that phony concern and feigned intimacy -- was in its way every bit as despicable as Mr. Clinton's conduct. Mr. Clinton at least tried to keep her servitude secret, not because he cared about her but because he feared the political cost. Ms. Walters' intentions were entirely mercenary. She would wring from Ms. Lewinsky every last drop of Nielsen blood.

And for this Ms. Walters was celebrated, unlike Ms. Lewinsky, who was reviled. The press pronounced Ms. Walters the queen of the "get."

Anchorman Dan Rather and public broadcasting's talk-show host Charlie Rose genuflected at Ms. Walters' altar of celebrity journalism. Only Ms. Walters could have done it, said Mr. Rose. This is what makes her the premier television interviewer of her time, said Mr. Rather.

And there wasn't a trace of irony in their voices.

Not one ranking member of the media said that what Ms. Walters did in getting the interview and during the interview itself was irresponsible, reprehensible or inexcusable. The ratings were great -- better than the Academy Awards, as it turned out -- so Ms. Walters reigned.

At about the same time as the Lewinsky interview, Paul Weyrich, a leading political strategist, sent an open letter to his friends in the conservative movement. Therein he wrote: "Politics has failed because of the collapse of the culture. The culture we are living in becomes an ever-wider sewer. In truth, I think we are caught up in a cultural collapse of historic proportions, a collapse so great that it simply overwhelms politics."

Mr. Weyrich's letter was a declaration of defeat in what we have come to call the culture wars. As such, liberals greeted it with satisfaction, conservatives with consternation. The superior forces of the media culture already have won, Mr. Weyrich said later. There's no longer any point in pretending otherwise.

Over the course of the past year, mainstream news reporters devoted an extraordinary percentage of their time and energy to the cause of exploiting Ms. Lewinsky for profit.

All Monica TV

NBC News had as an explicit strategy "all Monica, all the time." It worked. MSNBC's ratings improved. CNBC's prime-time ratings improved. NBC News did better on nights when Ms. Lewinsky was prominently featured. And it wasn't just NBC (where I once worked). ABC News, CBS News, Fox News, National Public Radio, the Washington Post, the New York Times -- all of these media empires mainlined Ms. Lewinsky every day.

They'd like you to forget that now. They'd like you to believe that Ms. Lewinsky was an aberration. Hardly.

In prime time, during the Academy Awards ceremonies, the host simulated masturbation while introducing a "presenter." And the show went on as if nothing unusual had happened.

Mr. Weyrich may be cranky, but he's not wrong. The cultural war has been lost. The only question left is how much worse it will get. Ms. Lewinsky, at the age of 25, has already lived the answer to that question.

John Ellis is a Boston Globe columnist.

Pub Date: 3/30/99