same way, then, Bennett had a right to ask what kind of girl Paula Jones was.
Still, fundamentally, even these justifications served as pretexts. Like their adversaries—like, indeed, the reporters who covered the case—all the president’s lawyers really cared about was the sex. Despite denials that were as indignant as they were false, the subject of sex subsumed everything in this case.
As the sun moves across the Arkansas sky, the shadows from the huge concrete towers of the Lonoke grain-drying cooperative stretch out along the town’s main drag. On some days, a visitor might be forgiven for thinking the shadows move faster than anything else in Lonoke. The railroad tracks that once ran up the grassy median strip of Front Street are gone, and thesedays only a few cars stop at the handful of surviving businesses in town. Pedestrians are few. Now and then, someone walks into Blackard’s Dry Cleaners, which is run by the family of the woman who was sitting next to Paula at the registration desk at the Excelsior. The big business in town is minnows. Since the sixties the locals have been replacing their rice farms with ponds, where they raise Lonoke’s gift to America’s bait shops. Around city hall, they even call Lonoke the minnow capital of the world.
Today, of course, Lonoke is best known as the hometown of Paula Jones. (It’s not far from Cabot, which nurtured Dennis Kirkland.) In a case filled with authentic pornography, there may be at least a moral obscenity in applying microscopic biographical attention to Paula Corbin Jones. Until the moment she took on Bill Clinton, her life was mostly sad, mostly ordinary, and entirely alien to the world of government and law. She must be the only significant political figure of the century who could say, as she once did to me, “The Republicans? Are they the good ’uns or the bad ’uns?” After Paula became famous, friendship with her became a kind of industry, as acquaintances, boyfriends, and even relatives cashed in on her notoriety. To the extent possible, it is important to try to separate truth from financially induced exaggeration. The life of Paula Jones does contain some clues to what happened between her and the governor in 1991—and to why, years later, her case spiraled into history.
Paula Corbin was born on September 17, 1967, the last of Bobby and Delmer Corbin’s three daughters. The lives of Paula and her sisters were dominated by the harsh tenets of the First Church of the Nazarene, where the family worshipped and her father sometimes preached. It was part-time, unpaid work, and Bobby Corbin supported the family as a pattern maker in a local mill where they made dresses for Sears. The three Corbin girls dressed in clothes that Delmer Corbin made from the scraps of fabric Bobby brought home from work. Nazarene prohibitions defined the girls’ lives. They couldn’t drink, dance, wear pants or makeup, roller-skate, watch television, or even visit friends’ houses. Paula wore thick glasses, and her hair flowed down her back. Early family pictures from Paula’s girlhood show all three girls with long hair, because haircuts were also prohibited by the family’s rules. Their isolation was intense. Delmer even fetched the girls from school so they could eat lunch at home.
When Paula became a teenager, the family’s life, never easy, turned even more troubled. While Bobby was on a disability leave, he was laid off fromthe mill, just short of the time needed to qualify for a pension. Two years later, in 1984, he died of heart failure while playing gospel music on the piano at a senior citizen’s home. Paula’s sisters dropped out of high school and married. Paula struggled on at Lonoke High and then transferred to neighboring Carlisle High because it required fewer credits for graduation.
As the girls hit their teenage years, their parents’ control over them dwindled. By the time of Bobby’s death, Paula was in full-scale revolt against the
Still, fundamentally, even these justifications served as pretexts. Like their adversaries—like, indeed, the reporters who covered the case—all the president’s lawyers really cared about was the sex. Despite denials that were as indignant as they were false, the subject of sex subsumed everything in this case.
As the sun moves across the Arkansas sky, the shadows from the huge concrete towers of the Lonoke grain-drying cooperative stretch out along the town’s main drag. On some days, a visitor might be forgiven for thinking the shadows move faster than anything else in Lonoke. The railroad tracks that once ran up the grassy median strip of Front Street are gone, and thesedays only a few cars stop at the handful of surviving businesses in town. Pedestrians are few. Now and then, someone walks into Blackard’s Dry Cleaners, which is run by the family of the woman who was sitting next to Paula at the registration desk at the Excelsior. The big business in town is minnows. Since the sixties the locals have been replacing their rice farms with ponds, where they raise Lonoke’s gift to America’s bait shops. Around city hall, they even call Lonoke the minnow capital of the world.
Today, of course, Lonoke is best known as the hometown of Paula Jones. (It’s not far from Cabot, which nurtured Dennis Kirkland.) In a case filled with authentic pornography, there may be at least a moral obscenity in applying microscopic biographical attention to Paula Corbin Jones. Until the moment she took on Bill Clinton, her life was mostly sad, mostly ordinary, and entirely alien to the world of government and law. She must be the only significant political figure of the century who could say, as she once did to me, “The Republicans? Are they the good ’uns or the bad ’uns?” After Paula became famous, friendship with her became a kind of industry, as acquaintances, boyfriends, and even relatives cashed in on her notoriety. To the extent possible, it is important to try to separate truth from financially induced exaggeration. The life of Paula Jones does contain some clues to what happened between her and the governor in 1991—and to why, years later, her case spiraled into history.
Paula Corbin was born on September 17, 1967, the last of Bobby and Delmer Corbin’s three daughters. The lives of Paula and her sisters were dominated by the harsh tenets of the First Church of the Nazarene, where the family worshipped and her father sometimes preached. It was part-time, unpaid work, and Bobby Corbin supported the family as a pattern maker in a local mill where they made dresses for Sears. The three Corbin girls dressed in clothes that Delmer Corbin made from the scraps of fabric Bobby brought home from work. Nazarene prohibitions defined the girls’ lives. They couldn’t drink, dance, wear pants or makeup, roller-skate, watch television, or even visit friends’ houses. Paula wore thick glasses, and her hair flowed down her back. Early family pictures from Paula’s girlhood show all three girls with long hair, because haircuts were also prohibited by the family’s rules. Their isolation was intense. Delmer even fetched the girls from school so they could eat lunch at home.
When Paula became a teenager, the family’s life, never easy, turned even more troubled. While Bobby was on a disability leave, he was laid off fromthe mill, just short of the time needed to qualify for a pension. Two years later, in 1984, he died of heart failure while playing gospel music on the piano at a senior citizen’s home. Paula’s sisters dropped out of high school and married. Paula struggled on at Lonoke High and then transferred to neighboring Carlisle High because it required fewer credits for graduation.
As the girls hit their teenage years, their parents’ control over them dwindled. By the time of Bobby’s death, Paula was in full-scale revolt against the
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