The late '90s were a heady time for the late-night monologist, with all the easy jokes about stained blue dresses, cigars, crawling under the desk, and blow jobs in the Oval Office that the protracted Lewinsky/Clinton scandal delivered them on a silver platter with the White House seal emblazoned on it. Letterman made such a franchise out of it, he had a hard time letting the convention die. Now that everyone knows he's been giving it to members of his own staff, he's going to have to endure the sting of the same jibes from Leno, O'Brien, Fallon, and even poor, forgotten Kimmel.

Here's a compendium of some of his comedic gems that have turned themselves into barbs:

Monica Lewinsky's Top Ten Nicknames for Bill Clinton"

10. Puffy the Intern Slayer
9. Sheriff Bubba
8. The Chief Sexecutive
7. Unnamed High-Ranking Official
6. My Sweet Impeachable You
5. The Little Rock Rascal
4. El Presidente del Armor
3. Tubby Dearest
2. Commander-in-Briefs
1. Free Willie 2

[Source]

"Now we hear that Monica has sued the President for $1,000,002.50. That's one million for pain and suffering and $2.50 for dry cleaning."

"I really have to hand it to the White House. Around here we can't even get the interns to work the copy machine."

[Source]

"You may think you have a stressful job, but since she's been a Senator, Hillary Clinton, they say, put on 30 pounds. In fact, she has gotten so heavy that today Bill hit on her."

"Celebrity birthdays, today Monica Lewinsky is 28. It seemed like just yesterday she was crawling around on the floor in the Oval Office."

"No move ever goes smoothly. Today Clinton's brand new desk arrived. He had to send it back, apparently not enough head room."
— David Letterman

[Source]

"Monica Lewinsky has her own show on HBO. I have not seen it yet but I understand it's getting very good word of mouth." -David Letterman

"Monica Lewinsky was on Larry King Live tonight. Monica really liked Larry King. Actually, she likes any guy with a desk."

[Source]

"Over the weekend President Clinton's dog Buddy died. It is a heartbreaking thing because Buddy was a great dog. Buddy could rollover, Buddy would beg. Buddy could catch things in his mouth - wait a minute - I'm sorry. I am thinking of Monica."

"President Bush has authorized the drop of 15,000-pound bombs on Afghanistan. I believe that is the heaviest ordered drop by a president since ... well, Monica."

"It turns out now that Bill Clinton ... he had tape recorders working in the Oval Office. This could get pretty good. They apparently were voice activated, just like his fly. These tapes are available to everybody. There's 80 in the Clinton audiotape collection. And if you buy all 80, he'll throw his sex video, 'Too Hot for the Starr Report.' ... The tape recorder was equipped with forward, reverse and pause, just like his interns. ... The people that have listened to them say you can't really hear anything because of the sound of Monica's head thumping on the desk."

"The House has approved drilling for oil in the Alaska wilderness. Say what you will about Clinton, but he was only interested in drilling in the Oval Office."

"Bush went to Wisconsin, to a Harley Davidson factory and rode a motorcycle. It's the biggest thing a president has ridden since ... I just can't bring myself to throw that joke away."

"Well, President Clinton has gotten himself a new dog. You know, I think it's changing his life, kind of brightening him up. He's teaching the dog to sit up, to beg, to roll-over, you know, just like he did with the interns."

[Source]

To be fair, Clinton didn't have much of a choice, because Meet the Press host David Gregory asked the former President whether the so-called conspiracy, first assessed by Hillary Clinton, still exists, to which Clinton replied in the affirmative.

Sure it is. It's not as strong as it was, because America has changed demographically. But it's as virulent as it was. I mean, they're saying things about him. You know, it's like when they accused me of murder, and all that stuff they did. ... But ... it's not really good for the Republicans and the country, what's going on now. I mean, they may be hurting President Obama. They can take his numbers down. They can run his opposition up. But, fundamentally, he and his team have a positive agenda for America. Their agenda seems to be wanting him to fail.

Well duh they want him to fail. But, that's beside the point, because the "conspiracy," if it should even be called that, may actually be more powerful than the one that worked against Clinton. With all the new media outlets, not to mention Fox News, it's easier to mobilize the masses and work them into a fury. No, there's no impeachment planned, but there are even more complicated and insidious roadblocks at the right's disposal.

And, sadly for the big O, Clinton's comments are only going to fan the flames. If there's one man the ultra-right hate more than Obama, it's Bubba, and having him jump in the fray will simply embolden and further ostracize the President's critics. Plus, a sizable amount of Clinton's drama came from his, shall we say, encounters with Monica Lewinsky. Injecting that particular memory into the right's already petulant collective consciousness could create a sticky, stinky brew of fresh Obama hate.

Oh, look: Ann Coulter's already ranting about "semen stained Kleenex." Great.

Prior to giving a speech yesterday to the Chamber of Commerce in Fernley, Nevada, Ensign explained to a reporter how his affair with the wife of his friend/longtime staff member, who also happened to work for him, was so very different from Bill Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky.

I haven't done anything legally wrong...President Clinton stood right before the American people and he lied to the American people...You remember that famous day he lied to the American people, plus the fact I thought he committed perjury. That's why I voted for the articles of impeachment.

Now, technically Ensign has a point, but just because his affair broke no laws — that we're aware of at this point anyway — doesn't mean that his isn't the more repugnant of the two situations. After all, Bill Clinton wasn't living in a temple owned by a mafia-inspired Jesus cult when he was getting sucked off by Lewinski, was he? But then again, in Ensign's mind, him sticking his pee-pee inside of his staffer's vagina was entirely the will of Jesus Christ, and if Jesus wants you to fuck somebody, well, you kinda just have to.

MYSTERY SOLVED: Several inside sources have finally confirmed that [Brand of cigars with bad publicists] was indeed the cigar that was used between Monica Lewinsky and Bill Clinton.

In light of the HBO movie that is going into production with Dennis Quaid and Julianne Moore titled "Special Relationship" featuring the love (or lack thereof) trio between Bill, Hill and Mon, the mystery of the century has finally been solved!

Among all of the scandal, blue dresses and SNL skits mocking Ken Starr, Linda Tripp and all the main players...one character seemed to be on the tip of everyone's tongue...the token oval office cigar. For years people have speculated about what cigar Bill and Monica "smoked" that fateful day and it has finally been released.

Bill Clinton would not smoke anything short of the best-of-the-best thus why he kept several [nasty] Cigars, producers of the most expensive cigars in the world, around his office for special occasions. Several inside sources have finally confirmed that [gross] Cigars was indeed the cigar that was used between Monica Lewinsky and Bill Clinton. It was in fact the [specific type of tasteless] Cigar, which has been reported to be one of Bill Clinton's favorite stogies!

This press release is predictably brought to you by 5WPR.

Jubril "Dominic" Faggins, 19, and Jhirad "Shanese" Powell, 18, both of Brooklyn, have been charged with attacking woman in The Archive on Greenwich Street on two occasions.

The apartment building is the onetime home to Monica Lewinsky, designer Michael Kors and actress Jennifer Connelly.

Thank god for the New York Post.

"It was Destiny [another transvestite] that told me to rob the white bitch," Powell told cops, according to court records.

Faggins and Powell then followed the woman, 36, into the lobby and wrestled her purse from her.

"I grabbed the bag off her and punched her while Shanese was holding her down," Faggins told cops.

Then they used the credit cards to buy $3,600 in wigs and jewelry in Brooklyn. No actual celebrities were harmed in this crime spree. Shanese and Dominic, please email us details. [NYP]

Everyone laughed because Hillary is obviously now over her husband getting the oral sex from Monica Lewinsky, having attained her lifelong dream of being a secretary to the president, a man, who defeated her. And she has Bill's performance on the campaign trail to thank for that wonderful position she finds herself in, in someone else's cabinet.

Which is why Hillary acknowledged she owes Bill for a life of "extraordinary richness." As rich as, say, a dark and bitter cup of coffee, which keeps you awake all night, trembling.

Hillary is going to get along with her former presidential rival Barack Obama just fine for the next eight years, because she'll sublimate any and all anger about her election humiliation into quiet fury at her husband. (He can take it.)

(Thanks to intern Danny Groner for the clip.)

Monica! Duh. Remember the Starr Report? Bet you never thought you'd look back on that era as one in which the mainstream media seemed less disingenuously pious.

In a recorded conversation later on October 6, Ms. Lewinsky said she wanted two things from the President. The first was contrition: He needed to 'acknowledge . . . that he helped fuck up my life.'

Obviously, we sympathize more with Monica than Times editors here. After all, as Washington Post editors usually point out self-mockingly in cases like these, as they did when I recently tried unsuccessfully to contrast "sweetie" with "cunt" in a reference to John McCain's alleged use of the term in a fight with his wife for a column for the Washington Post website, the Washington Post is indisputably a "family newspaper." Not so the Times, which possesses nary a comic section nor a "Mini Page" nor any of those coupons for various high fructose corn syrup treats that are actually 1000x more likely to be noticed by impressionable children than any actual text.

The Empire Goes Slack [NYT]
Cheney Dismisses Critic With Obscenity [Washington Post]
John McCain's Profane Tirade At His Wife

You have to love the two eagle-eyed guys behind Bill Clinton keeping an extra-careful watch on that handshake as the former president greeted college students this week in Hanover, N.H.. You never can be too careful, you know. Hey! Girl whose face we can only see half of! Don't look into his eyes! [The Dartmouth]

• Make sure the douchebag you met at the bar knows exactly how you feel about him. [Orange32]
  
• Monica Lewinsky got a degree from the London School of Economics. But we can still make cum stain jokes about her. [DealBreaker]
  
• Miss USA may have held on, but no such luck for Miss Nevada. Lesbionic tendencies among beauty pageant winners will not be tolerated! [TMZ]