A Nose For Posterity

By CALVIN TRILLIN

If Paula Jones has got herself a new nose, I hope it turns out to be, as my mother would have put it, cute as a button. Self-improvement is the American way. I was not among those who made snide remarks about Linda Tripp's makeover. Just because your behavior calls to mind Victor McLaglen in The Informer, there is no law that says you have to look like him as well.

Of course, final results in plastic surgery are not absolutely predictable. My father often spoke of a doctor cousin who, having decided to try his hand at beautifying noses, did a few teenagers successfully and then, after unwrapping the bandages of an older patient, watched in horror as the tip of the gorgeous new sniffer slowly began to droop toward the patient's chin.

On the other hand, this cousin was an ear-nose-and-throat specialist by training. The doctor who reportedly chopped Paula Jones' schnozz is a plastic surgeon who charges $9,000 a pop. That must be reassuring for Jones; in medical matters, as in so much of high-end commerce in this country, shameless overcharging is a great confidence builder. For the rest of us, it's reassuring to know that this procedure took place in New York rather than California, where Jones lives. If the surgery does happen to result in litigation, the medical-malpractice attorney who defends the surgeon would presumably not be William Ginsburg of Los Angeles. Seeing Ginsburg and Jones in a courtroom together would have made many of us feel that we're watching the last act of a very long play we hadn't intended to go to in the first place.

The sad part of this for Paula Jones is that, unless the legal commentators are underestimating the chances of her case on appeal, she is going to go down in history with her old nose. I am reminded of the young woman who had the misfortune to be with Nelson Rockefeller when he suffered a fatal heart attack. Wisely, she fled the press hounds, but the only picture of her that photo editors could find to run incessantly made her look rather lumpish. I could imagine her, safe in some unused summer house, fighting the temptation to return just long enough to get a more flattering picture into the record.

That would have been perfectly understandable. In a way, all the principals in our latest scandal have spent a lot of time trying to improve the picture of themselves that's in the record. Monica Lewinsky subjected herself to glitz-porn on the beach in an effort to replace that awful shot of her in the beret. In hiring a spokesman, Kenneth Starr was hoping we'd forget that picture of him smiling insipidly in his driveway while holding a black plastic bag of garbage. The President hopes that pictures of him toasting world leaders will replace the picture of him chewing his lower lip while being evasive about Lewinsky. And why did Linda Tripp show up at the grand jury with not only a makeover but also her two children? She wants the picture in our minds to be of a mom. Gypo Nolan, the character Victor McLaglen played, may have been, all in all, more admirable than Tripp; at least he had pangs of remorse for betraying his friend. But he never managed to get a sympathetic picture into the record.