BY DAN VALENTI

PLANET VALENTI NEWS AND COMMENTARY

(FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, WEDNESDAY JULY 10, 2019) — If you’re a woman and you’ve just got a book published, you might think — as did E. Jean Carroll — that the best way to get some cheapo publicity is to accuse the President of the United States of an alleged decades-old sexual assault. Experience, however “#me too” might babble otherwise, suggests the tactic doesn’t work. And in these lazy, crazy, hazy days of another blessed slow summer, when the periphery dominates the political debate at the expense of the Significant, why not take on the peripheral? No, not the budding Epstein case. Rather —

— Come on down, E. Jean Carroll.

The name reminds THE PLANET of J. Alfred Prufrock. We remember what a lit prof told us almost 50 years ago. The affectation of an initial for your Christian name combined with a spelled out middle and surname indicates weakness and self-doubt, a vain attempt to artificially pump up one’s self worth. The insight applies brilliantly to Eliot’s Prufrock, a man in an existential life crisis who can’t decide on much, not even how he should wear the cuffs of his pants … a man who “measures [his] life in coffee spoons.”

We can’t say as much about E. Jean Carroll, though. We only know she’s the advice columnist for Elle magazine, the kind of woman who an expert on everyone else’s problems but she herself is a mess. You know the type. God save us from “experts.”

We also know is that she has a book to sell, which makes the timing of her claims just a tad suspicious.  She waited almost 30 years until now?

There has been a Congress of women who have accused Trump of being “that guy,” but nothing sticks to him. Forget Reagan. Trump’s the all-time Teflon Prez. E. Jean Carroll’s claim sank to the bottom of the Dead Sea. She’s just not believable. Even Nancy Pelosi said of the woman’s accusation: “I haven’t spent any time on that. I don’t know what Congress’ role would be in this.” You go, girl!

Two friends of E. Jean Carroll came out recently in a show of “support.” Carol Martin, ex news anchor for WCBS-TV, said she advised her friend, “Don’t tell anybody.” Lisa Birnbach, author of The Official Preppy Handbook, said E. Jean Carroll called her immediately after the alleged incident. She said E. Jean Carroll was “breathless and laughing.” Birnbach said she laughed right along. Sounds like a real gut-wrench, eh?

You know what they say: With friends like that …

E. Jean Carroll claims she was shopping with Trump when he pushed her against a department store wall, unzipped, and tried to force himself on her. She said she “may have … hit him with my purse; I don’t know.” From there, the story falls apart, and when the lady went on yet another TV tabloid interview, she called rape a sexual thing, something women secretly crave.

Trump said E. Jean Carroll is “totally lying. Number one, she’s not my type. Number two, it never happened.”

“Let us go then, you and I, / When the evening is spread out against the sky / Like a patient etherised upon a table.”

We couldn’t have written it better, Thomas, “muttering retreats” and all. Now, about Epstein …

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“Talking with a child is like talking with yourself — yourself before you forget to notice things” — Anna Quindlen.

“OPEN THE WINDOW, AUNT MILLIE.”

LOVE TO ALL.

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