Monica Lewinsky is not nearly as interesting as Hitler's mistress Eva Braun, the school teacher's daughter who died in a bunker with her Fuhrer boyfriend after she took cyanide and he, maybe, shot himself.

And yet here in millennial America, all Monica Lewinsky has to do is break wind and she generates, you should pardon the expression, gaseous headline after headline. Acres of them. And for what? Like anything else in life lately, the Mistress Business has apparently changed; now they seem to let ANYONE in.

What was once a somewhat complex, nuanced profession dedicated to primping and propping and priming the male ego has become simultaneously devalued yet inflated, tacky and trashy to the max. So many of the Monica stories we've seen in the media have been fluffed and puffed and spun -- fairly mindlessly -- twitchy dust generated by a wind-tunnel, or uninspired swatches of mediocre PR.

Now, courtesy of those intrepid fact-ferrets over at the New York Post, we are told Monica -- "finally serious about losing those love-handles" -- has hired a pricey personal trainer for workouts at her $3,000-a-month Manhattan apartment.

Love handles? Come on. These are love dumpsters. Monica, the Post claims, weighed 232 at her heaviest. Which gives me parenthetical pause, because at 125 pounds, guys considered me too fat to be thin-and-sexy but too thin to be fat-and-sexy. So the idea of a 232-pound Monica in a miniskirt, flipping her thong at the president of the United States could either curdle your breakfast or expand what is considered physically attractive, couldn't it?

What else I can't get out of my mind, is this: If Monica weighed 232, what must Junk-Food Bill have weighed at HIS peak of physical perfection? No wonder he caved in to her charms, or vice versa. Monica Lewinsky is a veritable Sherman tank of lust! Can you imagine the collective half-ton of that prurient pair of snorting sex-beasts grappling and groping in the Oval Office like something out of World Federation Wrestling? Ms Man-Eater vs. Mr ManATee. Are those floors reinforced?

Clearly, he still misses her, judging by this UPI report from Jaipur, headlined "Bill Wanted Elephant Ride." "President Clinton said ... he was disappointed he couldn't ride one of the 15 ceremonial elephants awaiting him when he visited the Amber Fort outside Jaipur," UPI reported. "He said aides convinced him not to climb aboard the mammoth animals, bedecked in jewels with painted limbs and heads. 'Those elephants were beautiful,' Clinton said. 'I desperately wanted to ride on the elephant's back.'"

Yup, the prez is a guy who knows edge when he sees it. Explains a lot about his attraction to Monica, doesn't it?

As for Monica, perhaps she's discovered money is another kind of penis. So, what about commercial fallout from her sessions with this personal trainer? Will there be product exploitation? The possibilities and opportunities seem endless. Are you ready for an exercise video? The Monica Workout? ("Pant, sweat, clutch, pant, sweat, clutch, follow me. Again?")

Or, now that those deplorable small-animals crush-videos are officially frowned on because of presidential fiat and organized animal-rights pressure, I would urge the ex-White House intern don leather and spiked heels to penetrate the alterna-crush-video market by making "Monica: I've Got a Crush on You" while we watch her stomp live potato chips on a sensuously polyurethaned floor, which should be of definite special interest to the fetish community out there.

But let me caution you, better be careful about getting tooooooo sexually fixated on potato chips, or shiny floors, because, as WND columnist Linda Bowles so wisely warns us:

Please listen carefully. The essential and simple truth that I intend to repeat until it breaks through is this: The human sex drive is extraordinarily powerful. It may, at an early age, become inappropriately and steadfastly affixed to underwear, corpses, animals, children, footstools and members of the same sex. ...

Meanwhile, in the interests of truth, justice, and the American way, whatever that actually amounts to these days, here are some hitherto-omitted or neglected details I'd like to remind you about in the continuing saga of Monica Lewinsky, Mistress-in-Waiting.

• The purses Monica sells on the Net and now at posh Henri Bendel's are -- I bet you didn't know this -- made by Sumatran women in sweatshops left over from the formerly entrepreneurial Kathy Lee Crosby, a.k.a. the Maquilladora Queen. These purse-sewers use the so-called Blind Stitch, which results in the loss of sight for the most dedicated workers.

• Yes, Monica flipped her SUV, but it was really reaching for a dashboard-powered, um, vibrator as she barreled down the Ventura Highway.

• Still proclaiming she still has terrible taste in men -- she didn't take me up on my offer to set her up with a Left-Coast cast-off of mine -- Monica sets up her own Internet chatroom, DewMeByMonica, where she demonstrates her still-terrible taste in men live and real-time, daily. Again. Yet. Still. There's no Altoids concession, and I wouldn't go so far as to say she cybers, but if it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it's probably Monica.

• Hidden cameras spot Monica scarfing down a bag of Ruffles, or is it Ridgies potato chips outside a supermarket during her tenure as a spokesmodel for a diet conglomerate but what the cameras don't catch is each week, a buff delivery stud-muffin brings her a whole case of chips, apparently an infinitely renewable resource, unlike the world's supply of oil. If pressed, she will tell her friends she's preparing to do an acne commercial by developing some actual zits for the pimple cream to work with. Verismo Rules! The stud-muffin? You mean, her steamed dumpling? Ah, never mind.

• Penitent about her dating excesses, Monica seeks an apprenticeship with Mother Teresa's order, begging to be sent to India during the current Clinton tour. This is in the mistaken belief she will never be recognized swathed with miles of gilt-edged sari cloth and painted with a red prayer-dot on her forehead. Alas, she ends up teetering on the bank of the Ganges, waiting to throw herself in as a ritual suttee-style widow's sacrifice if her cellphone remains silent in its string of calls to you-know-who -- while he's is busy dodging bin Laden assassination plots by posing for photo-ops clutching Chelsea's mitt near the Taj Mahal.

• Also at press time, rumors were unconfirmed that Monica was negotiating with the vacuum cleaner company which produces those cute little Dirt Devils to have a brand all her own named Dust Bunnies in a financially sweet deal, the details of which are confidential. OK, suppose I'm making this up in the interests of satire. But it COULD happen, folks.

Yes, it struck me how really boring Monica is compared to, say, Eva Braun, and I began researching mistresses in general after having dinner with my friend Jackson, who seemed able to recite the Mistress Hall of Fame effortlessly between courses. To remedy my ignorance, "Joan's Royalty in History" website was a veritable goldmine. From Joan Bos I learned:

Kings chose the most beautiful women of their country and made them their mistresses. King George I of Great-Britain (1660-1727), however, managed to choose the most ugly ones, who were nicknamed the "Elephant" and the "Maypole." The "Elephant" was his illegitimate half sister! One of the favourite mistresses of the Polish King August II the strong (1670-1733) was his own bastard daughter. King Jo'o V of Portugal (1689-1750) was so religious that he chose nuns to be his mistresses. ... When Pedro the Severe (1320-1367) was crowned King of Portugal, he had the remains of his late mistress dug up and let them be crowned too. The first King of Prussia, Frederick I (1657-1713), loved his second wife dearly. Nevertheless, he took a mistress, because he thought it the correct thing for a monarch to do. ... Sultan Ibrahim I the Mad of Turkey (1615-1648) had even less scruples. Once, in a rage, he had his entire harem of 280 women cast into the Bosporus, tied up in weighted sacks. Only one of them managed to escape."

In an orgy of research lasting for days, one fascinating topic led me to another and another. Despite that, I was unsuccessful trying to track down a report of Eva Braun's sex life with Hitler which portrayed the couple cavorting and gamboling naked in their garden, attired only in raccoon tails. Go figure.

Hey, if Michael Jordan can hang up his promotional sneakers, why can't we just delete Monica Lewinsky from public consciousness? Encouraged by my fond friend Monty, I'm not quite the history buff, but I'm definitely enamored of this description of Eva Braun as prototypical Euro-trash, even Hitler's valley girl, from Robert S. Wistrich's "Who's Who in Nazi Germany":

Eva Braun spent most of her time exercising, brooding, reading cheap novelettes, watching romantic films, or concerning herself with her own appearance. Her loyalty to Hitler never flagged. After he survived a July 1944 plot, she wrote Hitler an emotional letter, ending, "From our first meeting I swore to follow you anywhere -- even unto death -- I live for your love."

Right, co-dependent no more.

When Eva and her "Adi" met in 1929, she was a 17-year-old photographer's assistant -- a shopgirl-- and he was 45. She described him to her sister Ilse as "a gentleman of a certain age with a funny mustache and carrying a big felt hat."

They shared a love of dogs, among other interests in common. Rumors have it Hitler wept over a photograph of his dead dog, Blondi -- what else? -- a German shepherd.

Though Hitler was always portrayed as a self-denying public servant, the reality was something else entirely. During his rise to power, he had lived mainly from royalties for his book, "Mein Kampf," and fees from rants and screeds he published in newspapers. And yet somehow he was able to afford an apartment in Munich, a villa in the Alps, and a car, while maintaining the fiction of a modest lifestyle. Beneath the surface lurked a demonic decadence -- his craving for sweet creamy Viennese pastries, the cinema, and Richard Wagner's overblown music.

Hitler's sex life, it is surmised, was abnormal, to say the least. Back in 1928 he had begun what some would say was a passionate, if perverse and psychotic, affair with his much younger niece, Geli Raubal, daughter of his half-sister. The affair ended tragically in 1931 with Geli's presumed "suicide" in his apartment, with his gun -- or murder -- paving the way for him to install Eva Braun as her successor, whom he did not marry until the day of his death, though he had made provisions for a generous pension for Eva in case something happened to him.

Robert Waite's 1977 monograph, "The Psychopathic God," suggests -- overdramatically, perhaps -- Hitler had some sexual perversions so abhorrent to his women that it drove them to destroy themselves. In fact, of seven women who were intimately connected with Hitler, six committed suicide or seriously attempted to do so. Eva Braun made two attempts before her final effort succeeded.

Actually, Hitler's Germany with its New Order sounds a lot like contemporary Washington, D.C., with its sexual scandals, its political excesses, its New World Order agenda. Here's someone named Rauschning fulminating after he resigned from the Nazi party in disgust:

Most loathsome of all is the reeking miasma of furtive, unnatural sexuality that fills and fouls the whole atmosphere around (Hitler), like an evil emanation. Nothing in this environment is straightforward. Surreptitious relationships, substitutes and symbols, false sentiments and secret lusts -- nothing in this man's surroundings is natural and genuine, nothing has the openness of a natural instinct.

Some saw Eva Braun as self-centered, but that seems to be standard mistress mien. Yes, she was preoccupied with acquiring new clothes, shoes, jewels, and public recognition as the Fuhrer's mistress -- while her family suffered wartime deprivations, acquaintances were hauled off to the gas chambers, and her beloved Adi deteriorated emotionally and physically. Yes, "Effie," as Braun was known to her intimates, sipped her vermouth, practiced her gymnastics, doted on her nasty little dogs and jockeyed for her distracted lover's attentions. Yes, she was oblivious to the horrendous destruction around her.

The last hours of Eva and Hitler read like a Mel Brooks script. Finally, hiding out in his bunker, he marries Eva. Hours later they are dead. Although subsequently there would be more Hitler sightings all over the world than eye-spies of Elvis. But when Martin Bormann, Hitler's deputy, picked the limp dead Eva Braun up in his arms, "she hung like a wet dish rag," in direct contrast to Hitler's "rigidly stiff and unbending body." Obviously Hitler's body -- allegedly missing a testicle -- had already gone into a state of rigor mortis and to do that it had to have been dead at least an hour longer than she was, which gives credence to the possibility of his "demise" being staged using one of his dopplegangers, or doubles.

Following their deaths, the lovers' bodies were set ablaze in the garden outside the bunker. Interestingly, Eva's corpse reportedly sat up in death; Hitler's didn't. Apparently, a freshly deceased body, or a corpse which has passed the rigor mortis stage, may react this way if heated, though you can't prove it by me. Something to do with heat tightening and contracting the sinews. However, during the rigor mortis stage which normally occurs 45-60 minutes after death, the body could be expected to remain rigid regardless if the surrounding temperature rises.

Infinitely more interesting than Monica, right?

When the bodies were ignited, two SS guards reported that the corpse of Eva Braun sat up, her legs raised and bent themselves until her knees were almost touching her chin, and her arms lifted until they were pointing straight before her. And she contorted as if she was riding a wild horse. Out of this world and into the next.

So the story goes. I kid you not.