The Perfect Stormy - by Starla Knight
First things first. Ms. Clifford, better known as Stormy Daniels, states that her relationship with Trump was indeed consensual. She’s not pooling her efforts to speak out with the women who have accused Trump of sexual misconduct. She is not claiming her position in the ranks of the #metoo movement. Rather she’s standing up because she’s offended that she’s been unfairly bullied into silence. Some people might argue that her case falls under the #metoo/#timesup umbrella, because her gender and her profession lead her to be bullied into silence, but we’ll respect her position.
She is the actress/performer suing a sitting president, with whom she alleged she had a consensual affair, to be released from a nondisclosure agreement she reached with his lawyer just before the 2016 election. She originally denied any affair occurred. According to the interview she gave to 60 Minutes, she previously denied the affair for two reasons. One, she had in the past been threatened in Las Vegas, after attempts to sell her story nearly seven years ago, and didn’t want to bring any possible harm to her or her loved ones. Two, she didn’t want the story going public in the wake of the election mania because her daughter was now old enough to see what was on the news and didn’t want the narrative to affect her child.
But the media wouldn’t let her be. Those looking for any and every indication of squalls in Trumps past relentlessly looked for the truth. Rumors of her previous attempts to sell her story surfaced. And the fear Ms Clifford once had about revealing her story turned to anger over being bullied into silence. Thus over the past two months, she has governed the story of her alleged relationship with Trump, and the $130,000 she was paid to keep silent. If Ms. Clifford’s court case proceeds, Trump may have to testify in depositions, and her suit could provide evidence of campaign spending violations.
And if her name seems omnipresent, repeated on cable television and in the White House briefing room, and plastered on signs outside nightclubs, where her appearance fees have multiplied, there is this to consider: Unlike most perceived presidential adversaries, about whom Trump is rarely shy, Ms. Clifford has not been the subject of a single tweet.
To many in the capital, Ms. Clifford, has become an unexpected gale force as she and not the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, might finally sink Trump.
Those who know her body of work well have registered the moment differently. But for most of her professional life, Ms. Clifford has been a woman in control of her own narrative in a field where that can be uncommon.With an instinct for self-promotion, she evolved from “kindergarten circuit” stripper to star actress and director, and occasional mainstream success, by her late 20s. She has garnered the respect of her peers. “She’s the boss, and everyone knew it,” Nina Hartley, one of the longest-working performers in the industry, said about Ms. Clifford.
“She was a very serious businesswoman and a filmmaker and had taken the reins of her career,” said Judd Apatow, who directed her cameos in the comedies Knocked Up and The 40-Year-Old Virgin. “She is not someone to be underestimated.”
In her own scripts, she has approached at times, more aspiring productions, with intricate plotlines and winks to politics. Her standards on set can be demanding. Ironically, Ms. Clifford does not mind firing people, colleagues claim, expelling those who blunder a scene or fluff a resume. She has required an actor change his “dumb” stage name because it would look ridiculous on her promotional materials.
Her competitive streak is notorious. After industry award nominations were announced one year, Ms. Clifford, who had accumulated more than a dozen such honors, informed an interviewer that she had been snubbed in the categories of cinematography and editing.
When opportunities have presented themselves outside her domain of the adult industry, Ms. Clifford has made the most of the publicity, helping her obtain a comfortable life in the Dallas suburbs.
Not everyone is interested in attending.
“Pretty sure dumb whores go to hell,” someone wrote her on Twitter last week.
“Whew!” Ms. Clifford retorted. “Glad I’m a smart one.”
Her response, in my opinion, was perfect. She’s no longer going to be shamed, and no longer going to be silenced.
As a young girl she had aspirations of being a veterinarian, or maybe a writer. “At first, I thought I wanted to be a journalist,” Ms. Clifford told The New York Times in an interview, about her background. She strained to remember exactly what she was like then. “I don’t really know because I’m such a different person now,” she said. “I wasn’t like the popular girl, and I wasn’t the jock, and I wasn’t the ditz. I don’t know. I was just sort of in the middle of the road.”
After high school, she found a professional home at the Gold Club in Baton Rouge, ingratiating herself with management as a reliable and magnetic performer, slogging through shifts to earn perhaps a few hundred dollars a night.
Ms. Clifford eventually graduated to higher-profile dancing work, traveling across Texas and Louisiana to headline at strip clubs, before transitioning to pornography. She was both determined to bend the business to her will and conflicted about the long-term consequences. “I have very mixed emotions about stripping because stripping got me where I am now,” she said, at age 23, in an industry interview. “I own my own house, I own my own car, I own my own business. My credit is excellent. I have nice furniture and nice things.”
Ms. Clifford chose a more tempestuous stage name than most peers. She was not an Angel, or a Summer, or a Destiny. She was Stormy. And the Perfect Stormy she’s proven to be, in this exact time and exact political place.
Recognition came quickly: awards, magazine spreads, feature roles and a contract with Wicked Pictures, a prominent pornography company. When she needed to, she charmed industry gatekeepers with a disarming wit.
“Are those real?” read a question posted on her website.
“Well,” she said, “you’re certainly not imagining them.”
In 2008, as Jenna Jameson, then the industry’s reigning monarch, announced her retirement at an awards show — “I will never spread my legs in this industry again,” she told the crowd — Ms. Clifford seemed to position herself next in line.
“I love you, Jenna,” Ms. Clifford said, accepting an award from Ms. Jameson moments later, “but I’m going to spread my legs a little longer.”
In 2009, well into her turn as a director, Ms. Clifford sensed an opening beyond her typical orbit. David Vitter, a United States senator in her home state of Louisiana, was drifting toward a re-election year, drowning in a prostitution scandal. Ms. Clifford declared herself a Republican and courted wide-scale media attention as she publicly weighed the merits of running. “Screwing People Honestly” was the not so subtle campaign slogan. In remarks at the time, she connected her professional journey to the lives of service workers across the state.
“Just as these misguided arbiters of the mainstream view an adult entertainment star as an anathema to the political process,” she said, when she eventually decided against a bid, “so too do they view the dishwasher, the cashier or the bus driver.”
She has since married again, a colleague in the business, Brendon Miller, the father of her now 7-year-old daughter. He is also a drummer and has composed music for her films. The family has been spotted often at equestrian events, where Ms. Clifford, the owner of several horses. Her preparations can be meticulous, matching her saddle pad with a horse’s bonnet colors.
“She takes it very personally that she does well,” said Dominic Schramm, a horse trainer and rider who has worked with her for several years. “She can be quite hard on herself.”
Ms. Clifford has not appeared at competitions since news broke in January that she accepted a financial settlement in October 2016 (just weeks before the election) agreeing to keep quiet about her alleged intimate relationship with Trump. She has said the affair (which includes only one sexual encounter), which representatives of Trump have denied, began in 2006 and extended into 2007.
Earlier this month, she escalated attention by filing suit, claiming the 2016 contract meaningless given that Trump had never signed it and revealing that the president’s personal lawyer had taken further secret legal action to keep her silent this year.
She has said that she does not want to expose the equestrian world — or her daughter — to the attendant circus trailing her now.
But the show has gone on for Ms. Clifford. She has danced across the country in recent months, from Las Vegas to Long Island. There are many more appearances to come. It would be foolish, she has said, to turn down more money than usual for the same work.
“She likes to maximize her profits,” said Danny Capozzi, an agent who manages her bookings, “not only on the feature dance bookings but at all times.”
What smart business person doesn’t?
I don’t believe Ms Clifford’s claim of having Trump drop trousers, to be spanked with his own magazine, is going to change the minds of his supporters. His supporters look at his long list of public affairs (and subsequent broken marriages) with beautiful women as the right, if not duty, of a rich and powerful man. If they were in his position they would likely take advantage of the opportunity as well. This is the party of morally bankrupt people after all. The deplorable, and proud of it.
But Ms Clifford is standing up for women who enter professional fields long judged for being immoral, and are then forever labeled as “dirty,” “undesirable,” “used” and “stupid.” Often these women become victims of one form of abuse or another for the rest of their lives. Subsequently these women are then forever expected to keep quiet and to willingly, quietly, accept any form of abuse that comes their way.
She claims that she’s not a victim, that even though she didn’t want to, she had sex with Trump anyway. Trump never forced her. That might be true. And even though she doesn’t want to claim the title of victim, she has been subject to a good amount of bullying, by Trumps lawyers and now his followers. Yet perhaps it’s #TimesUp? Is it the beginning of the end of women who work in the sex industry to be subject to bullying by the men who still seek to control the industry or the narrative?
As always, I would love to know what you think. Email me at starla.friction@gmail.com
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