_______________ DAY OF RECKONING BY ANDREW ROSS (04/02/98)

Salon is my hero. YOU are the Woodward & Bernstein of the present age, doggedly (and still all-too-lonely) illuminating the two most insidious plagues of our post-Watergate world: a special prosecutor mechanism ripe for political abuse, and a mass media so thoroughly corrupted by and invested in the economics of scandal that it literally menaces our civil functioning. I cannot praise enough the recent work of Mollie Dickenson, Murray Waas, Andrew Ross and Jonathan Broder on what's actually been powering the giant hamster-wheel of Clinton scandalmania. And what's this -- thoroughness, sourcing, legwork!? Who ever imagined these things would become such rare luxuries? And who ever imagined that the Washington Post (my own longtime local paper) would be as happily suckered by money and live-to-hate-Clinton cultism as the American Spectator or the Limbaugh Letter? Please keep it up. Your body of investigative work is putting you on the map, and deservedly. -- Susan Sharp Bravo, well put! I think there is a small, mean spirited faction in our country whose sole purpose in life is to inflict their vision of America on an unsuspecting, fair-minded citizenry. They seem to have equated uninformed with gullible, silence with indecision and common sense with feeble-mindedness. This "holier than thou" attitude is in fact historically repugnant to any open-minded American citizen. This incestuous cabal prays on the altar of fear and hate. What they have yet to understand is that the American public mind is, by it's nature, fair and well-grounded. I must admit that my own belief in the fairness of the Fourth Estate has been truly shaken. It seems that there are very few reporters plying their trade these days. In their place are opinion givers, pontificators, nickel and dime preachers in sheep's clothing. You must excuse me now. I am in dire need of some moral, ethical input. I feel the need to bring some balance back into my life. I'm going to put down the newspapers, log off the Net and turn off the news shows. I'm going to sit down for the next few hours and watch the movie "Shane." Good guy, bad guy, do what is right. Ah, what a concept -- how American. --Douglas Lowenkron Uh, never quite learned to be a graceful winner, did we? While it would appear that the judge did make the correct decision, let's not use this one episode as a magic wand with which all the transgressions of this administration can be made to disappear. The Clinton administration rivals the average university football team when it comes to criminal indictments and general impropriety. Would such transgressions be absent from a more right-wing administration? Of course not, but that's no reason to gloat. Supporting Clinton legally in this instance would seem to be the correct thing to do. I am truly glad he has been vindicated, at least for now. However, vindication is not grounds for glorification. Before that can even begin to happen you need to answer in the affirmative whether you would want your sister or daughter to be alone in a room with Silly Willie. Legal rulings or not, I wouldn't be too comfortable with that. Anyway, I enjoy the site. Keep up the good, albeit ridiculously slanted, work. -- Pete Tousignant SALON | April 3, 1998