_______________GENERAL REACTIONS TO CLINTON'S MEA CULPA

There has to be a moment in time when we stand back and look at our country, not as Democrats or Republicans, but as Americans. What are we willing to endure? Is it mediocrity? If Mr. Clinton had been the CEO of ARCO, and provided its board of directors with a sex scandal, his resignation would have been called for in an instant. We should expect something a little better from the "leader of the free world"! When my child goes to school and pledges allegiance to the flag, and the picture of the president is next to that flag, she may question the value of that gesture. I don't want that to happen. The man, regardless of his position, is a pathological liar (they teach that in law school) who has proven that he is not the man to be running this country. His personal pride and ego is once again clouding his vision to do the right thing for our country. This just proves that the "Peter Principle" (we rise to our level of incompetence) is alive and flourishing in our country. Let's protect our children, and get him back on "Hee Haw" where he belongs. -- Don Kliewer The current Clinton scandal should be a call to the houses of Versace and Coco Chanel. It is time for a new fashion trend, the bearing of a scarlet letter. Presidential critics are screaming for the return of an emblazoned A. What President Clinton has been put through by the media and by Kenneth Starr is hypocrisy at its worst. In the late '90s, it is embarrassing to put a nation's leader under microscopic, personal scrutiny. It is time to bring the entire matter to an end, and making a fashion statement may be the only way. History, like fashion, is cyclical. Washington did it! Kennedy, et al., did it! Scarlet A's, like poodle skirts, had their day. Now is the time for all to come out -- of the attic. Those who cite possible perjury and that our president must be a role model are using a highly personal situation to further their own agenda. Nowhere in the Constitution does it say, in word or spirit, that the president of the United States is the head, or represents, a specific religious institution. He is not the American equivalent of a pope or archbishop of Canterbury. It is not the job of a president to teach morals to our children. Those who insist it is may be the same people who abdicate that role to schools. It is the job of parents, family and religious institutions to teach those values. The morals of society should not be anyone's political agenda. Those who persist in following the perjury route will be bringing shame to our nation. Legally, perjury charges are subjective and a matter of semantics. If the media and Ken Starr continue the current path, the nation might as well start ordering scarlet A's by the score and mandate that all on the Washington scene who have ever, by thought or deed, been guilty of any indiscretion bear a scarlet letter on their chests. Sexual indiscretion is a private matter, the business of the people involved. The Orrin Hatches and Pat Robertsons of Washington are more of an embarrassment than the actions of President Clinton. As they speak and condemn, they are embroidering the detail work of the scarlet A. Sex in the White House should be left to Hollywood and should not be paraded in our news reports. The sad truth is that if the media now drops the Clinton story, the most recent breed of media stars, the new experts, the commentators, the visitors to talk shows, will have to go back to their former lives, out of the public spotlight. Starr and the media are crippling our nation, making it look weak, petty and foolish to the rest of the civilized world. -- Sally Michlin What goes around comes around. Bill Clinton is reaping the rewards of liberal legislative excesses. It was feminists and liberals who created the "Alice in Wonderland" inquisitional legal world of "Sexual Harassment." And it was the Democrats who created the office of the "Special Prosecutor" during the era of Republican presidents, and maintained its existence against the opposition of Republicans. Never assume that the powers you arrogate to government will be used only by you and your friends. -- Gary Schnitzer To judge by the remarkable level of self-righteousness evinced by President Clinton's critics on both the left and right, we have apparently entered a new Golden Age of Bigotry. I wish the folks who take such pleasure in consigning people to absolute condemnation for minor, indeed comic, foibles would take the time to read a book or see a movie that dates from even a few years ago. Maybe a whiff of some air that isn't toxic with the smog of all this hysterical Puritanism would clear their heads. The desire to hurt is very close to the surface in American life these days as we can see in the vast expansion of the prisons, our counterproductive approach to the drug problem and our increasingly hostile attitude to sex. The excommunication of Clinton from the Congregation of the Righteous is just a recent instance of this cultural pathology. Hypocritical hypermoralism is a way of compensating for the plain and inescapable fact that we don't believe in a damn thing but money and celebrity, and haven't for a long time. Ours is a morality without any concrete goals or real connection with either happiness or transcendence, a set of phony but marketable gestures that provides us sadistic pleasure with a clear conscience. No wonder Clinton is a target of so much hand-wringing. He's a healthy, vital person with a clear sense of purpose. The dead envy the living. -- Jim Harrison San Francisco The outrageous tactics of Starr's gang and their cohorts in the corporate news media amount to a far greater wrong than Clinton's marital infidelity. If Clinton resigns, then these people will have achieved their goal of undermining the results of a national election by these unsavory means, and we can expect such exploitative, media-driven abuses of judicial power to be a fixed feature of American politics. The president now has a moral obligation to prevent that by fighting to stay in office, and citizens who really care about decency and fairness need to show their support for him. Instead of dishing up sanctimonious crap, Andrew Ross should be calling for Linda Tripp to be indicted in Maryland for her illegal tapings of Lewinsky, so that a legal investigation of the collusion between her, Starr and other right-wing operatives can take place. -- Walter Risley Columbus, Ohio Seven months ago, when Clinton stated so emphatically that he did not have sexual relations with Ms. Lewinsky, I knew better. Clinton's denial was a screw-up and I feared for the presidency. With slack-jawed awe, I've watched this affair unfold in the national media. This is no Iran-contra affair. It's certainly no Watergate. Yet we've allowed Starr to spend over $40 million just so we can rubberneck Clinton's disgrace. We've turned the White House into the "Jerry Springer Show" and I am embarrassed. We've spent our summer discussing and making jokes about Monica Lewinsky's stained dress. We've been talking publicly about our commander in chief's semen and where it might or might not be. Good God. We're screaming about Clinton's moral responsibility, but what about our own? Would we have ever asked Kennedy the questions we asked Clinton on Monday? After Clinton's remarkable address Monday night, I expected this all to die down. But immediately afterward, there was Orrin Hatch spouting off about how Clinton's lie cost $40 million dollars, not the investigation itself. The next morning, I spotted numerous therapists on television discussing the struggles the first family will now go through. Blah blah blah. Salon Magazine, you are media with a conscience. You have led us to think about this affair rather than simply rubberneck it. I ask you now to lead us in other directions. Help us through the withdrawal we're bound to suffer as our daytime talk show goes into syndication. Enough is enough. -- Chris S. Witwer Austin, Texas N E X T+P A G E+| The sage advice of Vincent Bugliosi