T H E C L I N T O N C R I S I S A full list of articles - - - - - - - - - - T A B L E__T A L K Cokie and Sam go back to Washington. Discuss in the Media area of Table Talk - - - - - - - - - - R E C E N T L Y An ABC of ethical conflict By Doug Ireland Did Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz compromise himself when he accepted a freelance gig with ABC? (01/22/97) Under the Covers By James Poniewozik Sex tips for boys (01/21/97) Sam and Cokie trade deck chairs on ABC's Titanic By Eric Alterman Sam and Cokie, ace reporters? ABC News' pathetic ploy (01/20/97) Outlaw justice By Joe Conason Some "journalists" have a strange soft spot for Matt Drudge (01/19/97) Hollywoodland By Catherine Seipp Why people hate the way they're portrayed in the media (01/16/97) - - - - - - - - - - BROWSE THE MEDIA CIRCUS ARCHIVES

p e n i s g a t e OUR HIGHLY MORAL PRESIDENT IS BEING HOIST WITH HIS OWN JUST-SAY-NO PETARD. RAISE HIM HIGH! - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - BY CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Was that a V-Chip in President Clinton's pocket, or was he just pleased to see us? You would think that the journalistic "profession" might be appreciative of the ironies of the present crisis. Here is the president who campaigns, with his wife yet, for teenage sexual abstinence. Here is the chief executive who speaks sternly about blocking even mild smut on the family TV. Here is the Leader of the Free World who threw millions of women and children -- practitioners or products of loose morals -- off the welfare rolls because their sex lives were not up to scratch. And now he's up to his bulky thorax in something more than a mere "bimbo explosion." But most media reactions were of two equally objectionable kinds. There was the Pharisaism of William Safire -- "I can't believe it and I hope it's not true" -- yeah, right. Then there was the equally hypocritical "self-criticism" of Larry King, who wondered aloud whether "we" were right to dump the pope and Bibi and ol' Yasser out of the news to focus on the curvature and delinquency of the presidential member. Those who were not Pharisees were gloaters. Everyone on "Nightline" on Wednesday night wore an uncontrollable smirk -- everyone except Ted Koppel, who tried to retrieve the high ground by boring on about how and why they had justified the decision to leave His Holiness rotting in Havana. By showing film of other journalists pouring out of the White House press room and grabbing the phones, ABC attempted a lofty distance from the vulgar herd -- and succeeded only in giving Clinton apologists the excuse to murmur about a "feeding frenzy." Anyone who has spent five minutes in that press room knows it resembles a "feeding frenzy" in only one respect -- the inmates wait for their keepers to throw them fragments of gunk. Nothing is worse than press masochism and defensiveness. And nobody should profit from it less than Clinton. Is the nation's business being neglected for all this squalor? Quite possibly. But in that case -- whose is the squalor? Clinton has already been all the way to the Supreme Court to lose the argument that his "duties" come first. He had all the time in the world to meet Roger Tamraz and other bagmen and scumballs, and to play golf with whoever, and to leave messages on the home answering machines of female interns. (Since Paula Jones went public with her assertions about the tilt in the Clintonian penis, you'd think he would have stopped arguing that he doesn't have the time and started maintaining that he doesn't have the inclination.) And Vernon Jordan's friends in the press! Did you see them? Al Hunt and David Gergen and every other monkey's uncle, solemnly intoning that he just wouldn't be capable of scaring up hush money from Revlon for Monica Lewinsky -- as he undoubtedly did for Webster Hubble. In D.C. itself, everyone has their favorite story of Jordan's Martha's Vineyard lament -- that poor Bill complains it's hard for him to get a blow job in a limousine these days. But these tales are not to be repeated before the profane masses. When Bob Woodward uncharacteristically answered King's phony question about "priorities," and said, well, "I think it's sex Larry," you could almost feel a taboo on the obvious being broken. And since when is sex, on its own terms and for its own sake, not a perfectly apt subject for public discussion? Sophocles would have had no "problem" with the age-old question of why powerful men will risk anything for willful women. Vienna has taught us that if a politician cruises the country babbling about family values and continence and morality, he is probably screaming for sexual release. Instead of trying to shield our children from what they can download off the Net, why not have a meeting in the good old national "village" and discuss the unending dirty-mindedness and hypocrisy of politicians? But this is a respectable press that would have protected Dick Morris -- Clinton's other best friend, remember? -- unless or until he had been exposed by an unspeakable tabloid. And Morris, as we know now and could have guessed then, was engaged in debauching a national presidential election, not just a few babes dialed at random. Other countries and cultures marvel endlessly at the continuing effect of Puritanism on the American mind. In obedience to the old injunction -- always think of it, never speak of it -- heroic efforts must be made to act surprised when a rogue alpha male acts in what is well established as his "character." Nothing is more ridiculous than this public pretense that the baby boomers don't know where babies come from. And now the same prurience is being visited on those who are young enough to be the Chief Boomer's daughter. All I can say is -- thank heaven for Michael Isikoff. He lost his job on the dreary Washington Post four years ago because they wouldn't print his account of Paula Jones' story. He almost lost the battle to get Newsweek to print the Lewinsky tapes in a timely manner. But he has stuck to his job as a professional and unsensational sleuth and reminded us all that, in news and politics as with the psyche, repression is the problem in the first place. SALON | Jan. 23, 1998 Christopher Hitchens is a columnist with Vanity Fair and Salon contributor.  Discuss the presidential sex scandal in Table Talk.