T A B L E_.T A L K

New York magazine: Love it or leave it? Join the discussion in the Media area of Table Talk

- - - - - - - - - -

R E C E N T L Y

Steal this leak!
By Cynthia Cotts
In a rare First Amendment victory for the press, a D.C. court says reporters can use purloined information
(08/07/98)

If elected, I promise more girlie shows at the state fair!
By Peter Kurth
The media -- and the public -- can't decide how to treat 79-year-old farmer Fred Tuttle's bizarre campaign for the Senate
(08/06/98)

The autocrat of the coffee table
By James Poniewozik
TV Guide, America's favorite coaster, becomes history in spite of itself
(08/05/98)

Befriend and betray
By Tom McNichol
If journalists can't stab their sources in the back, what will fill the pages of our nation's great newspapers and magazines?
(07/31/98)

Lugging the guts into the next room
By Bruce Shapiro
Steven Spielberg's "Saving Private Ryan" has sparked talk the government tried to silence -- talk of the psychic wounds inflicted on World War II vets
(07/30/98)

- - - - - - - - - -

BROWSE THE
UNDER THE COVERS
ARCHIVE

BROWSE THE
MEDIA CIRCUS
ARCHIVE

Monica 2: This time, it's for the money

A nation of pundits has a very, very merry Testimoniday.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
BY JAMES PONIEWOZIK

You know there is trouble in the land when President Clinton shows up early for an appointment, and when he gives a brief speech. His questioning in front of Ken Starr's grand jury began at 12:59 Monday afternoon, one minute ahead of schedule. And at 10 p.m., he gave a speech that was over by 10:04.

In that speech, Clinton looked into the eyes of the American people and said -- oh, but you knew what he was going to say before it happened, didn't you? "This afternoon in this room ..." "Protecting my family ..." "Important work to do ..." Virtually every talking point in the speech was hashed out in the press weeks ago -- you could have written this speech last week, except that, naive you, you might have used a word like "lied" or "sorry" rather than "misled" or "regret."

And the pre-prep continued tonight; by 8 p.m., the slogan "Candor, Contrition, and Closure" simultaneously appeared on the chat shows as if by airborne leaflet. (And don't you just know that catch phrase was vetted to avoid choosing an unfortunate initial? "This speech has to be about Pain, Presidentiality, and Peace." "Yeah, and Puss--" "OK, cancel those faxes!")

Over the past few weeks, every wag in the press has taken a stab at writing a dramatic speech for the president: Say it's none of their business. Say you'll resign. Say you're seeking help. The subtext to all these suggestions is: For once in your life, do something unexpected. Say something that wasn't tested in focus groups and the op-eds and advisors' sessions. We got instead "A critical lapse in judgment and a personal failure on my part." Did the man miss a jump shot? For all its petulance toward Starr, it was a speech to end no speeches, leaving John Ashcroft and James Carville and Bay Buchanan and Barney Frank batting the same rhetorical back-court shots that they had been before and will be, presumably, until the end of time. You want closure? You can't handle closure!

A different sort of closure, then: The checks are in the mail -- Chris', Keith's, mine. And yours too. The Dow Jones industrial average closed up nearly 150 points. It was an excellent, excellent day in the United States of America.

Let it never be said that the president has no effect on the economy. By setting a grand-jury testimony date two weeks in advance, President Clinton not only turned the media into a massive focus group, airing out every possible stonewalling tactic and pre-scripting his confession down to the last comma, he in effect decreed a national holiday -- Testimoniday -- and opened a punditry Olympiad that would help finance second homes and midlife-crisis car purchases up and down the Northeast corridor.

So the last two weeks have been the "Speed 2" of news squawk: Like most sequels, a joyless exercise of the will, promising more loot and less fun for all the Sandra Bullocks involved -- red-faced, spittle-spewing Chris Matthews, cagey John Gibson, squeaky, indomitable Arianna Huffington. Again, we trotted out the presidential historians, poll takers and sex columnists. Again, we got the clichéd subplot involving the mustachioed Arab villain, raising the specter of America entering its second war with Iraq to be fought over precious fluids. And again, a nation huddled by the TV, steeling itself for the horrifying and unprecedented prospect of William Jefferson Clinton telling the truth.

But enough about the leadership of the free world, a turning point in the history of America, blah blah blah. This is Web journalism, after all. Let's talk about me.

This is only the second column I've written for Salon on the Clinton-Lewinsky sex scandal, and in that respect I am an atypical professional and a poor provider for my family.

This time, I was asked to write pretty much the same sort of piece I wrote in January; I felt burned out on the exhaustive, microscopic coverage and was convinced I had nothing to add to the subject. So I wholeheartedly said yes.

And in that respect I am entirely typical. For while commentaries on the Lewinsky scandal inevitably riff on what it is "about" -- sex, perjury, character, politics, privacy, media ethics, the Constitution, the Bible -- they are all wrong.

The Monica Lewinsky scandal is about getting paid.

N E X T+P A G E | The GOP's goose-stepping miniskirts