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50 PERCENT OFF | PAGE 1, 2
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Still, it was nothing compared with the pall that hung over MSNBC, where impeachment all-star John Gibson seemed a positively tragic figure, drained white -- well, whiter -- by the prospect of soon having to whip up partisan outbursts over the privatization of Social Security. They say there was no simple majority for conviction, but in fact the simple majority, with plenty of conviction, gathered in force on "NewsChat" to mourn with Gibson, who put forth to the viewers the show's trademark Question of the Day: "Should we accept the verdict, or should we take the law into our own hands, smashing down the White House gate as our torches light the night with the flames of pure justice?" Or something to that effect. But, you know? The magic was gone.

By my lights, though, Gibson has little to worry about. There's enough blind venom in this country to last well into the next century. For we now all live in 50 Percent Off Nation. Is it really all over? Nothing was over as of 12:37 p.m. Friday that hasn't been over for months. We've kept arguing the case nonetheless because, increasingly, each side of this country thinks the other is not merely wrong but illegitimate. Friday, we got a verdict suited to our times, relieving many but settling nothing. The president was wrongly tormented for a year over a personal failing. The president screwed the American justice system and walked off scot-free, biting his lip to hold back the laughs. It's a much deeper quarrel that 50 Percent Off Nation will find new means to express, in the form of those "substantive issues" that we all, you know, have been just dying to take a whack at.

What did we learn during the past year? That the nation yearns for a strong unifying figure, which we got in the form of Linda Tripp, busily transforming herself from the Elizabethan-puppet-show stock villain who drew easy playground barbs from the press for her looks. (A classic pot-kettle encounter, by the by, to anyone who's had the pleasure of cruising a get-together of journalists.) Of course it's fun watching Tripp's ham-handed attempts to invite us all into her gingerbread house for a big candy feast, but the irony is that she was right all along: She is us.

That is, we're all going to rehabilitate our images now. America in 1999 will be like Germany in 1946. The official story will be that the past 14 months were a shame, but we personally had nothing to do with it. We were never that interested in that story -- but Klaus down the road, there was always something a little fishy about him. Democrats? Social Security's job one -- always has been! Republicans? We just want to cut taxes! Already, Friday afternoon, Sen. Robert Bennett, R-Utah, was piously telling Jim Lehrer he wouldn't "let the media create an artificial fight" -- one day after he had called Bill Clinton the "most accomplished liar" in American history.

In the meantime, we'll take well-deserved breaks, heading off week-long recesses or filing meaningless wrap-ups. So fare thee well, Sens. Spencer Abraham, R-Mich., and Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii -- you'll always be at the top of the roll call of our hearts! Fare thee well, John Dean, Howard Baker, Daniel Schorr and Elizabeth Holtzman, and may the good staff of the Benevolent Center for Former Watergate Figures take good care of you! Fare thee well, impeachment scholar John Pavia of Quinnipiac College!

And next week, we can all get back to doing the people's business. Make sure you have air freshener.

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Who's Outing Whom?

When Jerry Falwell issued his famous warning that Tinky Winky, the lavender character on the children's show "Teletubbies" who carries a red purse, is a gay role model, the smirking mass media wondered: Has he lost his mind? A smaller minority wondered: This is news? Anyone who's paid a scrap of attention to the TV series since it premiered in the States last year knows Tinky had long ago lit up the gaydar, not of the Moral Majority, but of the gay community. Last month, the Village Voice's Michael Musto crabbed that his long-standing observation that the Teletubby "sends kids the welcome message that it's OK to be gay" -- more or less the same point Falwell made, albeit with opposite sentiments -- earned him a "Jeer" in TV Guide: "TV Guide," Musto wrote, "which has so many sisters on staff that the TV should stand for transvestite ... didn't care much for that remark, self-loathingly enough." Last spring Harper's Bazaar quoted a media-studies academic calling Tinky "the first role model for queer toddlers." The outing runs back to the show's origins across the pond. In 1997 James Delingpole in the Spectator wrote that "homosexuals (in Britain) have elevated the handbag-toting Tinky Winky to a gay icon"; and the firing of the actor who first wore the purple suit in 1997 prompted protests among British gays.

At the time no one was dismissing Mr. Winky's gay boosters as crackpots (except the show's nervous production company). Which raises the question of whether the derision of Falwell's crusade is another sign of antireligious bias in the secular general media. When a right-wing Christian leader outs Tinky Winky, it's proof this Bible-thumping Cletus is missing a string on his banjo -- but when a cultural-studies academic or a Voice columnist says it, it's an insightful apercu on our gorgeous televisual mosaic.

Whatever Falwell's motives, he's shown himself hipper to the discourse of pop culture-savvy gays than many of the wags who laughed him off last week. Perhaps, as a result, they're deaf to a deeper message within Falwell's cri de coeur. Think about it: A spokesman for a not-exactly-lifestyle-tolerant community is hinting to the rest of the world that he's been closely following the discourse of gay cultural critics for years. Does no one think that, perhaps, the good rev is trying to tell us something? Well, I for one support the man as he struggles to come to terms with his identity and express himself to an insensitive public. Preach it, Sister Jerry! You will survive!
SALON | Feb. 16, 1999

James Poniewozik's Under the Covers appears every Tuesday in Media Circus.