T A B L E+T A L K Gentlemen, how does Viagra work for you? Weigh in on the impotence debate in the Science and Health area of Table Talk D A I L Y+Q U O T E The People vs. Larry Flynt, Part 2 R E C E N T L Y "It's time to speak out" By David Corn Re: the Clinton scandals, confidential GOP memo urges Republicans to go on the attack (04/30/98) Gingrich's impeachment scenario By Jonathan Broder A veteran Washington reporter says the House Speaker visualizes the removal of both Clinton and Gore (04/29/98) Triumphant in death By David J. Garrow James Earl Ray is laughing all the way to hell, thanks to the King family's preposterous belief that he didn't kill Martin Luther King Jr. (04/28/98) American Spectator audit: Is the fox guarding the henhouse? By Jonathan Broder Theodore Olson, a close friend of Kenneth Starr's and a former attorney for David Hale, heads the embattled magazine's crucialinternal investigation (04/27/98) Cambodia's other madmen By Judith Coburn and Joshua Phillips However monstrous Pol Pot's actions, he is not the only one to have turned the country into a living hell (04/24/98) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Browse the Newsreal Archives - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
		Murderers, cannibals -- lesbians! AMERICA HAS A DISTINGUISHED HISTORY OF SPREADING SCANDALOUS RUMORS ABOUT ITS POLITICIANS, AND THE LATEST BATCH OF WHITE HOUSE GOSSIP IS NOTHING NEW. BY JENN SHREVE Hillary Rodham Clinton might see the attacks on herself and her husband as part of a "vast right-wing conspiracy." But true or false, conspiracy or no, the attacks are vicious and politically motivated, and there's nothing new about that. During Andrew Jackson's presidential campaign, his wife died of a heart attack shortly after reading vicious attacks on her character in a partisan pamphlet called "Truth's Advocate." Grover Cleveland was dogged throughout his tenures in office by rumors that he'd fathered an illegitimate child and then abandoned both the mother and child ("Ma, Ma, where's my pa? Gone to the White House, ha, ha, ha"). When President Woodrow Wilson remarried in 1915, a "suspiciously" short time after the death of his first wife, Ellen, rumors spread that Wilson had killed her. John Frémont, the 1856 Republican presidential candidate, was suspected of being a cannibal. The public's turning of a blind eye to presidential peccadilloes -- which has certainly been the case for President Clinton -- is also not without precedent. Almost every president or presidential candidate has been accused of some egregious flaw -- whether it be alcoholism, philandering or murder -- and in most cases the rumors have made little difference at the polls. The country paid little heed to Ulysses S. Grant's drinking problem, for example. In her new book, "Scorpion Tongues: Gossip, Celebrity and American Politics," New York Times editorial board member Gail Collins looks at American presidential history through the gossip surrounding each administration. She also charts the shifting reaction of the media, from the enthusiastic embrace of gossip by a multitude of partisan rags to the more rigid journalistic standards that newspapers adopted when they had to answer to advertisers. Salon spoke recently by phone with Collins from Washington, D.C. Pundits are wringing their hands because Americans don't seem to care much about the president's sexual behavior. But your book says this is really nothing new. What's new is the technological changes in the media and the way the political system is organized. But what is not happening, as the pundits insist, is some sort of loss of our moral compass. This is not about some dramatic change in the moral fiber of the nation. As you point out, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Ulysses Grant and Grover Cleveland all got involved in scandals but were never punished at the polls. And that was equally true in the 1970s, when you had all those crazy congressmen running around doing everything except sleeping with a cocker spaniel, and all got reelected; except for a couple of them whose private life was so wildly at variance with their public image, like the guy from Maryland [Robert Bauman] who was an anti-gay congressman who got caught soliciting young boys. It's also true that once they got reelected, a lot of them quit because they just couldn't stand it anymore; it was just too hard on them. Based on your study of presidential gossip, is it possible, as Clinton has insisted, that the rumors about him and White House interns and volunteers like Monica Lewinsky and Kathleen Willey are simply not true? It's always possible, though rumors that have real legs always have some kernel of truth in them. More important than whether they are true is how the public sees the object of the rumor, or what's going on in the country at the time. Take Woodrow Wilson. He didn't murder his first wife, but people were upset when they realized that he wasn't sitting in the White House mourning her, that he was courting another lady. That meant that rather than sitting around worrying about World War I, he was sleeping with his fiancée. That upset people. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - N E X T+P A G E+| It's only sex now