_______________THE SECRET LIFE OF A SCANDAL BY STEVE ERICKSON(07/16/98)
	Some lies about sex are kinder than some truths. Steve Erickson is right: We ordinary folks know this instinctively and act accordingly. But the president is not an ordinary person. Kind lies would be fine if the president were nice guy in chief. But, if that's the job description that "most" Americans are coming to associate with 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., God help this country when it encounters its next great crisis. The president is holder of an incomparably solemn trust and executor of powers the scope of which is almost impossible to imagine. This trust and these powers must carry with them a great duty of moral integrity and candor. Ken Starr's rage seems, to me, to arise from the way in which the president and his agents have ridiculed and dismissed that proposition at every turn. Indeed, they now swap perversion and principle entirely, to argue that Secret Service testimony -- interfering as it would with the president's liberty to indulge illicit conduct -- imperils the institution of the presidency. I hope that the president's actual conduct with Monica Lewinsky was innocent, and that his statements about such conduct were truthful. Even were that not the case, the honor and duty of high office and national leadership are bigger than any one man -- we could go on with little lasting harm. But if Bill Clinton is allowed, in defending himself, to tear down the central and vital ideals of national leadership, then we as a nation have all been left that much more defenseless. Steve Erickson may be right that the American people have made their decision, and Mr. Starr cannot now prevail. Perhaps he would cast Mr. Starr in such defeat as King Canute, fighting against a tide of popular indifference no man can resist. The better figure, though, might be Cassandra: He sees too early what all of us will see to our grief only too late. -- Matthew Dundon Bravo to Steve Erickson on his insights into the Lewinsky affair. I think that an overwhelming majority of people know (but are afraid to say) that Kenneth Starr is that Napoleon-Complex-Afflicted Geek who graduated college without "getting any" because nobody liked him. Anyone who's ever "gotten any" knows better than to raise such a query, much less pursue such a query with the tenacity that Starr is exhibiting. Surely the nation cares that Clinton is a bit shady in these matters, but it simply is not that important. The man got a blow job in his office after work. A few times. Then he denied it. Does Starr realize how often this sort of thing happens in the everyday working world? Oops! Gotta go ... someone's here to subpoena me. -- Alex Cook It is certainly true, as Steve Erickson says in your recent article "The Secret Life of a Scandal," that the American public has decided that the scandal is about "lying about sex" and that they don't care about such a minor matter. It is also true that the legalistic contention that the scandal is about felonious deception is, at best, a huge overreaction. What few mention is the exploitive aspect of this matter. All reports paint a very convincing picture of a young and attractive woman fixated on the office, not the man. If Bill Clinton were an accountant in Arkansas, Monica Lewinsky wouldn't have given him more than a passing smile. That situation was so obvious (and fairly common) that the White House staff took measures to move her away from the president -- a responsible and reasonable action to deal with a difficult circumstance. The great disappointment in our president is that he did not act so responsibly and reasonably himself. By all accounts, he took some sort of advantage of this situation. Exactly what sort of advantage doesn't really matter. Willing or not, Monica Lewinsky is a victim of exploitation. The fact that she was willing to the point of being compulsive matters little. Any sexual relationship is entirely inappropriate in certain relationships: teacher/student, doctor/patient, senator/page or president/intern. If this matter is all that Ken Starr has to chase, then there is an appropriate way to end this mess. Senators and congressmen have been censured for sexual relationships with pages. A bicameral resolution notifying the president that his behavior has not been appropriate for a chief executive would resolve the matter appropriately. It is not an impeachment, but the matter is not worth impeachment. The same resolution could include a dismissal of the special prosecutor. We have, however, learned something very important from all this. Starr's horrid heavy-handed tactics have been very public, but they are not unusual for any U.S. prosecutor. Now there's a scandal that the House and Senate need to scrutinize carefully. -- Hal Wadleigh Don't confuse your desperate hopes and political spin with what real America thinks of the chief philanderer. I thought Salon readers (or robots) actually cared about this type of callous and abusive behavior toward women. Not to mention the serious and credible evidence of criminal offenses committed by this immoral degenerate. Why don't we just let the investigation proceed without interference by Clinton's many accomplices and co-conspirators. If he has nothing to hide, his innocence will be evident. If not, he should be removed from office so the country can get back to business and end this national embarrassment. -- Sonny Landrum
_______________GOD'S OWN ZIP CODE BY CHRISTOPHER OTT (07/09/98)
	Amazing! Red-baiting in Salon, of all places. While I welcome most criticism of the fundamentalist Christian right and its involvement in politics, I was disturbed by Christopher Ott's obvious prejudice in "God's Own ZIP Code" and his clumsy attempts at rhetorical manipulation. For example, Ott sets up a false comparison when he says the Focus on the Family highway sign "implies a modest building and a rack of free pamphlets" and then immediately describes the actual large campus with its own ZIP Code, his prime motif for conveying the size of Dobson's operation. That's a lot to read into a sign on an interstate, but not if you're out to front load your reader's attitude toward the subject. The most telling, however, is his comparison of his tour to Soviet-era tours in the U.S.S.R. and of Dobson to Lenin. Dobson's organization may plaster his name and image all over its headquarters, but-- surprise! -- it's their headquarters. And Dobson may limit dissent in his organization, but that makes it little different than most churches, corporations and political parties in the United States. As another branch of the conservative Christian movement, Focus on the Family deserves careful, skeptical attention. What it doesn't deserve, any more than Salon's readers deserve it, is such a ham-handed hatchet job. -- Tim Merritt How is it that when a Christian organization becomes involved in politics it allegedly violates some mythical "separation of church and state"? As opposed to teachers' unions and other assorted organizations pressing their agendas? Like it or not, Christians are citizens too, and with an agenda as well. Only, the agenda of most Christians is to see our country return to a more civilized society, where all opinions are respected, not just the ones that are PC. This nation was founded by Christians fleeing from religious persecution; now 300 years later it would seem that the persecution begins again. Only this time Christians are fighting to end the intolerance of "tolerant" educated elitism, and the scourge of political correctness. -- Jon Thompson
_______________CRACKING DOWN BY JEFF STRYKER (07/10/98)
	My compliments for the article about Barbara Harris' efforts to pay for the voluntary sterilization of drug-addicted mothers. I should have guessed that there would be some people who would be against her program, but I was surprised by the incomplete reasoning they used to back up their opposition. Attorney Melanie Blum, who makes her living off of reproductive rights cases and whose fortune is therefore threatened by Harris' organization, CRACK, says, "To have somebody out there doing these kinds of things that have to do with creation of life or termination of life is way too presumptuous." This woman argues court cases? It's not as if Harris is driving around pulling women off the street at random and forcibly sterilizing them. Anyone who chooses to take advantage of the offer may do so; no one who wants to pass up the offer will be forced to submit. Rocio Cordoba of the ACLU says of Harris: "She is targeting a very discrete, vulnerable population of women who have few options." Indeed she is, and she's giving them an option they probably would not have had otherwise. The most laughable attempt to discredit Harris' admirable work was summed up in this sentence: "Harris' critics complain that the decision-making capacity of the women her program targets is so impaired by drug use that any consent to undergo sterilization is suspect." So these women are too mentally impaired to make a simple decision about their lifestyle, but they still have the mental capacity to raise and nurture a child? Sorry folks, you can't have it both ways. My check to CRACK is in the mail. I look on it as an investment. -- Jay Karamales
_______________DON'T STAND SO CLOSE TO ME BY DAWN MacKEEN (06/30/98)
	Am I the only one who finds Charol Shakeshaft's comment that "what we do know is that there are very few teachers who are wrongly or falsely accused of sexual abuse or harassment" similar to Ed Meese's famous remark that most accused criminals are probably guilty of something? How do "we" know this, anyway? And how does she know that one in four female schoolchildren have been sexually harassed by an adult in school? Until I know more about her methodology -- and precisely how she defined sexual harassment for the purpose of making this determination -- I'll maintain (to put it mildly) a healthy skepticism. If she really thinks that teachers will still want to have (nonsexual) "caring relationships" with students under the legal regime she advocates, then I'm afraid she is a bit out of touch -- no teacher in his or her right mind will mentor or otherwise show a personal interest in an exceptionally bright or troubled student's development if Shakeshaft's guilty-until-proven-innocent standard becomes the rule. Thank God the Supreme Court chose to put a limit to this police-state nonsense in the schools; would that they had done so in the workplace as well. -- Rock Wheeler Gaithersburg, Md. SALON | July 23, 1998

R E C E N T L Y+| BACK IS BEAUTIFUL BY ERIN J. AUBRY

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