T A B L E_.T A L K Eating their analysis with a fork and a spoon. Dismantle the punditocracy in the Media area of Table Talk ___________________ Want the story behind the story? Check out barnesandnoble.com's selection of books about the media ___________________ R E C E N T L Y Magazine racks By James Poniewozik Esquire, Cosmo, Self and Men's Health show us their tits (01/19/99) Of Fallowships, Flynt, Republican phone sex and demon goddesses of love By Susan Lehman (01/14/99) The century of the trial By James Poniewozik Clinton's Senate trial is just the latest episode in the long-running series of American Solomania (01/12/99) "Firing Line" ceases fire By Susan Lehman Plus: U.S. News goes on a hiring spree and Brill bashing is on the rise (01/07/99) Let the culture war rage By Steve Erickson It's time for America to decide what its true values are (01/06/99) - - - - - - - - - - BROWSE THE UNSPUN ARCHIVE		______{ U N S P U N_.B Y_.S T E V E_.E R I C K S O N }   A battle for the soul of America It's time for the American people to realize that the Clinton trial isn't really about Clinton -- it's about democracy. In Steve Darnall and Alex Ross' new graphic novel "Uncle Sam" (Vertigo/DC), the title character wanders the country homeless and ragged, red-white-and-blue wardrobe in tatters, hat missing and white hair and beard caked in the drool and dirt of sleeping in the streets. His memory is a mass of whispers, from "Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" to "I have a dream" to "I'm not a crook" to "Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?" to "You can't say Dallas doesn't love you, Mr. President" to "I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country." From these whispers he's trying to piece together an identity, trying to figure which of his various incarnations is real, until of course he must accept that they're all real. Reading the novel last week, I fully expected Uncle Sam at some point to morph into Tom DeLay. But maybe that's the sequel: "Uncle Sam II: The Exterminator," to cite House Republican Whip DeLay's earlier line of work, or "Hammer Comix," to cite the endearment by which he's currently known in the halls of Congress. Or maybe when they were writing "Uncle Sam" it was beyond even Darnall and Ross' darkest imaginings that DeLay would someday be one of the two most powerful men in the United States government, assuming you still count President Clinton as the other. While it would be inaccurate to suggest that the media has altogether ignored this development, it's certainly been discreet about the implications, maybe because the implications are so unseemly, maybe because it's the media's congenital predisposition to tacitly lend even DeLay the imprimatur of respectability, maybe because DeLay himself has been shrewdly circumspect about how publicly he wields his power. But as stark exception to the dictum that if you're going to try to kill the king then you better kill the king, this is the man who not only survived his failed attempt to overthrow Newt Gingrich but whose power alone among that of the Republican congressional hierarchy remained unchallenged in the wake of November's election. He's the man who roughly pushed Bob Livingston out of his nascent speakership when Livingston's various infidelities were exposed by Citizen Flynt, and he's the man who then installed as speaker with dizzying dispatch a right-hand flunky you've never heard of and whose name you probably still can't pronounce correctly. In the twilight of the Terror, with the Robespierres and Dantons of the '94 Republican "revolution" lopping off each other's heads, DeLay's Madame Defarge has somehow managed to couch himself safely in the blade's shadow, knitting a new stitch for every cranial splat on the cobblestones. He's also the man who has, almost single-handedly, impeached the president of the United States. N E X T+P A G E | A healthy hatred of government has turned into a hatred of democracy