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R E C E N T L Y

Cool on global warming
By Susan Lehman
Is it a conflict of interest for a Newsweek editor to rally anti-environmentalists?
(12/17/98)

Mickey Mouse scandal grips nation
By Gary Krist
Darlene voted out of Mousketeers on straight party lines -- charged with doing really, really bad things
(12/16/98)

Brillian mistake
By James Poniewozik
Why Brill's Content is too good for this world
(12/15/98)

The strange liberation of Michael Huffington
By Susan Lehman
Us goes weekly, all the Remnick that's fit to print and other tales of media madness
(12/10/98)

Secret America
By Steve Erickson
When Thomas Jefferson declared we had the right to "life," he meant one immune from the prying eyes of the media and the state
(12/09/98)

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But the argument on the Monica story is wrong, and here's why: It was a tawdry tale about the president having an affair with a 22-year-old. God save our frigid, dead souls the day we fail to get a kick out of news like that. As much as the respectable media liked to tut-tut over the public discourse taking place in the late-night monologues, that was exactly where this story belonged. The legal-political story is the one that really wearied us, and it was, sadly, out of the scandalmongers' control.

That hasn't stopped the popular perception that it was scandalmongering that brought us to this pass, though. Sarah Kerr, in a Slate dialogue last week, implied that the media have pruriently stretched out the story: "Take the example of what's happening this week with the prez. In undeniable ways, the media seem more powerful than ever, more driven to dress up the news as entertainment no matter what the destructive cost. But the public annoyance with this circus shows that though we may not be able to control the entertainment, we're getting better at tuning it out."

This "destructive ... circus" charge is the standard line by now: the press as troupe of evil clowns, spritzing the foul seltzer of scandal at its helpless audience over and over again. By slavering over scandal, it kept the story alive and buried the president. What this argument misses -- and we saw this in the pointless speculations this year on whether public opinion would affect Ken Starr -- is that the law doesn't give a crap whether you pay attention to it or not. In fact, to the extent that it did go crazy over the sex aspects of the story, the press perversely became Clinton's best friend, unintentionally putting it in a ludicrous perspective that served him best. It flatters journalists to believe that the public hates only those bad apples peddling sensation, that it would approve of us if only we would take our jobs seriously, but really -- as Michael Wolff's "Impeach the Media" poll analysis in New York magazine last month showed -- the more we took the story gravely, hand-wringingly seriously, the more the public sickened of it, and us.

We had it all figured out after 1997, didn't we? After Diana and the paparazzi, we decided the greatest problem in the media was the sleaze-hungry tabloid press. Then 1998 came along and showed us that the tabloid press may be the most responsible institution the country has. At least, in its single-minded attention to novelty and shock, it shows a simple wisdom lacking in our more responsible institutions this year: You gorge on a juicy story until you vomit, then you move on. Remember how the first few weeks of the Lewinsky story -- the period truly driven by salacious excitement -- was decried as a low point in the tabloidization of the media? Today it looks like a Periclean golden age compared with the sclerotic "It's just about sex/No it's not" dialogue that followed: If it started as a feeding frenzy, it lived on as a grim prison cafeteria line. If only the Lewinsky story were cynically driven by entertainment values -- it would have died by April.

It is only appropriate, then, that the only genuine, unscripted moments in the news this past week were prompted by Larry Flynt, whose Hustler magazine launched the congressional-sex investigation that prompted Bob Livingston's resignation as speaker-designate. Likewise, toe-sucker Dick Morris is probably the most egregious wise-man apotheosis on talk TV, but amid last week's "Wag the Dog" flurry he was a comparative voice of reason, appearing on Fox and nailing the hypocrisy, given their Gulf War track records, of both the Republicans' loose-cannon attacks and the Democrats' shut-up-and-support-the-troops rhetoric. Morris may be an unprincipled sleaze, but the great thing about sleaze at a time of dazzling, universal hypocrisy is that it's nonpartisan: The only thing it's against is cheap sanctimony. Indeed, when -- if -- this story ends, the most lasting changes in our politics may have been wrought by the tabloid sex wallowers, who, by performing a sort of aversion therapy on the public, have done more than the intelligentsia to ensure that adulterers can now proudly run for office.

The responsible media, on the other hand, managed to take what should have been a perfectly thrilling wallow in bodily fluids and turn it into a joyless, vengeful, yearlong kick in the ass. As 1998 commenced we resolved to reap the lessons of 1997, and we reaped them good and hard. We grew up and got serious; we started the year unzipped, we ended it unspun. As we finish up the holiday season and get ready to party like it's 1868, does anyone out there feel better off for it?
SALON | Dec. 22, 1998