So Much For the Sweet Mysteries of Life By Richard Craig November 21, 1998

We actually got to hear both Monica Lewinsky and Ken Starr talk. At length. About the gory details. Garbo and her kindly uncle tell all.

This is as close to an epiphany as this scandal gets. My God, the actual voices of honest-to-goodness scandal participants! No more anchors, no more reporters, no more pundits. It was about damn time.

So what does America have to say after catching its collective breath?

"Big deal."

Like so many other widely-anticipated events, the Ken and Monica Talk Show was more than a slight letdown. The word "stupefying" seemed appropriate amid the hours and hours of testimony and tapes. Past the first minute of "So that's what he/she sounds like," and the next five minutes of "Wonder if they'll say anything juicy?", most of the content of the great gabfest was pretty mundane.

Last year at this time, the Linda Tripp tapes would have dominated every media outlet known to man for weeks on end. Hearing the details of a presidential love affair straight from the intern's mouth would have been the very definition of shocking. But time changes everything. From sheer repetition, as a nation we've remained largely unfazed by virtually every new development in this story, regardless of how sensational it might otherwise be.

Of course, many of the details that came out of their mouths this week were actually old news. Transcripts of the Tripp tapes have been readily available for months, and the Starr Report itself was basically a super-encyclopedia-sized transcript of Starr's testmony in the House impeachment hearings. After all the revelations of the past year, there's precious little left to shock us. In this oversaturated news climate, nobody's going to get too excited over anything that fails to make the sky burn.

The people in the news media recognize this, but they also know that the potential exists for these events to be huge. If anything major has been overlooked and comes out now, it could swing public opinion toward impeachment or end the process entirely. This means they must commit resources to them in case anything actually happens. But with little new to report, news organizations must go with the scraps they have left to them. This is why a couple of days ago we were all treated to repeated airings of Starr saying "The president chose deception." This is hardly an earth-shaking rallying cry, but it was the best thing they had to go with.

The Tripp tapes would seem like the ultimate forum for either the high-minded approach (The Truth Behind the Lie) or the lowbrow (the latest cool dishy gossip about the Prexy). Yet they also failed to deliver on the potential for revelations or entertainment. They generally sounded an awful lot like two young women grousing about men, and even when one of the men is the president, it gets awfully familiar awfully quickly.

Perhaps the familiarity is why two of the biggest stories to emerge this week had nothing at all to do with the content of the tapes or testimony. The Tripp tapes were so boring that the media latched on to the fact that Fox sportscasters Joe Buck and Tim McCarver could be heard calling a baseball game in the background of one tape. Not that there was anything inherently newsworthy about this, but it gave the media a fresh angle, or at least what passes for one these days. The announcers dutifully answered silly questions about becoming part of the scandal, and reporters staved off writer's block for one more day.

More serious was the announcement today that Sam Dash has resigned as Starr's ethics adviser in protest over Starr's decision to testify. In addition to being an esteemed legal figure and longtime law professor at Georgetown, Dash provided Starr's with a link to Watergate. Dash served as chief counsel to the Senate Watergate Committee 24 years ago and was lauded for his fair-mindedness throughout. Without Dash on board, Starr has lost what some experts believe was his greatest claim to credibility. Indeed, Starr's star has fallen so far that he may have doomed the entire existence of the Independent Counsel. The act that provides for the office will come up for Congressional renewal in the middle of next year, and its continued survival no longer looks promising.

For now, House Republicans can continue to rattle their sabers all they want, but it's become plain that America just doesn't care anymore. Even this week's events haven't made a dent in Clinton's approval ratings -- a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll this week shows Clinton's ratings holding steady at 62 percent. Clinton may sit down on Thursday and give thanks to the American people for their support in spite of everything. But many Americans won't be truly thankful until this whole mess is over.

©1998 Richard Craig. All rights reserved.

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