_______________SALON'S COVERAGE OF THE CLINTON CRISIS (01/21/98- 08/26/98)
	The pious panty-sniffer Starr has his head so far up Monica Lewinsky's dress he hasn't a clue to the damage his obsession has done the country and his party. Bill Clinton never promised me he wouldn't sleep with anyone but his wife; he promised her, and now he's been as thoroughly disgraced as a man can be for his indiscretion -- the public laundering of the most licentious details of his dalliance, the sincere dismay of loyal supporters and the gnawing realization that if he'd just kept it in his pants for a couple of years, the massive, publicly and privately financed get-Clinton industry would have had to be content with innuendo and smear in the burned-out investigations of Whitewater and all the other let's-get-him-gates. He should not resign. If he had tried to subvert the national electoral process, or colluded with gun-running thugs to further his foreign policy, or committed any other similar and arrogant abuses of power, I could support his removal from office immediately. But this last-ditch "gotcha" from the fourth branch of government we call the OIC has been pursued so relentlessly that the sanctimony of the accusers disguises one important fact that ought to go unchanged in any society committed to the reasoned governing of free men -- his sins were against his wife and his God, and none of our damned business. -- Bob Wands
_______________AGING HORMONES BY MOLLIE DICKENSON (08/25/98)
	Thank you for noticing the same thing I did. It seemed to me that male columnists and talking heads were irate with Clinton's speech all out of proportion to what he said and/or didn't say. Spittle was flying all over the country. I'm reminded of Bette Midler's famous line: "Mud will be slung tonight!" Nearly two-thirds of the public, if you believe the polls, said, "OK, fine, he testified, he confessed, now can we please move on?" And the experts and the professional talkers and the editorial writers said, "No, we can't, because WE don't think he groveled enough, and we are the professionals and WE know how much he should have groveled." And, as another Irish-Catholic, I thought the whole purpose of Christianity was forgiveness. Isn't that why Jesus lived in the first place? -- -- Kathleen Schultz Portland, Ore. The sex is plainly the easy focal point of the punditry's attacks, but I can't swallow the notion that anyone in D.C. is really envious -- how could you be? Monica Lewinsky does not for a second inspire that one-seventh of the Deadly Sins, and it's not as if Clinton is Hugh Hefner-ing his way around the White House with bikini-clad babes, laughing heartily while Michael Kelly and the editorial staff of the Washington Post finger their rosary beads. It's the lying, stupid, that makes the insiders so mad. It's Clinton's willingness to put on the public persona of a married relationship while sneaking "beaners" in the Oval Office, and then acting with his own moral fervor when called on it. Should Americans simply accept, as Dickenson implies, that politicians are inherently "different" from us -- more sex-starved, greedier, more egotistical -- and shrug it off? The politicos and commentators seem to have concluded no, and for other reasons than because Clinton (as Camille Paglia has aptly noted) likes women with a certain shape of mouth. -- Brian H. Corcoran Washington I couldn't agree more that sexual jealousy is at the root of the incredibly hostile climate governing the trappings of Clinton vs. Starr. He is the only sexually attractive president I've ever seen, having grown up with only a glimmer of Jack Kennedy. I, for one, appreciate and actually like the thought of a rather randy president leading us. We're all so boring and terribly "Amurican" these days. What's wrong with a leader who's still got a testosterone drip going? Underneath it all, we are such Puritans. Bill Clinton, I applaud you. Your Achilles heel is nothing that the most powerful of the world's history hasn't experienced before you. Using sex as a release in the Oval Office is far preferable to alcohol or drugs. Am I wrong? -- Barbara Moss Molly Dickenson's piece on Washington's adversity to a sexually active president is especially gratifying in that it was written by a women. I can't express the level of satisfaction I indulge in while watching the frustration of this geriatric neopuritanic culture as they writhe in disbelief at the fact that Americans, especially women, are not going to turn on this president because he can still get it up. Ms. Dickenson's illustrations of the bias and denial of the D.C. elite should serve as a social primer for our contemporary "effete snobs." -- Ron Thalman Mollie Dickenson could not have served up a bigger load of horsepucky on a lost bet. It's not that Clinton's critics pine for leaders with no "personal contradictions" (St. Augustine, for example, was famously promiscuous before seeing the error of his ways), it's that we rightly expect the so-called leader of the free world to have more integrity than your average weasel. Bill Clinton flunked the integrity test years before Monica Lewinsky ever sashayed down a White House hallway. As for the idea that our president's juvenile sexual athleticism is something to be envied -- give me a break! Dickenson's mindless regurgitation of anti-Catholic hand-wringing wins her no points, either. Catholics, like all Christians, strive daily to live by a moral code whose strictures seem judgmental because they are. Forgiveness follows repentance, bub. Anyone who thinks Clinton deserves a "get out of jail free" card is looking for shortcuts to grace, and there are none. That doesn't mean Catholic critics are waging a holy war, or that Catholics are any more self-righteous than those who profess other creeds (including, by the way, nonjudgmentalism). To imply otherwise is deceitful and stupid. -- Patrick O'Hannigan I have said all along that Clinton was being targeted by these old fossils who are jealous of a younger virile man in the White House. One of the things that I trust most about Clinton is his sex drive. It's my theory that a president like Clinton is more reluctant to send young people into war than older men who have forgotten what life is about. -- Paul W. Drehmann Dickenson is right on target about the appeal of the Clinton scandal to Irish Catholics. I have been telling friends for weeks that this is just what Irish Catholics are trained for. The spectacle of sexually repressed men forcing others to confess the private details of their sexual lives is the Irish Catholic experience. Father Kenneth Starr can do no wrong in their eyes. It is those two sinners, Bill and Monica, who must be punished. I am just surprised that so much of the "normal" world has bought into this revolting display of Catholic Inquisition. Takes all kinds, I guess. -- John Dougherty Bensalem, Pa.
_______________BLACK LIKE (WHITE) ME BY JANET McDONALD (08/24/98)
	This Janet McDonald claims that the 1960s book "Black Like Me" was embarrassing. That book is something that I invite all of my friends of other nationalities to read. For this 20-something black female, that book told about the daily things that I still endure like nothing I have ever read. I would love to know why the author thought that the book was embarrassing. -- Viki Pierson
_______________JUNGLE LOVE BY LAURA MILLER (08/21/98)
	In Laura Miller's review of "Our Friends and Neighbors," I came upon this little gem: "LaBute doesn't create bad guys, he creates fiends, which may be the most detectable sign of the director's Mormonism. It was Hannah Arendt, after all -- a Jew like Woody Allen -- who came up with the idea of the banality of evil." Say what? I didn't know that I was supposed to be looking for "detectable signs" of a director's religion when watching a film. If Miller is so interested in the way an artist's religion affects his/her work, then she should do more than toss out a throwaway comment like the one I quote above. As it stands, her assertion about Mormons and Jews comes across as glibly reductive and more than a bit patronizing. --Sean O'Malley
_______________A BUG TOO FAR BY JANELLE BROWN (08/19/98)
	I have been playing PC games of all sorts for years and am not without knowledge of hardware and software design. I have also been playing Ultima Online since its public release last September. Author Janelle Brown shows a complete lack of knowledge of the actual circumstances regarding the game and the lawsuit. If the author had done any research, she would have found that although the lawsuit is correct in some of its claims, it is clearly factually incorrect in most points. Also, a majority of the players that have voiced an opinion regarding the lawsuit express great disgust, anger and even hatred that the lawsuit was filed at all. As for the game itself: It still has many problems, but very few if any of the problems it started with. Simply, there are issues bigger than UO bugs here. Software in general is published less than perfect. Considering the cost of thorough testing on a large user base, it may be unavoidable. With UO, at least the design staff is trying to fix it. Since when does every company do that? --B. Harris SALON | Aug. 28, 1998

R E C E N T L Y+| SALON'S COVERAGE OF THE CLINTON CRISIS

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