_______________SALON'S COVERAGE OF THE CLINTON CRISIS
	Slate was reduced to irrelevance when it started charging for the privilege of reading its contents. Salon, however, risks irrelevance by turning itself into a hack publication in aligning itself with President Clinton -- having even been identified as "the online magazine sympathetic to the president." You've proved your point, so get over the contrarian thing. The rest of us got over Clinton a long time ago, and you should, too. Your credibility is at stake. I greatly enjoy Salon, and often disagree violently with its contributors, but I find Salon's never-ending ga-ga noises about Bill (and Hillary, for that matter) quite tiresome. Spinning is for press secretaries, not journalists. MOVE ON. -- Kent Bressie
_______________THE SALON REPORT ON KENNETH STARR BY DAVID TALBOT (09/10/98)
	While your article is penetrating and persuasive, I am still distressed that it is literally the only one of its kind that I've encountered since the beginning of this whole farcical endeavor. The fourth estate is still obsessively excoriating the president with a zeal that is just short of Pentecostal. Meanwhile there is a sphere of listless approval sheltering Starr's agenda that is so profound and illogical it borders on psychedelic. Someone once said that all emotions seek an object -- in light of recent scandals one could update that with: "All emotions seek a target," and it is all too obvious who the target is here. Bill Clinton is a repository for the right's interminable, sanctimonious campaign to overhaul the collective mechanisms of morality in this country -- a job they, historically speaking, have always appointed themselves the foremen of. -- Justin Nuttall New York Salon's non-stop apologizing for President Clinton and attacks on Ken Starr are as tedious as anything I've heard on television news. The latest article by David Talbot is a good example: Bill Clinton is featured as a victim, guilty only of getting caught pursuing his sexual fantasies, and Ken Starr is the out-of-control right-wing prudish prosecutor who can think only of toppling our "duly elected" president. Opinions are fine, but when they are based on half-truths and ignore the obvious they become fantasies. Salon should remind the columnists on the Clinton-Starr beat of these facts: 1. Bill Clinton is one of the very few Americans whose job description is in the U.S. Constitution. He voluntarily ran for our highest and most public office. He is paid by us to do a job, and trusted by us to do the best job he can. He is paid well and lives like a movie star on our tax money. You're damn right he should be held to a higher standard of behavior than the rest of us -- he gave up most of his private life when he decided to be a public servant. If the invasions of privacy, the predations of the press or the responsibilities of the office are too onerous, he can quit. 2. Ken Starr was appointed by Attorney General Janet Reno and a panel of federal judges. His powers are not limitless; they are described by a specific statute. And he answers to the attorney general, the panel of judges and ultimately the president. I expect Salon's writers to criticize Ken Starr, but when the president does it he is insulting a federal employee doing his job, and cynically manipulating public opinion by turning legal and political conflicts into personal ones. 3. Clinton lied (or "dissembled," as apologist Talbot would have it) -- after seven months he finally admitted what we all know. It's not Ken Starr's fault that Clinton had sex with an intern in the most public house in the country. It's not any right-wing conspiracy that made Clinton lie. It was Bill Clinton, not Ken Starr, who misled and humiliated his most ardent supporters, including his own wife. It was Bill Clinton who stood by silently while one after another of his friends and federal employees were dragged in front of a grand jury, at their own expense. I don't care about Clinton's sex life, but Bill Clinton is the one who took the risks and acted like a frat boy; he's the one who lied about it even after it was obvious that the truth would come out one way or another, and he's the one who is now trying to portray himself as a victim of "sexual addiction" and the target of a puritanical prosecutor. 4. The same Bill Clinton now mugging and sniffling for the cameras fought tooth and nail for seven months so he wouldn't have to tell the truth. He wasted who knows how much public time and money, taking his losing arguments to the Supreme Court more than once. Just like Clinton's mouthpieces in Washington, Salon is quick to point out how much Starr's investigation has cost and the extraordinary legal maneuverings involved, but I don't read much about Clinton's delaying tactics and smoke screens. And I don't see Salon reminding us that Bill Clinton is a lawyer, though we got a hint of how he really thinks when he tried to redefine what a sexual relationship is. 5. The Whitewater investigation has not been a total bust. Just because the Clintons weren't indicted doesn't mean they are innocent, and it certainly doesn't mean Whitewater was a dry hole -- Ken Starr has quite a few indictments and convictions to his credit. Maybe Salon doesn't care much about Whitewater, but I for one am glad that at least a few of the people who ripped off millions of dollars that all of us had to pay back got what was coming to them. I can see how some people can admire Web Hubbell and Susan McDougal for their unwavering loyalty to Bill Clinton, but surely Salon could dig up a little dirt on them and quit flogging the David Hale horse for a while. 6. Whether Clinton technically broke the law or not, he violated the spirit of the law, he cheapened his office, he embarrassed the country and he lied to every American. He should resign out of shame. Instead, he's going to try to tough this out, and we'll probably be subjected to many more months of legal wrangling that can't be blamed on Ken Starr. Will Salon add up how much public time and money Bill Clinton wastes trying to outwit the duly-elected but unfortunately Republican Congress? 7. No matter how this turns out, Monica Lewinsky will wear a scarlet letter for the rest of her life. Bill Clinton will do just fine. Where is the "fundamental fairness" Bill Clinton believes in? -- Greg Jorgensen Portland, Ore. Thank you for being a voice of reason amid the hysteria of the media's self-fulfilling feeding frenzy, the far right's coup d'état by ceaseless collateral legal proceedings and investigation and the president's own stupidity. David Talbot's article was particularly lucid. Will you be awarding the Supreme Court the "Nostradamus Award" for its decision to allow the Paula Jones civil matter to be litigated during the pendency of Clinton's term wherein it opined that the litigation would not distract him from his job as president? -- Mark Giunta
_______________MONICA'S BETRAYAL BY JENN SHREVE (09/09/98)
	I just read Jenn Shreve's piece, "Monica's betrayal." I guess I'm missing something. I guess I'm out of it. But I just don't get it. What is the rationale underlying President Clinton's large and loyal corps of apologists, rationalizers and defenders? Consider any other powerful, 40-something man. A CEO, a businessman, any other politician. Imagine YOUR boss, or even yourself. An older, married superior having sexual contact with a 21-year-old subordinate in the workplace. Nothing to do with your job? No one's business? Tell Clarence Thomas. Any other man would be ravaged by many of Clinton's current defenders. Miss Shreve's piece paints Monica as the evil and unethical betrayer for failing to uphold the "honor among thieves." That is a stupendous reach and convolution of both logic and ethics. Monica, be she calculating and clever, infatuated and immature or just plain dumb, was a 21-year-old intern surrounded by the most powerful institution in the world. She deserved better than to be exploited for her parochial origins. And compared to Washington we are all parochial. Don't bend your morals to fit your idols. Don't cloud your judgment with ideological purity. What President Clinton did was wrong. -- Rett Erickson
_______________TRUE ROMANCE BY JACK HITT (09/98/98)
	My theory is that Clinton has been obsessed with Monica, as has the media. There is something about her demeanor and her looks that have brought about more than passing interest, even from those who criticize her the most. Clinton (the Southern gentleman) has indeed acted like the smitten fool. It is unfortunate that his obsession became ours. -- Dorothy Reynolds
_______________"EVERYONE WILL BE PUNISHED" BY JONATHAN BRODER (09/10/98)
	Anybody who really cares about the whole country would not put us through the so-called scorched earth thing. If it is decided by both sides of the aisle that the president must go, he will go and instruct his followers to bow out with dignity. President Clinton knows we have gone through enough and to think he would try to sink the ship because he can't be captain is ludicrous. He may have made a lot of mistakes, but he will not try to completely take out everyone who has had a questionable past. His loyal people know that he has had his finger on the proverbial button for six years, and for the Clinton team to appear to be that vindictive would really hurt the Democratic Party's chances in the fall. Give these guys some credit; they're not stupid. -- Bob Campbell
_______________"KING LEOPOLD'S GHOST" REVIEWED BY ZACHARY KARABELL (09/09/98)
	I think your magazine is one of the best things in print, whether on paper or online (although I think you publish the knee-jerk barkings of Horowitz and Paglia just to provoke knee-jerk responses, like the call-and-response yapping of dogs in the neighborhood). What consistently disappoints is the brevity of your book reviews. Most of the time your critics barely get a chance to get a good analysis going. Today's review, for example: In Zachary Karabell's review of Adam Hochschild's "King Leopold's Ghost," he accuses Hochschild of trying "to shield himself and the reader from recognizing the full dimension of the horror." OK ... but why not give him the space to develop his point, rather than leave it as a simple assertion without any supporting material? Without it, Karabell's review lapses from an attempt at critical persuasion (read it or don't; here's why) to just one more unsupported online opinion. Your periodic features on books are usually excellent, e.g. Gary Kamiya's piece on Ron Rosenbaum's "Explaining Hitler." I am not asking for this kind of depth for every book you cover, of course, but please consider putting more meat on the bones of your regular reviews. -- Tim Merritt Atlanta SALON | Sept. 14, 1998

R E C E N T L Y+| SLAVES TO THE SYSTEM BY NINA SIEGAL

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