T A B L E_.T A L K

Are all women's mags agents of Satan? Discuss your love/hatred of stories about orgasms and weight loss in the Media area of Table Talk

R E C E N T L Y

A clean Slate at the Microsoft trial
By Susan Lehman
Octogenarian dismal-science practitioner Herb Stein replaces rapier wit Michael Lewis -- hard seats blamed
(11/12/98)

The amazing disappearing Newt
By Steve Erickson
After the Republicans have picked over the carnage of the former speaker's career, Newt will vanish into historical thin air
(11/11/98)

Weep and read it
By James Poniewozik
Books are alive, well and as sentimentalized as ever
(11/10/98)

I wrote about Michiko Kakutani and lived to tell the tale
By Susan Lehman
(11/05/98)

Freshen up your election, hon?
By James Poniewozik
Politicians and pollsters, run! It's the attack of -- 60-foot Waitress Mom!
(11/03/98)

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_P U N D I T S   T O   S A D D A M :
________Your evil derrière is ours!

When Saddam Hussein canceled our regularly scheduled war, Sam "Strangelove" Donaldson and his hotblooded colleagues practically climbed into the F-16s themselves to finish the job.

BY JAMES PONIEWOZIK
I once heard somebody explain why Persian Gulf War videotapes appealed to military buffs, even though, as a piece of martial theater, the turkey shoot itself was a relative snooze: It offered a safe dry run (dry, that is, on our end) of World War III, putting billions of dollars of Cold War hardware to good use without any of the unpleasant aftereffects of having to roast two-headed rats in a post-nuclear moonscape. Waste not, want not.

In much the same way, since the Gulf War three national cable news networks had amassed a vast, high-tech strike force: Greener night-scope vision! Enough punditry firepower to cover major sex scandals on two continents simultaneously! Theme music a hundred times more powerful than the Hiroshima and Nagasaki explosions combined!

And yet this force had never properly been blooded. So the deployment of the American news machine on the Iraq crisis began by midweek to resemble a WWII ensemble picture: hard-bitten veterans like CNN's Christiane Amanpour mustering alongside eager greenhorns like MSNBC's "Morning Blend" host Soledad O'Brien (with George Will reprising his role as the prim chaplain). After 10 months on maneuvers at Fort Monica, it was time to head into the field and see what kind of damage this baby could do.

As in 1991, "Operation Desert Thunder" (defense cutbacks have gutted the Pentagon's creative nomenclature department) began with an air war that softened up the territory for an ensuing strike. But this time the advance sorties were carried out by the proud dirigibles of the American commentary caste. William Safire and various cable-news speculators, for instance, were volunteering by midweek the notion that during an air strike Saddam Hussein might blow up Iraqi citizens himself, meaning, essentially -- considering the slim chance of any independent verification afterward -- that any butterfingers on the behalf of the attacking forces would be kinda-sorta exculpated in advance.

But most important, the campaign was carried out in the supertitles and the screen graphics, where the first draft of history is now written. CNN and MSNBC staked out their positions in the tag lines for their coverage that rolled out Thursday: CNN called it "Showdown with Iraq," whereas MSNBC opted for "Showdown with Saddam," a turn of phrase that comfortingly implied we would shortly be launching missiles not against a crippled third-world people but rather straight between that sumbitch's eyes. One could argue that MSNBC's is in fact the more peaceful phrasing -- emphasizing that "our quarrel is not with the people of Iraq" -- but considering that history indicates "the people of Iraq" would end up better positioned to take a Tomahawk in the ass than their bunker-encased leader, it's a rather dicey distinction to make.

MSNBC certainly appeared to have invested the most in the pending war, including a frosted-glass-looking backdrop map of the Persian Gulf that would have made a lovely crudité plate. By Thursday, the network had developed 10-second agitprop promos worthy of Paul Verhoeven: As a close-up of a glowering Saddam was superimposed on the cross hairs of a radar scope, a voice-over intoned, "Is there only one way to deal with this man? The time for decision is near!" ("The only good bug is a dead bug! For its part, Fox News curiously decided against 24-7 Iraq coverage, offering heavy doses of impeachment news through the weekend; at one point on Saturday morning the network -- which seems hell-bent on being the definitive news channel for information on your pet's health -- stuck with a segment on spaying and neutering as the other nets went live with coverage of Iraq's reported acquiescence to sanctions.

By Friday night, the accepted wisdom on the networks was: War is inevitable. So the disbelief and outrage were all the greater Saturday morning when the dread dove of peace spread its malignant wings and shat the foul droppings of conciliation all over those fine graphics. "Has diplomacy defused an attack on Iraq?" a CNN anchor intoned gloomily. "It may have." (Meanwhile, back on "Morning Blend," O'Brien had reached the firm grammatical decision that the term "hands" is singular. "Isn't the president's hands tied?" she asked White House reporter John Palmer. "The government's hands is now tied.")

N E X T_ P A G E | We must kill Saddam immediately! From the White House, I'm Dr. Strangelove