97 articles
I confess that I'd heard the rumors about Iceland -- a whispered account from a friend who once had a layover in Keflavik; a hushed conversation with a stranger in a smoky, dimly lit bar who had met Icelanders while traveling in Europe: The women of Iceland are the most preposterously beautiful…
On Friday, March 13, Paula Jones's attorneys filed several hundred pages of sworn testimony and corroborating evidence with Judge Susan Webber Wright's U. S. District Court in Arkansas. There's a lot to be learned from these documents. First of all, there's the fact of Bill Clinton's animal grip on…
Let's stipulate that every public figure who has been in Washington for the last decade has by now voiced at least five contradictory opinions on the subject of sexual harassment. And sure, picking out those contradictions in the age of Nexis is, in the idiot folk-saying of THE SCRAPBOOK's…
Last week, the New Yorker informed its readers of least two previously undisclosed facts about Linda Tripp. First, in the spring of 1969, Tripp, then 19, was arrested in the town of Greenwood Lake, New York, on charges of grand larceny. Second, in 1987, on a federal security-clearance form she…
"THIS WHOLE THING IS POLL DRIVEN," declares a leading defender of President Clinton. Indeed, following Kathleen Willey's gripping TV appearance on March 15, the mere possibility of a dip in the president's poll ratings gave Clinton and his advisers a bad case of the jitters. "There was…
The vice president carved time out of his busy schedule last week to call up the Washington Post and lodge what can only be described as a pre- Copernican complaint.
Paul Campos
From its first moment, Primary Colors lets you know that it considers itself a Very Important Film. There are no credits, just a gigantic American flag and a close-up of John Travolta's hand as it grasps another in portentous slow motion. This is almost exactly how the novel by "Anonymous" (okay,…
There is a clinical condition known as being "in denial." The term is often used loosely. Occasionally, though, the condition manifests itself in pure form. Witness the lead editorial from last Tuesday's New York Times on " presidential character":
NOT FOR THE FIRST TIME, the Boy Scouts of America are under siege. In Orange County, California -- bastion of robust conservatism -- the local Scout council is dealing with the case of the Randall twins. Their father, a lawyer, has reared them atheist, which traditionally is a problem in scouting.…
Linda Simon
IT HAPPENED TO WOODROW WILSON IN 1918, to FDR in 1936, to Harry Truman in 1950, to Dwight Eisenhower in 1958, to Lyndon Johnson in 1966, to Nixon-Ford in 1974, and to Ronald Reagan in 1986. It will surely happen to Bill Clinton in 1998: the sixth-year rejection of the party that controls the White…
NEWS ITEM: A Hispanic civil rights group wants Taco Bell to quit running commercials that feature a pointy-eared, pint-sized, Spanish-speaking Chihuahua named Dinky. The fast-food chain uses the dog to hype its products with the signature phrase "Yo quiero Taco Bell," which means "I want Taco…
All those incumbent congressmen must be pretty smug this year. What with the economy humming along, and voters so docile that even the rake in the White House gets high approval ratings, what could possibly go wrong between now and November?
WEEK AFTER SCANDALOUS WEEK, feminists remained conspicuously silent about the allegations of sexual misconduct facing President Clinton. Then, on March 15, National Organization for Women president Patricia Ireland spoke -- in a peep masquerading as a roar. On CNN's Late Edition, Ireland said of…
Sensitive to the needs of readers without access to the Internet, where this image has been widely disseminated of late, THE SCRAPBOOK here reproduces a frame of video shot by ABC News in November 1992. It doesn't mean anything -- truly it doesn't. It's just a nice, touching picture. It shows…
March 21, 1997
Since the Baghdad deal between Saddam Hussein and U.N. secretary general Kofi Annan on February 23, analysts have waited to see how Iraq would treat U. N. weapons-inspection teams. The early results are in, and, unsurprisingly, the Iraqis have posed no major obstacles to inspectors. At least until…
In America, there is Ally McBeal, the surprise TV hit about a young, quirky, unmarried woman at an elite Boston law firm. In England, there is Bridget Jones's Diary, the bestselling comic tale of a year in the life of an unmarried working woman in her thirties. And between the two of them, they may…
To appreciate just how much dirt is being flung at independent counsel Kenneth Starr by the White House and its spin-agents, you must first learn a few things about cars and trucks.
Just nine months ago, David Brock was promoting an article he had written for Esquire, in which he ostentatiously renounced his status as "Right- Wing Hit Man." Brock was the star investigative reporter for the American Spectator. He had written the huge 1993 article on "Troopergate" -- 17,000…
It is a federal crime to eavesdrop on, tape record, or disclose the contents of other people's cellular telephone conversations. The same law that makes these activities illegal also allows the victim of such eavesdropping to sue the snoop and his confederates for punitive damages.
"Only on Yom Kippur does a shul get this crowded," someone murmured to me as the sanctuary at the Park Avenue Synagogue began to fill on Monday, March 9. It was a lousy, stormy morning; my childhood fantasy that raindrops were God's tears again seemed literally true.
Last week, I experienced my lowest moment since puberty: I found myself being lectured about truth, honor, and ethics by the gossip columnist for the National Enquirer. Actually, not lectured, but screamed at before a daytime TV audience. "You," the columnist shrieked, his portly body rising…
"HELL'S A BURNING'." These were the last words Jim McDougal left on my answering machine on the morning of January 22, 1998. America was about to wake up to the Monica Lewinsky story, but somehow Jim McDougal knew about it first and wanted to spin. Or just wanted to talk. Even from a jail cell,…
Howard Kurtz
Something the press calls a "war" is going on in Kosovo, a southern province of Serbia. Between late February and March 9, the conflict took at least 50 lives and perhaps as many as 80, with dozens missing. Most of the dead were ethnic Albanians, as are 90 percent of the province's people. The…
MONICA LEWINSKY'S THERAPIST is on the phone from Los Angeles explaining how her patient wound up having an affair with Bill Clinton. Starting work as an intern at the White House, says Irene Kassorla, a Hollywood psychologist who has counseled Lewinsky, is "like your first day of kindergarten. Can…
Daniel Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw
When the U.S. national soccer team met Mexico at the Los Angeles Coliseum last month, the crowd was largely proMexican. This wasn't surprising, given L. A.'s immigrant population and the popularity of soccer among Mexicans. What was surprising was the behavior of the crowd. They whistled, booed,…
The last time we caught up with GOP senator Rod Grams, he was helping Dianne Feinstein block a Senate resolution on human rights in China. And not even a very tough resolution. It merely urged the Clinton administration to urge the U.N. to criticize China for human-rights violations. Despite the…
Sidney Blumenthal didn't wait until he got to the White House to serve as an operative for President Clinton. And no, THE SCRAPBOOK isn't talking about those puff pieces Sid wrote about Clinton (and about Hillary, too) in the New Yorker. Those were just Sid's public work on the Clintons' behalf.…
For months now, the skies over Jakarta have been thick -- not just with smoke from raging forest fires but also with the planes of Clinton administration and IMF officials. Deputy treasury secretary Lawrence Summers visited, then defense secretary William Cohen, followed by International Monetary…
Republicans on Capitol Hill are pinching themselves with delight over the high poll numbers they have achieved simply by doing nothing. Their strategy has two parts. First: Don't schedule votes on anything serious. And, second: If you have to vote on something serious, vote against it -- even if…
Jacob Sullum
Angela Davis -- the Communist who is never called a Communist, despite running several times for vice president on the Communist party ticket has published a book on the blues and "black feminism." The lead blurbist is Toni Morrison, winner of the Nobel prize, who says the book is "a serious re-…
The symbolism couldn't have been worse: At a March 3 press conference devoted to a House bill on Puerto Rico's future, a reporter asked whether the congressmen could give some of their answers in Spanish, for the benefit of the Spanish-language media. Rep. Jose Serrano, a Puerto Rican-born Democrat…
SUNDAY, MARCH 1. Everybody always talks about how brilliant the Wait Disney Company is at marketing, how it can take a movie like Beauty and the Beast and turn it into a wildly successful stage show in New York -- complete with a pushcart out in front of the Palace Theater selling Disney…
BILL AND HILLARY CLINTON have found themselves an awfully sympathetic minister -- the Rev. J. Philip Wogaman, who presides at a Methodist church a few blocks from the White House. Wogaman has recently sounded less like a clergyman than a purveyor of the Clinton line. Shortly after the Monica…
Trent Lott, Jesse Helms, and Chuck Hagel sent a pointed letter to President Clinton on March 3 asking him to personally reassure them that they hadn't been misled by undersecretary of state Stuart Eizenstat. Eizenstat, they wrote, had testified before the Foreign Relations Committee in February…
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan let loose a jaw-dropper in a Q&A with Newsweek, defending his diplomacy with Saddam Hussein: "In some cases we have to deal with people we may even consider evil to save lives. One dealt with Eichmann to save lives, to make sure that people would get away from the…
Brian Mitchell
There are two good reasons why you haven't seen Linda Tripp mentioned much recently. First, Tripp is lying low, understandably. Second, and more significant, the Clinton muckraking machine has dug and dug and dug for dirt on Tripp and come up empty. Count on it: If there were sleaze in Tripp's…
Mancur Olson died last month, but I confess there was a time when I thought he'd been dead for centuries. I was taking a freshman course at the University of Chicago. Our reading list winter quarter included Aristotle's Politics, Hobbes's Leviathan, Locke's Treatises, Burke's Reflections -- and a…
The Senate will likely vote in the next couple of weeks on the enlargement of NATO to include Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic. The votes are there, and NATO expansion will almost certainly be approved. But a few senators are trying to postpone the vote for several months on the grounds that…
IF PRESIDENTIAL PRESS SECRETARY Mike McCurry seems calm these days, it may be because he has seen it all before. Seventeen years ago this month, McCurry's first boss, Sen. Harrison "Pete" Williams, a four-term Democrat from New Jersey, went on trial for his role in the Abscam scandal. Months…
As Carl Cannon reported in these pages last month, White House staffers have taken to calling Clinton aide Sidney Blumenthal "G. K." -- short for " grassy knoll" -- in honor of Blumenthal's predilection for conspiracy theories. But even the most diligent Blumenthal fans may not know how deep-…
PRESIDENT CLINTON AND HIS BACKERS aren't shy about trumpeting their version of what independent counsel Kenneth Starr is up to: He's a partisan prosecutor who's out of control, poking into what should be private matters, leaking, and violating constitutional rights, all to bring down the president…
The merger of the nation's two giant teacher unions is very likely to be approved at their national conventions in New Orleans this July. The combined entity, as yet unnamed, will be the largest union in the AFL-CIO and a powerful political player.
Rick Moody and Darcey Steinke, eds.
"When a rock hits a glass, it is bad for the glass." So advises an ancient folk saying. "When a big car hits a small car, it's bad for the small car." So advises the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The ancients knew intuitively that it is better to be a rock than a glass when an…
One of the few pure pleasures of the Monica Lewinsky spectacle has been to watch her good, self-promoting attorney, William Ginsburg, slowly disintegrate under the intense heat of his own celebrity. Two weeks ago, you may recall, he bragged to Time magazine about his personal closeness to his…
Paul Johnson
The other morning, I climbed a volcano. Just a little one, that rejoices in the comic-opera name of Rangitoto and sits on an island of its own near New Zealand's Auckland harbor. As America's Cup aficionados know, Auckland is a mariner's dream of bays and sheltering peninsulas, littered with…
IS IT WORSE TO MUG AN OLD LADY TO raise money for a criminal gang than it is to mug an old lady because you want to buy a case of Dr. Pepper and a box of Moon Pies? If you say yes, you might want to update that resume. There's a job waiting for you in the Clinton communications office.
DICK MORRIS CAME TO LUNCH the other day. In the course of explaining why the president's Monica Lewinsky caper is merely a sideshow, he ventured that a "silent plurality" of Americans objects more to having the story forced on its attention than it does to the underlying behavior. But don't a lot…
The Nykesha Sales controversy took an ugly turn at the end of last week when one of the participants dared -- ye gods! -- to say something true. As most sports fans and even many non-sports fans now know, Nykesha was the star scorer on the University of Connecticut's women's basketball team. An…
UNLESS HE WANTS TO BE REMEMBERED as the Herbert Hoover of Japan, Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto needs to act to rescue his country's economy -- and fast.
THE SCRAPBOOK is pleased to dust off the Dianne Feinstein Moral-Equivalence Award, named for the California senator who last year compared China's Tiananmen Square massacre to the 1970 Kent State tragedy. The first winners of 1998: DiFi herself (again) along with Minnesota Republican senator Rod…
Fouad Ajami
Shortly after the Monica Lewinsky story first broke, Hillary Clinton asked her old friend Harry Thomason to come to Washington. Thomason, who was in the middle of producing both a sitcom pilot and a feature film, dropped everything and bought a plane ticket. Within days, the Hollywood producer had…
Judith Tick
THE REASON U.N. SECRETARY GENERAL KOFI Annan went to Baghdad is not hard to understand: He believed his job required him to make every effort to avoid the use of force against Iraq. Whether one agrees with his view or not, there is no doubt that Annan reflects the ethos in what many U.N. employees…
The Feb. 23 Le Figaro, summarizing a survey of French opinion on Iraq, perfectly crystallized a century of Gallic strategic thinking: "Oui a une intervention militaire, mais sans la France." Or, as it would appear in the subtitles: "Yes to military intervention, but without French participation."…
David Lowenthal
If -- or perhaps when -- Mike Tranghese begins looking for a new job, he might move to England and try the BBC, where sensitivity has been taken to lengths that even women's basketball hasn't yet considered. Earlier this month, a young man called Damon Rose was awarded a prized position with BBC-…
Ppage 36 of the February 23 issue of U.S. News and World Report contains what must be the most vicious paragraph to appear in a news magazine this year. In 1957, U.S. News reports, Lucianne Goldberg, otherwise known as Linda Tripp's literary agent, became pregnant out of wedlock. "According to…
WHILE THE TROUBLES may not be hurting the Clinton poll numbers a lick, respectable opinion has it that the scandal definitely isn't doing The Children any good at all. As a result, parents are said to be struggling on two fronts: one, to shield their kids from the fouler aspects of the allegations,…
By last week, my friend Sandy Hume had become, at age 28, the hottest new reporter in Washington. He had single-handedly turned the Hill newspaper into must reading. Sandy broke the major congressional story of 1997 -- that of the House Republicans' botched coup against Newt Gingrich. This was only…
WHEN REP. BILL PAXON announced last week that he was quitting Congress, it looked like good news for majority leader Dick Armey. Paxon was about to challenge Armey for the number-two job in the House. And whoever won would be in line to be the next speaker of the House -- perhaps as soon as next…
Bill Clinton was taken to the cleaners by Saddam Hussein last week -- to the surprise of' practically no one. But there were surprising reactions to the Clinton administration's failure to use military force against Saddam, and its decision to reward him for agreeing to inspections he was already…
THE PRESIDENT HAS PROPOSED to shrink class sizes in the early grades by hiring 100,000 more teachers at federal expense. This is quintessential Clintonism -- a warm Labrador puppy of a policy notion, petted by teachers and parents alike, but destined to bite when it grows up.
THERE'S GROWING IMPATIENCE among Republican partisans and conservative activists with the seeming timidity of their congressmen in going after President Clinton. But GOP leaders are far closer to moving forcefully against the president than is widely realized. Indeed, planning is underway to…
An independent prosecutor had been appointed to investigate a scandal engulfing the White House. But instead of doing that, this prosecutor was " deliberately going into extraneous issues," the president complained in a private memo to his chief of staff. "He cannot be allowed to get away with…
"THERE WAS A PERFERVID SENSE of intellectualism," muses the sociologist Daniel Bell in the recent documentary Arguing the World. He was recalling his contentious student days at City College of New York. The film lovingly profiles not only Bell (CCNY, 1938) but his fellow classmates and…
Harvey Klehr, John Earl Haynes, and Kiril M. Anderson
WHEN A WHITE HOUSE STEWARD WAS reported to have told a grand jury that he had seen Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky together in a compromising position, the Clinton administration's vaunted rapid-response team kicked into action. Only this time, it had a new member: Joseph Small, the steward's…
Here's the one moment from last week's ludicrous CNN "town meeting" that is worth preserving for posterity. A veteran named Mike Mac Call addressed a serious question to the Clinton administration's national-security vaudevillians, Madeleine, Bill, and Sandy:
Philip Heymann, veteran of the first-term Clinton Justice department, last week contributed an op-ed to the New York Times that displayed the sort of too-clever-by-half legal reasoning increasingly prized in the Clinton era. Interior secretary Bruce Babbitt, Heymann argued, should be investigated…
For days after the nation made her acquaintance, it looked as if something terrible had happened to Monica Lewinsky, something even worse than serving as the amatory equivalent of a spittoon and then getting the "Never heard of her" treatment. Networks kept showing a black-and-white picture of…
George Steiner
Of all the skirmishes that refuse to be settled by consensus or judicial fiat, religious expression in the public square remains one of the most stubbornly unresolved. Be it school prayer or firehouse nativity scenes or religious exercises in public buildings, court dockets across the country are…
Walter Reich, director of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, was doubly abused when he was fired last week for having opposed a visit to the museum by Yasser Arafat. First, he was right in trying to block the Clinton administration's cynical effort to get Arafat to tour the museum, ostensibly to…
God, I hope he's lying. In the Lewinsky affair, the mantra of President Clinton's defenders is, "I hope he's telling the truth." Regarding Iraq, however, the only hope for the country is that the president is not telling the truth about his avowed goals.
Last year, alleged ex-intern Monica Lewinsky allegedly took out a Valentine's Day ad in the classified section of the Washington Post, allegedly meant for her alleged presidential paramour, Bill Clinton, with whom she was allegedly having an affair. Addressed to "HANDSOME" and signed, coyly, "M,"…
A philologist has mailed to THE SCRAPBOOK this fragment of a previously unknown Hebrew manuscript recently discovered near Qumran:
NOW IS THE HOUR OF BILL CLINTON'S greatest political need, and one senator has rushed to his side: Bob Torricelli of New Jersey. Torricelli has made the defense of Clinton his special cause. Other Democrats warily hang back, but Torricelli charges ahead, vouching for the president on television,…
Town & Country, a glossy magazine for the well-heeled, touted a special feature in its January issue: "T&C's Guide to Civilized Divorce." Placed just before photos of society newlyweds in the monthly "Weddings" section, the guide highlights how to choose the right attorney, minimize costs, and…
DOES THE REPUBLICAN PARTY really want Tom Bordonaro to win a House seat? The 38-year-old state legislator is the GOP candidate to succeed Democrat Walter Capps, who died last fall, in the coastal California district around Santa Barbara. The race is the most critical in the country between now and…
INDEPENDENT COUNSEL KENNETH STARR believes that, constitutionally, his office cannot indict the president of the United States. What, then, of the evidence the prosecutor is assembling suggesting that Bill Clinton may have lied under oath, urged others to do the same, rewarded them for doing so,…
After last week's WEEKLY STANDARD cover story on Sidney Blumenthal, " Hillary Clinton's Brain," the word around the White House was that Blumenthal had switched from working on the scandal defense team to a new task -- helping to convince the American people to back President Clinton's Iraq policy.…
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 14. How is it that moviegoers know, on the basis of almost no information, to stay away from a stinker? I've just been to see Sphere, which would seem ready-made to please. Its director, Barry Levinson, and its star, Dustin Hoffman, both won Oscars for Rain Man almost a decade…
Leonard J. Leff
THE WASHINGTON OPINIONOCRACY has developed pretty good antennae about the sincerity of Lewinsky-related public statements by various presidential henchmen. Clinton attorney David Kendall and his allies are now loudly bemoaning news leaks by Kenneth Starr's team of prosecutors. The complaint is…
Dorothy L. Sayers & Jill Paton Walsh