The Remote Island by Bryan Christian The burning question of the day: Life on Mars or Eleventh Hour? Plus: Britney goes on the record, USA may not renew Monk, and our Grey's Anatomy recap.
If there's anything that disappoints Genevieve and me more than Clinton's serial amnesia, it's the public's parroted shock and dismay at his behavior. "Can you imagine?" people ask, mouths wide enough to insert a pair of Keds. While there may be a few Pollyannas out there who genuinely believe Clinton's behavior is out of synch with the rest of the planet's (Kenneth Starr, known to sing hymns on his morning jog, may be one of them), most of us make a show of dropping our jaws for two reasons: because it is a way of asserting that we would never behave this way, and because it helps us explain the collective right we feel to rip the roof off the White House and hold a magnifying glass to its antechambers.
Faux censure has been a means of extracting gossip for some time. In medieval "penitentials," priests catalogued sinful acts with a degree of thoroughness that now seems, well, excessive. Indeed, Catholic confession could be seen as an ingenious means of providing a fortunate few with tantalizing gossip. The Lewinsky debacle, meanwhile, has entertained more than a few who sit in judgement: arms crossed, priestlike, we the nation have instructed Clinton to confess his sins again, we didn't hear him the first time. How many times? On Easter Sunday? Where? Can we see a diagram?
Is the priest better than the confessor? Some are, some aren't. Representative Dan Burton, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, who called Clinton, according to the Times, "a name that is a vulgarity for a condom," recently confessed under duress to supporting a mistress and child out of wedlock. There may be a few elected officials who have never had an affair, but we have a hunch they aren't the ones making all the noise.
The great irony of recent events is that we liked Clinton better when we knew he was lying through his teeth. Polls indicated that most people believed he was dissimulating before the confession (his guilt was pretty clear given his silence and Monica's tapes). Why did we like him better for lying? Perhaps because it was an understandable response -- it is, after all, what most people do when pressed about infidelities, and perhaps it permitted us to forgive him without implicating ourselves.
Indeed, Clinton's belated honesty put the nation in an uncomfortable position -- it's the old "if you don't hate faggots you must be one" grade school conundrum: if you're not disgusted with adultery you must be screwin' around.
Of course we should make clear that we don't condone Clinton's behavior -- these are the words that everyone must pronounce to be cleansed of associative culpability. This incantation elevates us, distances us from the damned. In truth, both self-deception and deception of others are lamentable, and neither has been in short supply in recent weeks.
At the end of the day, when all the fingers have been wagged, the Lewinsky debacle is more about entertainment than anything else. Ratings are up, circulations are high, and the subject won't go away until that changes. Sure, everyone says they're sick of the subject, but when Larry King is fingering his suspenders over the nuances of welfare reform, many will be reminiscing about the good old days when CNN was interrupting regular programming with the lab results on Monica's besmattered dress.
, featuring curious yet marvelous infusions of cucumber and rose petal.
