|
|
 Oh, Monica. You're So, So Grown Up!
* Plato Cacharis, Monica's lawyer, may have missed his true calling: A great Broadway director. Watching the Monica Tapes, the adjective which occurred to me most was: Well-coached.
* At the point where the discussion got into that 2:30-in-the-morning phone call from Clinton she suddenly decided - in mid-sentence - that she needed a break. When the tape started again and the House Manager asked if she wanted to continue her answer, her eyebrows went up, her eyes got wide, her shoulders shrugged, her head shook, and she said as if surprised: "No."
* Monica and the President are two people who have used charm and guile to get whatever they have wanted, from whomever they wanted it, whenever they wanted it. Beverly Hills 90210 found Washington, DC 20500. The lowest common denominator of American culture collided with the lowest common denominator of American politics.
* Proving that having a really, really, really large amount of money doesn't make you smart, West Virginia Senator Jay Rockefeller whined yesterday on Meet the Press that this has all been the fault of the American press. He said the wall-to-wall coverage was too much and, "I resent it."
* Remember, he wasn't in Dryfork, WVa. hanging out with his constituents at a coffee shop, he was on Nebraska Avenue on Meet the Press. I happened to have been at NBC yesterday morning when Rockefeller and the other five Senators who were on Tim Russert's show swept in with their entourages. None of them, not even Rockefeller, was dragged in wearing a Susan McDougal orange jump suit and leg irons.
* Obviously Jay Rockefeller didn't "resent" it enough to miss the chance to get his mug on television, even to complain about talking about Monica.
* The death of King Hussein of Jordan provided an odd end-of-the-twentieth-century-media counterpoint during news coverage yesterday. The cable news networks and the regular Sunday talk shows had to switch between a discussion of President Bill Clinton and his terrible conduct with a 21-year-old girl and reports of the death of King Hussein.
* Television anchors got to practice their full range of emotional delivery as they switched from one story to the other. Why, it was almost as if Plato Cacharis had held a clinic.
* In a remarkable interview, which had been taped a few weeks ago with CNN's Christiane Amanpour, King Hussein appeared with his head completely bald from his chemotherapy treatments. He certainly could have worn the traditional Arab head covering (the gutra and the igal) but he spoke of the children he had seen at the Mayo Clinic being so brave as they, too, underwent cancer treatment. He was not embarrassed by his lack of hair because it reminded him of the strength of those children.
* The King didn't appear to need a Dick Morris poll to help him decide how to handle it.
|
