trite TRIAL retrospect

I speak to you now from some lazy afternoon well into the 21st century. Starved for nostalgia in a world seemingly intent on speeding ahead of me, I was delighted to click onto to a summer re-run that earlier I thought perfectly summed up the era of my youth. I mention it here because more than a simple romp in the past, it holds a lesson still germane to our future. I'll let (now long retired ) Jane Pauley tell the Bill and Monica story as recorded on my VCR:

"In the fine tradition of MSNBC's Time and Again, (and again, and again) we took a look back on a magical time in America when presidents ran free, members of congress lost their jobs, and a chubby girl with a Pepsodent smile reminded us all of our own child hoods, living in Washington on mom and dad's bill.

Remember the arguments?

· It was never about sex, it was about perjury.

· It was never about perjury, it was about sex.

· No man is above the law and no man is beneath it.

· Sexual indiscretion is not a high crime or misdemeanor worthy of impeachment.

· Finally we can now move on with the business of the country.

· The American public never cared about the president's private life.

· I never knew we had so many constitutional experts.

· A crowd of poorly conditioned, middle aged, white guys are as menacing on Capitol Hill as they are guzzling Jack in a hunting lodge - just without the silly hats.

· Two strawberries in my carburetor are worth six in your gas tank

· A small bird in the hand is worth a giant lizard skiing in Aspen.

· That snow blower snickering in the tree is wackier than the duplicitous buzzard that made off with my Kentucky walking stick.

It was a different time in America. A time when lawyers quit for TV, when TV would quit for nothing. No one living at the time could forget the war of rhetorical haymakers that gave pundits jobs, left justice ignored, and put the country to sleep.

Once a scandal revolving around questions of moral turpitude, we quickly "moved on," shifting to a trial of cliches. And what of public reaction? If the 90s military buzz phrase, "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," has a Clinton-On-Trial equivalent, it became, "Don't Know, Don't Care."

But why? Weren't constitutional questions at stake? Maybe. But there was a twist. The guys running the trial had routinely lost their elementary school lunch money to the playground bully. When they'd tried to kiss a girl they felt a slap, or heard a cackle. It bugged them. They took it out on us. And we finally got wise.

Web sites soon buzzed with the collective question that would become famous: 'Would you hire any of that Capitol Hill crew to represent you in a rent dispute with your lord dispute?' If you did, most agreed, this might be the final result.

Judge: "Given your counsel's repetitious, uninspired, imperious, pretentious manner, and transparently embarrassing last minute history cramming, I order you to pay three months future rent at double the going rate." Slam!

The web-prognosticators needed no further convincing. The trial ended and the nation actually did move on. But the era left its mark. Today, it's hard to find a political web-site that doesn't hold this truth to be self-evident - what's good for small claims court, is good for America.

Next week on Time and Again, be sure to check Part II of our special Federal Targets Retrospect ... Bill Clinton vs. Eric Rudolph - Same Plight, Different Topography.

Goodnight."

Yours Truly,

Xandor
Copy Boy In-Chief