New York -- Once upon a time there was a television guy here named Stanley Siegel, a flash-in-the-tube who attracted attention doing such things as broadcasting from a bathtub full of Jello.
Someone asked what he really wanted. Mr. Siegel answered, "My own channel!" He wanted to be on 24 hours a day, so people could watch him sleep and shave in the morning, whatever. He never quite made it.
But maybe Newt Gingrich will do it in his name. Or maybe Bill Clinton will.
TTC: The Clinton Channel. NEWTV: Newt-at-Night. Or maybe CNN will get them together for all-day or all-night "Crossfire." Beavis and Butt-head come to prime time. Heh, heh, heh . . .
What have we done to deserve this? How much of this can we all take? Tune in tomorrow.
Perhaps Newt's novel will be a mini-series: "Gone With the Hair Dryer," or, "To Kill a Mynah-bird." Or Mr. Clinton will be doing the commentary on the Super Bowl. If there were no TV, what would these two do, go door-to-door?
These two Southern boys, smart as whips, love to talk, and they are never going to let us get away.
To tell the truth, this is your life. Or ours. They are probably the two most sophisticated political analysts in the country, and they practice the business of governing on the side.
It is not so much Big Brother Is Watching You as Little Brother Is Talking to You. The First Talker, and the Talker of the House.
You have to hand it to the two of them. I am tempted to add: Or they'll take it from you. (In fact, I just did.) They are both engaging and entertaining and exaggerating and exaggerated. When these two are through with us, we'll be begging for Calvin Coolidge.
They both came from nowhere, a small place in the South. (Mr. Gingrich was actually born in Harrisburg, Pa., but he adopted the South with the fervor of the true convert, adopting down-home conservative populism after a better-forgotten fling with liberalism.)
Both are truly modern politicians, that is, totally self-created: supply-side politicians who supplied themselves to the rest of us.
If there is an American establishment or system that produces, chooses or grooms the leaders of the great democracy, these two can be explained only if the process is similar to the selection of a baby Dalai Lama.
I like Mr. Gingrich. Over the years I have stopped by his offices to fill up on high-octane leaded. I could say that I've stopped by his sets, because sometimes he works with a blackboard doing The World According to Newt, or lectures from an old schoolmaster's desk in the corner.
It did not take a great effort; with Mr. Gingrich a good opening question is "Hello." Cutting through the hyperbole and nonsensical theory, what he has said would happen politically in Congress and country over the past 15 years has pretty much happened. And so has he.
The last time I listened, just before the midterm elections, he declared that Mr. Clinton was finished and that the only way to understand the president was to hang around the bars of Hot Springs, Ark., and read New York Times editorials.
It might seem strange to hear Newt boosting the Eastern Establishment's datebook, but both he and Mr. Clinton are alternately fascinated and apoplectic about the fact that the editorial page editor of the Times is another smart Southern boy of their generation, Howell Raines from Birmingham, Ala.
Going along, I said, "You're telling me to read the Times? Why?"
"Because," he said, "Howell Raines is a Southerner. He knows!"
Soon, perhaps, we will all know. Some of it will be fun. Some of it will be dark, except for the glow of the television in the corner, the playing out of the inferiority complexes that Southern men bring north with them to Martha's Vineyard or "Meet the Press."
So it goes. This is a democracy of great energy and so is Mr. Clinton. And Mr. Gingrich. There is, finally, this joke in Washington:
An important constituent asks Tom Foley, still officially speaker of the House, for a favor. Mr. Foley says he can't do anything, the man has to go to Mr. Gingrich. Mr. Foley advises: "Ask Newt what your country can do for you . . . "
9- Richard Reeves is a syndicated columnist.