Using 'public interest' as fallacious excuse to assail our 0) liberties
The release of the videotapes of President Clinton's testimony to the grand jury has me aghast. It is frightening to think of the damage that has been wreaked on our personal liberties by this media feeding frenzy.
A free society rises and falls on the ability of the citizens to identify the real issues and to distinguish the causes and effects of these issues. The past few years have brought an alarming increase in the loss of privacy under the fallacious guise of "in the public interest." If our society is to prevail, we need to recognize that "in the public interest" means protecting all of our rights to privacy.
This does not include displaying our country's dirty linen for all to see. Nor does it, in good conscience, permit the media to bombard us, and our children, with constant doses of sexually explicit and implicit material.
Our society will not rise or fall because of Bill Clinton's indiscretions. The true determination will be how we, as citizens, and how our representatives respond to the invasion of privacy that has occurred as a result of the inability by the president
(and others) to control their libido.
Sandra Kelman
Pikesville
Republicans tearing apart the fabric of our nation
I watched only moments of the tape with anguish. This must be the darkest day of United States history. It is surely the smarmiest, most degrading day in our history.
To expose our president to this kind of abuse is mind-boggling. To expose any man or woman to this kind of abuse is just too awful to even consider. What the Republicans are doing to the fabric of this country is too terrible to imagine. We may never recover from this venomous assault. I am sickened to think such hate lives in this nation.
Richard Everett Upton
Baltimore
We say goodbye to probe, media keep saying hello
Kudos to David Zurawik for his column on the saturation coverage of the Clinton scandal ("Saturation coverage despite the polls," Sept. 19).
Finally, even though it's in the Today section, someone has articulated the ever-increasing annoyance I have with the way the media have been cramming not only "all the facts" but also telling me what I ought to be feeling.
MSNBC (all scandal, all the time) is over the top, not only with hour after hour of droning talking heads, but also with the constant attempt to make its point of view my point of view. And trying to make me feel guilty for not agreeing.
Well, the truth of the matter is that most of my friends and associates are tired of this. We don't need graphic details, and we don't need people telling us what to think. We're quite capable of thinking on our own.
If ever there was a more clear-cut example that a media elite exits, this is it. When the polls don't agree with their point of view, they play it down while banging their drums ever more loudly.
Some of us aren't voyeurs, needing pandering to by ratings-starved media.
John McGing
Columbia
Starr, Congress members unlawfully distributed sex
Since 1996, a law has been in place to bar the use of government funds to distribute any material that is sexually explicit. That law was invoked in a federal appellate court ruling that the U.S. Bureau of Prisons may ban certain magazines.
As the Starr report is clearly sexually explicit material, Kenneth Starr has plainly violated federal law by using government funds to distribute that material. Further, members of Congress who voted to distribute the material via the Internet have also directly contributed to and encouraged violation of the law.
Mr. Starr should be held accountable for his actions, prosecuted and disbarred. The members of Congress who voted to use government funds to distribute the sexually explicit material should be impeached.
It's unfortunate that in their zeal to get the president they overlooked their own actions.
Alexander Geist
Baltimore
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President Clinton has certainly done something morally wrong, but Kenneth Starr and his henchmen have done a terrible disservice to children in our nation.
I think that all of the Republicans, and especially Mr. Starr, should be censured for allowing such smut to be aired.
Geraldine Cohen
Baltimore
Ordinary citizen would face speedy exit from the job
Another morning, another newspaper, another feeble attempt excuse the inexcusable ("Disgrace, little more, is placed before nation," Sept. 14).
Chief executive caught fornicating in the Oval Office? "An ordinary citizen," says The Sun, "would not be in criminal difficulty."
Not be in criminal difficulty? After sex with an intern, on the job, in the office, after lying to investigators and a federal prosecutor? The ordinary citizen would indeed be in criminal difficulty.
Certainly, any chief executive officer would have been chased into retirement by these revelations.
As for the military, the officers whose careers have been terminated in the past few years must be dumbstruck to find this misbehavior private when conducted by a president.
Theo Lippmann's article on Roosevelt vs. Clinton was well thought out ("Lucy Rutherfurd was not FDR's Monica Lewinsky," Sept. 13). Mr. Lippmann's analyses are usually accurate, as long as no Republicans are involved. And in this case, his point is well taken: Indeed, Mr. Clinton is no Roosevelt.
The true and obvious parallel is not Roosevelt, but Warren G. Harding, whose scandal-ridden administration was buoyed by a rising stock market and enlivened by a furtive White House affair.
John Heasley
Ellicott City
Peddler of Hyde story did country a favor
As far as I am concerned, Norm Sommer, who spent months trying to find a national newspaper that would print the "Hyde scandal" to expose the hypocrisy involved in this relentless witch hunt, is a national hero.
Teresa Bilzor
Harwood
If perjury is a crime, charge tobacco executives
With Congress debating charges of perjury against President Clinton, do we not have the right to expect them to take action against the chief executive officers of the tobacco industry, who committed perjury when they testified before Congress that nicotine was not addictive?
I wonder if the leaders of Congress such as Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, House Speaker Newt Gingrich or perhaps even Rep. Jesse Helms, would have the courage to do such a noble act?
John H. O'Hara
Bowie
The writer is president of the Maryland Group Against Smokers Pollution.
Investigate Sudan bombing not more Clinton-Lewinsky
We have every detail about each time the president dropped his pants but very little information about his decision to drop bombs on Sudan and Afghanistan.
rTC I don't need to know how many times the president and Monica Lewinsky did what. I get the picture. I don't understand why the president decided to bomb a pharmaceutical factory. The connection to the embassy bombings seems fuzzy.
I wrote to my senators asking for an explanation. I got one response -- a form letter saying that the senator supported the president's decision. No explanations. Now former President Carter has offered to help lead an investigation, but the White House has turned him down.
It seems to me that dropping bombs ought to be worth at least as much investigation as that other story.
Doug Cunningham
Baltimore
Clinton needed adviser like Michael Olesker
In regard to Michael Olesker's column on the subject of President Clinton's lies, I want to say amen ("Clinton lied, but let's not throw him out over sex," Sept. 15). If Mr. Olesker had been the president's adviser, we would have a better country.
Rona L. Hankin
Berkeley Springs, W.Va.
Pub Date: 9/25/98