Like a houseguest who won't leave, the Clinton scandal lingers long past the point that everyone has tired of it. Many Americans would be happy, polls indicate, if not another word was said about the president's already excruciatingly examined dalliance.

So apparently aliens are buying all the Starr Report books and making it a best seller. No one, and no one anyone knows, is watching the television coverage, yet ratings are way up. And surely the thousands of postings about the scandal on Internet discussion groups are the work of a single spam artist.

"It's just like O. J. [Simpson's trial]," said Darrell West, a political science professor at Brown University. "People are watching, but they're embarrassed they're watching."

It's become the scandal people love to hate, the car wreck on the side of the road that can't be turned away from, the talk that everyone professes to ignore yet somehow manages to hear and spread.

"We're embarrassed that we're interested because it's about sex," said West, the director of Brown's John Hazen White Sr. Public Opinion Laboratory. "We're used to making fun of the tabloids, but now the whole society has gone tabloid.

"Essentially, the People magazine mentality of Hollywood is now taking over Washington. Whitewater didn't attract attention, campaign finance didn't attract attention, it really took sex to get people to pay attention."

Despite loud protestations that the media have overplayed the story, many are watching the TV broadcasts, buying newspapers with special sections reprinting grand jury testimony and evidence and logging on to the Internet for the latest details.

While not quite in the range of prior consuming interests like the Simpson trial or the gulf war, the scandal has drawn millions of viewers to the 24-hour cable networks, which have been endlessly dissecting it.

"I think people are emotionally exhausted by it and they're weary of the story, but it is the fate of the presidency we're talking about," said Howard Polskin, a spokesman for CNN, where the top-two-rated broadcasts of the year have been Clinton's four-minute address to the nation on Aug. 17, and his four-hour taped testimony that aired on Sept. 21.

Public yet to decide

The scandal's drumbeat hasn't been constant, of course. There was the initial flurry after the news broke in January that a one-time intern named Monica Lewinsky claimed to have had sex with Clinton, and he denied it. In subsequent months, interest in the story ebbed, except for the occasional leaks from the grand jury proceedings as independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr called witness after witness. But since August, when Clinton testified and later addressed the nation, followed by Congress' release of Starr's finding on Sept. 11, the scandal has roared back to front and center.

Part of the reason the story has demonstrated such staying power is the way news has come out irregularly, in small leaks of information or huge dumps of documents from Starr's office. Also, some believe, people are following the scandal and talking about it as a way of sorting out their feelings.

It's become a running dialogue: Who is the villain? Who is the victim? Should he stay, should he go? And why is Hillary still there?

"I think public opinion is still quite fluid," West said. "A lot of new information is still coming out."

In the meantime, people continue to chew on the subject -- at home, in the office, while they're getting their hair cut.

"Ninety percent of the talk is about this," estimated Laurie Schroeder, a hairstylist at the Lola Jones salon in Mount Washington.

Schroeder's feelings have evolved since the news first came out in January, and she was one of several women in the area asked by The Sun to comment. Back then, she said it would be a shame if Clinton were to fall for simply having had sex rather than for a more important issue like Whitewater.

"At the time, I didn't think he should be ousted for it, but now it's clear that he lied," said Schroeder. "In January, if he had just said he had sex with her, he could have saved us all of this and we would have just gone on. Now, though, I think he should resign."

End is nowhere near

With more documents expected to be released this week, the story will continue to deepen as more details are learned about other figures in the scandal, like Linda Tripp and Betty Currie. And, depending on whether Congress opts to hold impeachment hearings, the political aspects of the story will continue to unfold. In other words, the story is nowhere near ending.

"People want this to be over, and they're annoyed at the media for covering it. But the press is telling us this is a historic moment, this is unprecedented," said Diana Owen, a Georgetown University political scientist who studies public opinion. "So you feel you're not a good citizen if you don't watch it. It's being billed as your moment in history."

That sense of history in the making probably has helped drive sales of the book version of the Starr report and the video of Clinton's testimony, both available for free either downloaded from the Internet or taped off a broadcast.

"People went to see the movie 'Titanic,' and they still wanted the video, didn't they?" said Kay Dangaard, spokeswoman for Amazon.com, the Internet bookseller.

While the company does not release its sales figures, at one point last week both the video and book were at or near its "Hot 100" list, which tracks orders and is updated hourly.

In fact, it took Stephen King to release a new novel and Oprah Winfrey to announce her latest book club selection to move Clinton-related products like William J. Bennett's book, "The Death of Outrage," out of the top spots on the list.

Internet feeds interest

While the Starr report books are selling well elsewhere -- it is on several best-seller lists already -- Amazon.com is no doubt benefiting from the central role that the Internet is playing in the scandal. If someone is already online catching up on the latest news, rumor or joke about the scandal, it's easier to log onto Amazon or other Internet booksellers than to log off and go to an actual store.

Online, unlike in the real world, there's always someone willing to dish the scandal.

Arne Langsetmo, an engineer in Oakland, Calif., said he rarely hears scandal talk during his frequent business trips. But online, newsgroups like alt.politics.clinton, alt.impeach.clinton and alt.current-events.clinton have kept up a steady stream of chatter.

Like others, Langsetmo believes the media are overplaying the salacious aspects of the scandal, and yet he is fascinated enough by it to post as many as 20 or 30 messages a day.

"I've always been a political junkie," he said.

"Sometimes you just have to respond," said Craig Chilton, a writer in Evansdale, Iowa, who scans the Clinton-related newsgroups and often posts his take on the matter.

Owen, the Georgetown professor, said the explosion of the Internet and other new media is having an impact on how public opinion about the scandal is evolving. With information coming from so many different sources, it's hard to find a consensus, she said.

Public 'more fickle'

"The public is almost over-polled. It's hard to gauge exactly what is being polled in each of the different polls. Whose opinion really is making public opinion?" she said. "And because the news cycle is much more fast-paced, the public also changes quickly.

"With Watergate, it was a much slower process," Owen said. "It was not reported in the same way. It unfolded in the mainstream press, and there wasn't the new media out there popularizing it or sensationalizing it. Popular opinion developed slowly. I think the public is a lot more fickle about how it feels about government in general today. Feelings about Clinton have fluctuated more than they have for other presidents."

Jane Rosolio, another Baltimore-area woman interviewed by The Sun in the now seemingly distant first days of the scandal, said she's remained a Clinton supporter. But then, she has actively avoided what she considers the surfeit of news coverage.

Rosolio has relied on media outlets like National Public Radio that she believes cover the scandal in enough but not exhaustive detail.

"I did not read the Starr report and I didn't watch the videotape of [Clinton's] testimony," Rosolio said. "I know the gist of it, and that's all I really need to hear. When people talk about the cigar, for example, I'm not really sure what they mean.

"I'm sorry it's gone on so long," she said. "I miss the interesting things we used to hear about. What did we do before all this?"

Pub Date: 10/05/98