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Politics : Clinton's Scandals: Is this corruption the worst ever? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: DMaA who wrote (6630)	9/21/1998 2:24:00 PM
From: j g cordes	Respond to of 13994

World Reaction: Germans Outraged at Clinton Tape By Anne Thompson Associated Press Writer Monday, September 21, 1998; 2:02 p.m. EDT BERLIN (AP) -- Germany's rail company ordered train stations to switch their TVs away from the broadcast of President Clinton's testimony about his sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky. Deutsche Bahn said it wanted to protect children from the sordid details. But adults -- thousands of passengers kill time waiting for trains by watching the only public large-screen TVs in Germany -- may be more upset by the broadcast. They think it's dirty ... politics. And the railway's order reflects the national mood. From Chancellor Helmut Kohl to the man in the street, most Germans are outraged by what they see as the United States dragging its own leader through the mud. ''I find the whole business extremely upsetting,'' Kohl said Monday. ''I can only repeat, in my blunt way of saying it, that it makes me throw up.'' In Frankfurt, Germany's banking capital, train station TVs showed a nature program about owls on Monday instead of Clinton's testimony. ''It is nonsense. ... (President Clinton) is also a person,'' said Ms. Scholz, a Deutsche Bahn employee who did not want to give her first name. Politics are high in the German psyche as the nation gears up for an election Sunday. Sex, or character questions pertaining to sex and marriage, are notably absent from the campaign -- though Kohl challenger Gerhard Schroeder has been married four times. Germans find all this personal stuff just too personal to be part of politics. ''What (Clinton) wants to keep private shouldn't become public to the whole world. Most important, his political work didn't suffer because of his affair,'' said Gerd Bandorf, as quoted in the Koblenzer Stadtanzeiger newspaper. At the last minute, the weekly paper ripped up its prepared edition Monday to run an article about Germans outraged that the United States has been investigating Clinton's sex life -- despite the fact that he may have lied about it under oath. The front-page headline asks: ''Why are you making your president ridiculous before the world?'' ''There are more important things in the world than the sex life of the American president,'' Michael Hoffstadt was quoted as saying in an advance copy of the article. Over and over German newspaper editorials have been making this very point. Their main message: World events from the Russian economic crisis to the Middle East peace process need Clinton's attention and can only suffer if he is weakened and distracted by scandal. ''The attention to the Clinton affair is bad for America and the trusting of the political institution,'' the conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine said in an editorial. ''It is bad for the world, because they cannot trust the courageous American leadership.'' c Copyright 1998 The Associated Press