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Politics : Bill Clinton Scandal - SANITY CHECK -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Harvey Allen who wrote (24313)	12/23/1998 4:21:00 PM
From: Daniel Schuh	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 67261

Larry and Lucy nytimes.com On the subject of Flynt, we have today's NYT op-ed from Frank Rich. For those who just can't wait for Larry Flynt to expose the sex lives of some more G.O.P. "big fish" in the next Hustler, there's a titillating tidbit in the "Men of the Year" issue of Time. In an interview, Lucianne Goldberg laughingly recalls a tell-all book proposal from the ancient, pre-Monica past in which a "very famous Republican name" would not take off his glasses "even when he was buck naked, performing a particular sex act. . . ." Time deletes the Republican name Ms. Goldberg merrily provided, but surely someone will pass her dish on to the rest of us soon enough. . . . If there's a moral distinction between Ms. Goldberg, a fierce partisan on the racy fringe of the publishing world, and Mr. Flynt, a fierce partisan on the racy fringe of the publishing world, it's visible only to William Bennett, who actually told Larry King Monday that he knew of no conservative counterpart to the "Democrats and liberals" prying into private lives. Mr. Bennett apparently hasn't heard either of Ms. Goldberg, who urged Linda Tripp to tape Monica Lewinsky and then sped the results to Newsweek, or of Richard Mellon Scaife, who funneled some $2 million to The American Spectator, which hired private detectives to dig up dirt on the President. Mr. Flynt so far has offered only up to $1 million to smoke out hanky-panky, though he seems to be getting more bangs for his buck in the capital than Mr. Scaife did even in Mr. Clinton's all-too-fertile Arkansas. So far, a pox on both glass houses. But, there's a kicker for the moral reformationist wing and fellow travelers: By never promising us Boy Scouts in the Rose Garden or Rotunda, the Democrats have little to lose in this ugly game. If what we know about Bill Clinton's sex life by now hasn't leveled him, what further revelation could? The Republicans, meanwhile, have handed Larry Flynt the ammunition to mow them down. The only way disarmament will come is if the G.O.P. now takes that ammunition away -- if someone within the Republican Party has the guts to stand up to its powerful religious wing and say that private sexual behavior (whether that of a heterosexual Congressman or a gay ambassadorial nominee) is really, truly not a criterion for public office. Bob Livingston could have been just the heroic Joseph Welch required, but by inaccurately likening his plight to the President's and then resigning, he botched his historic opportunity and handed the culture warriors of his party the very victory they crave. Unlike Mr. Clinton, who was supposedly impeached for the illegal act of perjury, not sex, the fallen Speaker-to-be resigned for sex alone, not perjury -- thereby ratifying the religious right's position that sex in itself can drum a sinner out of public office. Far from inspiring the Presidential resignation he intended, Mr. Livingston has in one disastrous act empowered both his own party's zealots and Mr. Flynt. Our "Crucible" may have only just begun. Like that other quasi-legal matter I follow, it's all entertainment to me at this point. In D.C., though, it still looks like nobody gets out of this alive. Next up, Maureen Dowd, who's getting crankier by the day.