Thursday, March 26, 1998 --- New York (APJP) -- Every now and then, it's refreshing to get an intelligent outside view on a perplexing issue. I had such an opportunity this weekend, having been called out of town on business to London to negotiate a deal for my company.
Sitting down to dinner in a luxury hotel restaurant in London's posh Mayfair district , I got quite the earful of the British perspective on the current controversies vexing President Clinton.
"The American press is unseemly, unethical and tasteless," said one of my British friends, a dealmaker in London real estate. "Even our tabloids would restrain themselves from going into the kind of detail on President Clinton 'affairs' that we keep seeing on satellite TV out of America! It's a shock -- the coverage on CNN is outright tawdry. You'd think Rupert Murdoch owned the network now!"
"What I don't understand is the behavior of this Kenneth Starr fellow," said another British colleague, a classical musician with an international career. "It's simply beyond the pale. He's been given power no single man should ever have. Here in England, the press -- both the broadsheets AND the tabloids -- would be screaming in protest about this sort of judicial abuse. The courts would NEVER allow Starr leeway to undertake these sorts of indiscretions."
"Doc, would you please tell me what all these women have to do with -- now what is it called, Whitewater? Is this Mr. Starr trying to prove that failed land deals can help your sex life?" The table erupted into laughter. Admittedly, there had been a few tasteless jokes at Clinton's expense, jokes I've heard dozens of times, but they actually seemed witty when told by Brits. And the host for this dinner, a British friend from my college years, was a gracious, equal-opportunity offender, sharing a few of his less delicate jokes about John Major and Tony Blair.
What made the entire scene completely mind-bending is the fact that almost every Brit at the table was a dyed-in-the-woll Tory -- one of them had even worked with Margaret Thatcher!
And the Brits are certainly not neophytes to the wide world of political scandals. The name Profumo may not ring a bell for most people in the United States, but it remains the Acme of superscandals in the UK, making Watergate look like small potatoes by comparison. Profumo had something for everything: sex, money, more sex, espionage, blackmail, even more sex, suicide, and enough politicians to keep 25 grand juries busy for four years -- if such a thing could be afforded!
On top of that, hardly a year goes by without a member of Parliament or an upper-level cabinet minister becoming embroiled in some sort of scandal involving either sex or money, but seldom both. Yet even England's oft-maligned tabloids won't print a word unless there is tangible, solid and corroborable evidence of wrongdiong -- due almost entirely to the tight libel laws in Britain.
"I have no doubt that 90 percent of what I've seen and read in the American press would never pass muster over here," said a friend who works for BBC International. "And the 10 percent that did meet with the approval of our editors and lawyers would be handled far, far differently, carefully and discretely worded." In fact, you can see for yourself how the Brits are handling the story at the BBC's world news web site.
"I'm especially amused at this entourage of lawyers and publicists surrounding this Paula Jones woman," said my friend and real estate. "It would take no more than 10 seconds of blather from [Susan Carpenter] McMillan for the tabloids and political cartoonists to come up with at least a dozen ways to poke fun at this pompous, smug exercise in human disingenuousness. This sort of phony grandstanding simply does not go over here. It defies me why your press actually takes her seriously!"
"And the way your press is treating that poor Miss Lewinsky. They've destroyed her," said my colleague from the "Beeb". "At least the British press won't destroy your life without iron-clad proof that you've been a naughty girl."
"The impression I gathered from my last trip to New York," said my realtor colleague, "is that it's as if the entire American press establishment is playing a high-stakes game of poker here. They're actually putting the entire stake on something happening to Clinton -- resignation, impeachment, some sort of 'guilty' verdict -- so that, should something happen, the press can say 'so what if he was popular with you, we told you so about this guy! Now you'd better start believing us!' Yet the press looks to have had more to do with creating and sustaining the scandal than even Clinton's enemies. And if Clinton escapes punishment or censure, which is a strong possibility, the American press establishment is going to lose credibility in the eyes of the rest of world."
"You'll get no argument for me about that," said my BBC colleague. "In fact, in my eyes, they're already a hopeless case."
'Nuff said... and I hardly had to say a word!
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