You can reach Andrew Ross at ross@salonmagazine.com

Last week, Andrew Ross stunned us -- and the White House -- with a sloppy editorial calling for the resignation of Bill Clinton. Ross, who is billed as Vice President of Business and Strategic Development for Salon, shows he's no lightweight in the 'strategy' department. What better than to build a case for Bill Clinton over a year -- and then turn around and call for his head? Ross's boss, David Talbot, wrote that it was Starr that should be shown the door and properly fingered The New York Times and The Washington Post as the tabloiders-in-chief who created Ken Starr and should now undo him.
Good cop, bad cop? We wonder.

We thought it might be fun to tell you what Ross might REALLY have been thinking as he penned the following pap.

See if you agree.

Our "marginalia" appear in italics.

He Should Go, but I know he won't, so what harm will it do to attack him?

What I wrote almost seven months ago was that if President Clinton had a sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky, lied about it and led others, inadvertently, to lie on his behalf, then he should resign. Now that we know he is guilty on all three counts, I believe he must go.

What the heck... I might as well stick by what I said in January and create even more controversy so SALON might get in the mainstream news again. After all, when the President mentioned SALON our readership skyrocketed and our ad rates jumped along with my salary. Anyone who reads this won't know I'm a marketing VP with no standing as a commentator, so here goes:

In his short address to the nation Monday night, Clinton put much of the blame for the situation on the office of the independent counsel. He is quite right in this. Kenneth Starr's pursuit of the president has taken on increasingly Stalinist overtones, unconstrained by any sense of proportionality, decency, relevance or traditional limits of the law.

Cute, huh? Here, I agree that Starr is a schmuck -- and even tell them why! I like that Stalin reference. Yeah, I toyed with Hitler, but that would've been too much.

Not only has Starr's investigation long been "out of control," in Clinton's words, it has become a criminal enterprise in its own right. It is increasingly clear that Starr's office has illegally leaked grand jury testimony, suborned perjury and procured tainted testimony. It has molded a corrupt cast of characters into star prosecution witnesses, while browbeating innocent people into bankruptcies and nervous breakdowns. Knowing that his original mandate -- to investigate Whitewater -- had crumbled into dust, Starr desperately clutched onto the utterly bogus Paula Jones lawsuit to keep his sinking enterprise afloat. The "perjury trap," about which we have heard so much lately, was hatched then, in an unholy, and quite possibly illegal, alliance, between Starr and Jones' right-wing lawyers. This alliance of fundamentally undemocratic forces presents a far greater threat to the health and integrity of the republic than the president's pathetic moral lapses.

Gee, should I really call for Clinton to resign? As I re-read this, it looks like nothing I can say about "doing the right thing" would stand up against the case I've made here against the Starr Man.I better call Jerry Falwell for some roller pointers.

But that does not excuse Clinton's moral lapses. It is these -- and not the hair-splitting legal debates over whether the president committed perjury in a deposition ruled immaterial in a lawsuit without merit -- that fundamentally matter.

"Moral lapses" -- I love it! Sure, get down with the Rutherford Institute, Andy, that's right -- Bring it on!

It is about sex, and while the president -- and, judging by the polls, the vast majority of the American people -- consider this a "private matter," the affair was conducted on public property, by a public official, with a taxpayer-funded intern young enough to be his daughter, behind a curtain so thin that it resembled a seedy burlesque show.

Well, that's stretching it, but it sure sounds good. I know it is a private matter and even though he did it at his house, that house is paid for by us. Young enough to be his daughter -- that's original, yeah, I like that. I wonder if anyone reading this knows what a "burlesque show" is? How 'bout strip show or lap dance?

Republicans like Sen. Orrin Hatch are quite right that there is something sickening about a middle-aged man having a 21-year-old furtively service him next to the Oval Office, no matter how willing, or even initiating, Lewinsky may have been.

Oh, yeah! Quoting ol' Orrin is a great ploy. There really isn't anything sickening about it -- after all, she was nearly 22 and had "been around the block more" than a few times -- but without the "poor little misguided girl" treatment I can't sell my position. Orrin Hatch! I love it!

He is, after all, the president of the United States, for God's sake, whereas she was barely a legal adult.

I'm not sure it makes any difference whether you're the president or a trash collector, but throwing in GOD -- now that's a good touch. Makes it seem more holy, even papal -- "she was barely a legal adult" - wonder if they'll get that pun? Get it? BARELY! Ha, ha, haha, haaaa.

And while Clinton insisted last night that he and his family now be allowed some privacy in which to mend the wounds, it is his own actions -- whether driven by arrogance, "sex addiction," or a strange impulse toward self-destruction -- that have exposed his wife and his daughter to public shame and humiliation.

Let me check my original here: "And while Clinton wanted some private time, it's his fault whether driven by a healthy libido, addiction or the plain fact that she was some piece!" Boo-hoo, his wife and daughter -- yeah,that'll make them weep.

It is bad enough that he lied to his political associates, and had them lie on his behalf, all the while keeping mum about the truth while their legal bills mounted up -- still, they're professional pols, they knew on some level the risk they were taking. But what about his own daughter? And what about his wife, a proud, strong woman, the president's most consistent and effective defender, made a fool of, reduced to an object of pity?

This makes even me gag. He didn't ask anyone to lie -- they lied to stay on at the White House. To say they didn't know EXACTLY what they were getting into is pure BS, but what the heck. The wife and daughter already knew his "weaknesses," but they love and respect him anyway. Hillary Clinton as an object of pity? I wonder if they'll buy that. Maybe I ought to strike that one...

The practical reasons Clinton should leave the stage have been well-stated: A crippled president, hobbling pathetically through the rest of his term, trousers fastened firmly at his knees, is a joyful scenario indeed for Benjamin Netanyahu and Saddam Hussein. All that "important work" the president referred to Monday night, urging us to "move on," has about as much chance of getting done as the Democrats have of retaking Congress in November. For a politically brilliant man who was only too well aware of the vicious enemies he had, and of the sex-scandal eruptions he had narrowly escaped in the past, for such a man to have committed his brazen and repeated offenses in the White House surely renders him unfit for the highest office in the land.

Yeah, sure! "Well-stated" by ultra-right-wing fanatics and $150 an hour pundits. Crippled? Ask Iraq, Pakistan and those Islamic terror "campers" in Afghanistan. But I'm right about the do-nothing Congress -- they're all busy sweeping their own dirt under the rug before we expose THEM. I won't mention that Lewinsky was doing Clinton long before he found out that he was being witch-hunted by "Salem" Starr.

Of course, all this is academic. Clinton will not resign. He will not be driven from office. The media will continue with its ongoing epileptic seizure, combining moral frenzy with drooling sensationalism. And Ken Starr will play out his role as KGB commissar, a man aflame with ideology instead of justice or national duty. The American public regards both men with ever-growing loathing and contempt for what they have dragged the country through.

Here's my out. Of course he won't take my advice or chastisement. He'll stay in and the people will love it. I know that, they know that, but heck, it reads good. Doesn't it?

Clinton should not be impeached. In the end, this sordid matter is not about perjury or matters of state. He has committed no known high crime or misdemeanor. But he has committed a low moral act that has brought disgrace to his office and humiliation in a very public manner to his wife and daughter. And no matter how he much he pleads the matter is private, his betrayals have lessened us all.

This is the best wrap I've ever written. Pressure him to resign, but don't impeach him -- heh heh. Let him off the legal hook and then slam him with the Bible. But hey, the truth is his "betrayals" have not lessened ME. I'm still here, still writing, still looking at the rear ends of college coeds with a gleam in my eye.

- The Editors