By M. Stephanie Murray
Arizona Daily Wildcat
January 29, 1998

Bill Clinton: criminal or victim? It's about hype

Arizona Daily Wildcat M. Stephanie Murray

A few weeks back, I saw a supermarket tabloid whose headline screamed "Who killed Jon-Benet Ramsey? Our readers decide!"

Now the national, supposedly respectable media is trying to determine the American public's verdict on Interngate, Zippergate, Tailgate, whatever you want to call it.

And we, the people, have decided . . . we don't care.

America is finally realizing that public judgement is not always the most reasonable course of action when it comes to celebrity scandals. Just because the news is throwing scandalous tidbit after exclusive interview at you doesn't mean you know anything worthwhile. That's why we have lawyers and judges who are paid to put up with the tedium of court cases, in which much of the evidence is not titilating, just important.

What the American public should be, and increasingly is, concerned with is whether or not the President is capable of doing his job in light of this scandal. He is. The President's job approval rating is high, higher than usual, acutally. His personal approval rating is plummeting, but the two ratings don't seem to be connected in the public's perception. We may not want our daughters working for Clinton, but he's done a damn good job governing the country. Most of us don't care what kind of sexual peccadilloes our sanitation workers are involved in, either, as long as the recycling gets picked up every other week.

President Clinton did the right thing with the State of the Union address on Tuesday night. An NBC News poll showed that 60 percent of America's viewers wanted to hear about the State of the Union, not the state of the scandal. The incessant media coverage of "The Crisis in the White House" is causing a viewer backlash. A CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll after the President's address showed that 48 percent of Americans are "very confident" in his abilities as President and that 49 percent felt he "set a good moral example."

This is not the first scandal of the Clinton administration and it probably won't be the last. But the American public really doesn't care anymore. When trivia and gossip is elevated to evidence (does anyone really think a semen-stained dress is going to show up in court?) real news loses relevance by association. We can no longer strain the important from the inane, and our interest has waned.

Anyway, this has to be over by next week. Who's ready for Olympic hype?

M. Stephanie Murray is a senior majoring in English literature.