Radio
Out-wriggling Houdini
Michael Vestey
idst the extensive coverage on radio An of the Starr report on President Clinton, most of it excellent, one outstanding matter puzzles me. We know what Clinton didn't do with marijuana, but now that we are aware of what can be done with cigars, we have to ask: did Monica inhale? If she did, then it might turn out to be a far more seri- ous matter in smoking-conscious America than anything else she and the President did in or near the Oval Office, especially as, at the time of writing, Clinton seems to be out-wriggling Houdini.
Although the reporting of this extraordi- nary document and its immediate after- math was handled very well on radio, I have to say I was staggered by the benignity towards Clinton by many programmes. If this had been a Republican president I feel the tone would have been rather different, less tolerant for one thing. Not just the knives would have been out but whole squadrons of Exocets. I've lost count of the number of pundits on the airwaves who've taken an indulgent view of Clinton's behaviour, as if to say, well, you know that's Bill for you, boys will be boys, so he found ingenious new uses for cigars, hardly something to impeach him for, is it?
There is some merit in that argument, as it happens, but there is the little matter of covering up and committing perjury about it which has to be considered. We were solemnly lectured that Nixon's downfall over Watergate came about because he ordered a cover-up, not for condoning the kind of dirty tricks the Kennedys did to him and got away with. It's humbug really. There is in the White House the most dis- honest, and probably most crooked, presi- dent since or before JFK and yet dear old Bill is allowed to cling on — at least for the time being.
I thought of this while listening to Broad- casting House on Radio Four on Sunday morning. The presenter, Eddie Mair, was in Washington and discussing the affair with, in London, the veteran BBC reporter Charles Wheeler, a former Washington correspondent, and Germaine Greer, who presumably was present to discuss the naughty bits. 'I don't think this will drag on as Watergate dragged on,' said Wheeler optimistically. He thought Clinton was a victim of Lewinsky's attempts to seduce the President. 'One gets the impression he could sue her for entrapment.' What? He then gave Clinton a verbal pat on the head and said, 'Technically, he may have com- mitted perjury but, actually, the American people are surely going to say there is something dubious about the basis of the affair [the Starr investigation].'
Oh, fine, I thought. Although I have always admired Wheeler's reporting, both on television and radio, he does, like so many of his colleagues, have something of a weakness for Democrats, as they do for Labour. I remember once, sometime in the early 1970s, watching him on television interviewing Teddy Kennedy and hearing him address the hero of Chappaquiddick as `sir', which even then in those more defer- ential times made me cringe.
Greer seemed to think it was just locker- room stuff, finding it 'tacky and uninterest- ing'. Tacky, yes, but uninteresting? If you're a Democrat wishing it all to go away so that your man survives, then I suppose you would like it to appear in that light. No doubt if it had been a Republican president they would be calling for him to be hand- cuffed and shown the door straight away. At least Greer did accept that Clinton had lost his moral authority in the world, though for many of us he never had it in the first place.
By Monday the World at One barely mentioned it, except to carry an interview with the BBC's chief political correspon- dent John Sergeant on whether or not Tony Blair would still be meeting Clinton in Washington. I was not able to hear all the news and current affairs output on the radio since the Starr report was first pub- lished on the Internet, but it also occurred to me that some of Clinton's fiercest critics were not much in evidence. Where was Rush Limbaugh, the hugely successful US radio talk show host who weekly excoriates Clinton and his administration? Where was Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, the Daily Tele- graph's assiduous Clinton-watcher, who has done more to expose the Arkansas mafia than anyone else? Perhaps he's not as glamorous an investigative reporter as Woodward and Bernstein of the Washing- ton Post who were accorded heroic status for pursuing Nixon. I doubt if anyone will make a film about him.
Perhaps Evans-Pritchard did appear somewhere and I missed it, but I have my doubts. One expects such protectiveness towards their Democratic leaders from the American media because it is largely pro- Democrat; the Washington Post ignored the misdeeds of the Kennedys and set about destroying Nixon and can merely be regarded as the Democratic party's house magazine. But I would have liked to have heard some of the more robust pundits and commentators on the radio.
Take it easy, Sabre! He's fashionably terrified of commitment.'
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