The week's big news, and how's it's being spun.

Aug. 31 1996 3:30 AM

By William Saletan

(updated Tuesday, Sept. 3)

The United States attacked Iraq with 27 cruise missiles. The attack was in response to the Hussein government's weekend assault on Kurds in Northern Iraq. Among America's leading allies, only Great Britain supported the unilateral action. Saddam Hussein accused Clinton of bombing Iraq for electoral gain, citing campaign stump comments of Bob Dole, who had criticized the president for failing to act promptly on intelligence reports of Iraq troop movements. At the Pentagon, officials rebuffed the Washington Post' s suggestion of a U.S. "intelligence failure" in Iraq, but acknowledged that differing interpretations of the data had hobbled decisive action.

Clinton advisor Dick Morris resigned amid tabloid reports that he was having an affair with a prostitute. The story was broken by a supermarket gossip magazine, the Star, and released to the New York Post. In the absence of a substantive convention message, the disclosure buried Clinton's acceptance speech. The New York Times ran three front-page stories on it; the Washington Post referred to it in four. Network news shows led with the Star exposé, spreading it lingeringly across the TV screen, with photos, while their anchors spoke of it with distaste. Commentators noted the story's ironic resonance with Clinton's character problems, his family-values convention theme, and his dependence on Morris. The White House and Morris himself denounced the story as yellow journalism, but did not deny it. The Dole campaign portrayed Morris as the discarded antidote to Clinton's chronic liberalism. Political analysts predicted that the embarrassment would reduce Clinton's convention bounce, but that Morris himself would not be missed since Clinton's fall strategy is largely in place. Some reporters dressed up the story as a "breach of security" issue, citing allegations that Morris let the prostitute listen in on a phone conversation with Clinton. The Star's editor declined to say how much he had paid the woman for the story and insisted that she just wanted "to get it off her chest."

Meanwhile, the Democratic Convention concluded. The press recycled a dozen basic story lines: Clinton's speech was long and scattered but good enough to keep him ahead; he's the Comeback Kid once again; his whistle-stop train tour was effective and ingenious; he is triangulating toward the center on family values; he is sitting on his lead, playing it safe, "running out the clock"; he remains an enigma without a mandate; the Democrats are pandering to women; they are posing as the party of the future; they filled their convention with sap instead of substance; they talked endlessly and mindlessly about children; they are divided over welfare reform; they are less divided than in Chicago '68; Hillary Clinton shrewdly repackaged herself as a devoted wife and mother; and Gore is the heir apparent. The New York Times' "enigma" story broke new ground with an extended metaphor based on Clinton's membership in his high-school band: neither a geeky loner nor a popular football star.

Palestinian-Israeli tensions escalated. Palestinians shut down their economy for half a day at the urging of Yasser Arafat, who called Israel's expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and its demolition of an Arab community center in East Jerusalem a "declaration of war on the Palestinian people." Arafat also exhorted Palestinians to flout travel restrictions by congregating at an East Jerusalem mosque. An aide to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called Arafat "a tyrant and a corrupt leader," and the New York Times warned that Arafat's threats "will only reinforce many Israelis' doubts about his commitment to nonviolent politics." But Israeli commentators chided Netanyahu for his "arrogance" and "thickheadedness" in fraying relations with the Palestinians.

Saturn Corp., a division of General Motors, announced it will market an electric car beginning in early November. The car has a maximum speed of 80 mph and can travel only 90 miles between charges. The Los Angeles Times described it as "teardrop-shaped," "sleek," "zippy," and "sporty." It costs $35,000, though the first models will only be leased. Honda will sell a fancier electric car next year; Chrysler, Ford, Toyota, and Nissan are designing less ambitious models. The New York Times immediately punctured the hype, calling the electric car a "dubious social investment" because economists say it won't reduce pollution much and that its batteries will "release dangerous lead into the air, water and land."

Twenty-year-old golf prodigy Tiger Woods left college to turn pro. Analysts likened him to Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, Arthur Ashe, Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, and Jackie Robinson, citing his three U.S. amateur titles and his ethnic background (African American, American Indian, Chinese, and Thai). The Los Angeles Times reported that Woods "began playing [golf] at the age of six months." Woods signed a five-year endorsement deal with Nike, reportedly worth $40 million. The media emphasized Woods' value as a tool of sports marketing; sports marketers emphasized his value based on popularity with the media. "Even if he turns out to be a total bust, he might make $75 million or so before anyone figures it out," wrote Washington Post columnist Michael Wilbon. As in other sports, critics complained that the unproven, mediagenic rookie was getting more endorsement money than were the world's best players.

Politicians turned up the heat on pedophiles. President Clinton established a nationwide database to track convicted sex offenders. California legislators passed a bill to require "chemical castration" (periodic injections to inhibit the sex drive) of twice-convicted child molesters. The ACLU complained that the bill endangered "the right to procreate," but the bill's supporters cited pedophiles' high rate of recidivism and the demonstrated efficacy of castration in reducing it. Meanwhile, the deaths of two girls in Belgium led to an investigation of what is apparently an international pedophile ring, and delegates from 130 countries met in Sweden to call for a crackdown on child pornography and prostitution, which have been flourishing in southeast Asia and Africa and are spreading in Eastern Europe.

Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan tangled with the U.S. government over a $1 billion humanitarian award allegedly bestowed on him by Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi. The Treasury Department told Farrakhan he could not accept the gift, citing the U.S. ban on financial transactions with Libya due to its complicity in terrorism. Farrakhan promised to sue and said he would use the money to help poor Americans hurt by the new welfare-reform law. Critics doubted Libya could afford the gift and suggested Qaddafi was counting on the United States to quash it.

Four women cadets began training at The Citadel, the formerly all-male military college in South Carolina. The Citadel's chairman distinguished the new cadets from last year's failed female cadet, Shannon Faulkner: "They're not coming in as plaintiffs." Unlike Faulkner, the four women are top-notch athletes with better stamina than most male freshmen. They survived the first three days of fitness drills while five male cadets dropped out. The male dropout rate was lower than last year; a Citadel spokesman speculated that the male cadets refused to give up before their female classmates did. In other notable comments on women's physical abilities, New England Patriots football coach Bill Parcells was rebuked by the team's owner for referring to a player as "she," and GOP Chairman Haley Barbour said that a fistfight between a Republican Convention delegate and Clinton advisor George Stephanopoulos would be fair only if the delegate were a woman.

Prince Charles and Princess Diana were officially divorced, ending a tattered marriage that had "created the greatest crisis of public confidence in the British monarchy since the abdication of Edward VIII" in 1936 (Washington Post). They agreed to joint custody of their two sons. Diana will get at least $22 million and a $620,000 annual subsidy for her Kensington Palace office. Charles was spied weekending with his purported mistress, Camilla Parker Bowles. British gossip turned to the question of whether Charles will marry her. In a Gallup poll, churchgoers and clergy opposed the idea. "Bed Her Don't Wed Her," advised the Sun. As part of the divorce agreement, commoners are no longer required to bow or curtsy to Diana.

Judges in South Korea sentenced one former president to death and another to 22 years in jail for their roles in a 1979 coup and 1980 massacre of protesters. Commentators declared it a cleansing of the nation's sordid past; the Wall Street Journal called it "as epochal as President Nixon's fall." The Nixon analogy proved apt, as analysts wagered that Korea's current president, Kim Young Sam, would pardon the two men or reduce their sentences in the name of national healing.

Television lurched into its fall season. Several networks pulled sitcoms days before they were to air, then rewrote, recast, and reshot them. CBS first postponed, then announced the premiere of Ink (now set for Oct. 21), starring Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen. On NBC's Suddenly Susan, the lead character's job and the setting were changed, and every actor was replaced except the star, Brooke Shields. The New York Times cited three reasons for all this: the high prices networks have paid for the shows; the excess of shows in production (due in part to competition from start-up networks UPN and WB); and a shortage of experienced producers. Two shows are expected to do well: CBS'Cosby and ABC's Spin City, featuring Michael J. Fox as a George Stephanopoulos clone.

The fall book season also began. Great Books, by film critic David Denby, and The Last Thing He Wanted, Joan Didion's first novel since 1984, received mostly favorable reviews. Denby's book, in which he describes a year spent reading the classics at Columbia University, was called "a lively adventure of the mind" by novelist Joyce Carol Oates in the New York Times Book Review and "rather garrulous but pleasing" by critic Frank Kermode in the New York Review of Books. In the Wall Street Journal, however, critic Donald Lyons deemed the work "too verbose and meandering and at $30, too stiffly priced to work as a sort of Cliff Notes." Also in the Journal, James Wolcott expressed qualified disappointment at Didion's novel, a Central American intrigue, saying it "ends up fishing around for a handkerchief to dab away its own Hollywood tears." But Richard Eder of Newsday and the Los Angeles Times called it "a moral thriller on the order of one of Graham Greene's entertainments."

--Compiled by William Saletan and the editors of S LATE.

Photograph of Tiger Woods by J.D. Cuban/Allsport USA. Other photos from Reuters.