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| Michael Irvin |
A woman accused Dallas Cowboys wide receiver Michael Irvin of holding a gun to her head while teammate Erik Williams and another man allegedly raped her Dec. 29. Dallas police openly discussed the evidence and said the players might be charged within two days. The national media pondered star-athlete megalomania, Dallas decadence, and the general collapse of morality. Given the players' prior records (Irvin is on probation for felony cocaine possession; Williams reportedly escaped a previous sexual-assault charge by settling out of court), columnists demanded their ouster from the team and savaged Cowboys owner Jerry Jones for waiting to see if they were guilty. Then Irvin's lawyer said he had an alibi witness, and the accuser's estranged husband suggested that she had a habit of falsely crying rape. The police, chastened, stopped leaking evidence and theories against Irvin and started leaking evidence and theories against his accuser. Within two days, the press was in full retreat and revision, debating whether the players were victims of a rush to judgment, à la Richard Jewell, and the police were the true villains. (Jan. 1 headlines: "Opposites Who Attract Trouble," "Cowboys Should Ban Irvin Now" [the New York Times ]. Jan. 3 headlines: "No Evidence Links Irvin to Alleged Crime Scene" [the Washington Post ]; "No Arrests for Now, Police Tell Cowboys" [the New York Times ].) (posted 1/4) | | Newt Gingrich is rounding up votes for his re-election as House speaker Jan. 7. The New York Times says that at least 27 Republicans have refused to commit to him. But only one Republican has firmly committed not to support him. Democrats are trying to drag out the House Ethics Committee's deliberations to boost media coverage and public disgust with Gingrich. Republicans are retaliating by leaking word that the committee will exonerate Gingrich, since this rumor encourages GOP lawmakers to stand by him and get the vote over with. Pundits pleaded that lawmakers shouldn't treat the vote as a partisan showdown but conceded that they almost certainly will. The latest reports indicate Gingrich will be dealt only a reprimand, allowing him to win re-election; but nobody thinks the controversy will end there. (posted 1/4) |
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| Pacific Northwest flood damage |
Nature continued to punish the Pacific Northwest. After two massive snowstorms, heavy rain and melting snow have caused floods, mudslides, sinkholes, and at least 11 deaths. While local newspaper coverage has generally been self-pitying, the comfortably faraway New York Times responded with Schadenfreude, likening the Northwest's woes to biblical plagues ("We finally got our natural disaster, as if it were coming to us," conceded a Seattle coffee server) and reporting that "some Northwesterners" confess to a "sheltered, even slightly wimpy quality in their approach to the extremes of nature."(posted 1/4) | | The Democratic campaign-finance scandal expanded while tightening around President Clinton. Among the latest revelations: Democratic fund-raiser Charles Trie got Clinton to meet with a rogue Chinese arms merchant at the White House. A Thai businesswoman and several associates with investment interests in China met with Clinton at the White House to discuss China policy, a day before she forked over an illegal $85,000 check to the Democratic Party. A White House aide, Doris Matsui, was included (illegally, if true) in an Asian-American political fund-raising committee headed by John Huang. The new disclosures emboldened major newspapers to sharpen their portrayal of Clinton as a central participant in the sale of presidential access to foreign contributors. Pundits agreed there is still no evidence of a policy quid pro quo, but the Los Angeles Times pointedly compared Clinton's pre-election withholding of information on the scandal to the Watergate cover-up that led to President Nixon's resignation. William Safire suggested that the whole affair might actually be a Communist Chinese espionage plot. (posted 1/4) |
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| Assailant restrained |
An Israeli soldier with a record of mental illness fired into an Arab marketplace in Hebron without provocation, wounding seven civilians. The soldier was wrestled down by a fellow officer and later explained that he wanted to thwart Israel's troop withdrawal from Hebron. The attack did not provoke riots and further bloodshed, in part because the soldier was a lousy shot and failed to kill anyone, and in part because Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expeditiously phoned Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to condemn the shooting. The short-term question was how such a nut got drafted into the Israeli army; the long-term question was whether the attack would convince Israelis that their own right-wing settlers are a greater threat to peace and security than the Palestinians are. (posted 1/4) | | Straws in the wind: To the mystification of beach-goers, the U.S. government is proposing regulations to protect sharks from depletion by fishermen. The Wall Street Journal says marshmallows are the new rage in fancy restaurants. Year-end figures show the murder rate continued falling in 1996; among the factors cited are gun-control laws, more criminals locked away in prison, and more cops on the beat. The New York Times reports that debutante balls are coming back. A study finds promise in a new therapy for impotence: a drug pellet that is inserted into the man's urethra. (Fewer than one in 40 men in the study backed out due to the pain.) An official of the American Names Society says parents have stopped naming their daughters "Hillary" since 1992. Sales of tobacco pipes are booming; the pipe industry hopes to capitalize on--and supplant--cigar chic, but the Wall Street Journal says skeptics still consider pipes "tweedy and prissy."(posted 1/4) |
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| The NCAA football season concluded with its annual series of bowls. Third-ranked Florida whipped top-ranked Florida State in the Sugar Bowl, earning consensus recognition as national champions. In the Rose Bowl, fourth-ranked Ohio State beat second-ranked Arizona State--hitherto the nation's only undefeated team--muting college-football pundits' annual debate over 1) which of the various bowl winners was really the best and 2) whether to scrap the bowl system in favor of a tournament that would produce an undisputed champion. The Rose Bowl's hero was Ohio State backup quarterback Joe Germaine, who played high-school ball in Arizona but was snubbed by Arizona State as a recruiting prospect and earned his revenge by leading Ohio State to its winning touchdown in the final seconds. The chief controversy behind the Sugar Bowl was whether Florida State had tried to injure star Florida quarterback Danny Wuerffel with late hits in a previous game, or whether Florida coach Steve Spurrier was a wimp for complaining about it. Wuerffel was hardly touched in the bowl rematch and, after running up the score in the final minutes, gave all the credit to Jesus Christ. (posted 1/4) |
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| The American media decided that the Tupac Amaru guerrillas holding hostages at the Japanese Embassy in Lima, Peru, aren't so bad after all. Each day brings a new hostage release (only 83 of the original 400 or so remain). The guerrillas are modifying their demands and have stopped threatening to kill the remaining captives any time soon. Newspaper reports increasingly tout the guerrillas as reasonable fellows (in contrast to the rival Shining Path rebel movement), while portraying Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori as snappish, aloof, pugnacious, and intransigent. The Los Angeles Times and Washington Post turned their attention to the Peruvian government's "draconian" treatment of the guerrillas' jailed comrades. The New York Times faulted Fujimori for neglecting the poor and called the guerrillas' hostage-taking raid "quaint, even evocative" of "revolutionary crusades of days gone by." Everyone now expects a peaceful resolution of the standoff. (posted 12/31) |
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| This year's post-Christmas toy horror story is the Cabbage Patch Snack Time Kid doll. Designed to munch plastic french fries and lacking an on-off switch, the doll has reportedly devoured the hair of at least six girls since Christmas. In some cases, medical personnel were called in to subdue the doll or cut the child free. "Doll Goes Haywire, Chews Hair," screamed the Associated Press. A Mattel spokeswoman insisted the munchings were "isolated incidents."(posted 12/31) |
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| "Ebonics," a program authorized by the Oakland school board to train teachers to recognize black English as a second language, triggered a national uproar. "Ax" would be translated as "ask"; "I be," as "I am." Much of the debate mirrors the bilingual education controversy: Critics say ebonics would impede kids from learning the proper English necessary to succeed professionally; defenders say kids' native patois would merely be a basis for learning proper English. The school board added to the controversy by claiming--contrary to much scholarship--that ebonics is "genetically based" on African dialects. Conservatives pounced on ebonics as Afrocentrism and multiculturalism run amok. At first, established black leaders and pundits (including Jesse Jackson) also denounced it as self-segregation and "teaching down." Cynics speculated that ebonics was just a scheme to get federal bilingual education money; the Clinton administration quickly ruled that out. Eventually, Jackson backed off and endorsed "building a bridge" to jive-speaking kids, while other black pundits began to complain that the program had been cavalierly dismissed and caricatured. (posted 12/31) |
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| Alexander Lebed |
Former Russian national security chief Alexander Lebed announced that he is launching a new political party to challenge "the extreme right and the extreme left"--the Communists on one hand and President Boris Yeltsin's "democratic apparatchiks" on the other. The announcement was widely viewed as a de facto declaration of Lebed's presidential candidacy for 2000. Analysts agreed that he is still the country's most beloved politician and can exploit popular yearning for a return to order without tyranny. But he trails two other would-be Yeltsin successors--Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin and Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov--in raising money and building a political organization. (posted 12/31) | | California Rep. Bob Dornan gained some measure of vindication for blaming his Nov. 5 defeat on illegal votes cast by Hispanic noncitizens. The Los Angeles Times reported that a Latino civil-rights group had indeed evidently recruited not-yet-naturalized residents to vote against Dornan. He lost by 984 votes; the Times verified only 19 illegal votes in the entire county--including his district. (posted 12/31) |
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| Photograph of Michael Irvin by Michael Mulvey/Reuters; photograph of flood damage by Jeff Vinnick/Reuters; photograph of Israeli soldiers by Nayef Hashlamoun/Reuters; photograph of Alexander Lebed by Yuri Gripas/Reuters |
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--Compiled by William Saletan and the editors of S LATE.
