Vice President Al Gore is doing his part to protect President Clinton from impeachment. The new Gore strategy apparently calls for Gore to be as annoying as possible, thereby reminding congressional decisionmakers of the potential cost of removing Clinton from office. Gore initiated his campaign last week, when he announced plans to spend $20 to $50 million in taxpayers’ money to implement a midnight brainstorm of his: Putting a continuous, live image of planet Earth, as seen from space, on the Internet! NASA chief Daniel Goldin has been dragooned into supporting Gore’s goo-goo caprice. As John Pike, director of the space policy project at the Federation of American Scientists, told Elizabeth Shogren of the Los Angeles Times: “The Earth is big and the weather is slow, so it’s not like there is perceptible motion. It is about as exciting as watching the grass grow.” Sort of like watching the vice president himself! … Gore continued his scare campaign by phoning Washington Post Executive Editor Len Downie to complain that a photo the Post had run of the big-blue-marble Earth was upside down! Only after Gore hung up did Downie realize that there is no “right side up” or “upside down” when you are looking at a sphere from outer space … Gore’s campaign appears to be highly effective, as Clinton’s approval ratings have kept rising despite new and dramatic sex charges. … Chatterbox, calling on its extensive network of insider contacts, has learned details of future components of the still-secret GoreBore initiative, which will include: A national campaign to convert football fields to the metric system; a Global Engineering Olympics to be televised during halftime of the NCAA championship basketball game; a gigantic Temple of Science to be built on the Mall in Washington, featuring animatronic demographers discussing overpopulation; and a proposal to have “students of the world … gather and study environmental information on a daily basis and communicate that data to the world through television.” … And everyone will wear their underwear on the outside, so we can check! …. Actually, that last bit about having students gather daily environmental information isn’t phony. It’s genuine Gorebore …
QUID PRO QUO?60 Minutes sure pulled out all the stops on Sunday to make Kathleen Willey look good. The black-and-white photograph of Nathan Landow, the developer who allegedly pressured Willey to keep quiet, made him look like a vicious psychopath. The photo of Julie Steele, who says Willey told her to lie, made her look as if she’d just tried out a vacuum cleaner on her abundant graying hair. … All this may be part of the implicit deal 60 Minutes strikes with an important source like Willey. But viewers should be warned. … Chatterbox knows how this game is played, mister! … CBS’s Ed Bradley conducted a similarly kid-gloved interview with Anita Hill during the Clarence Thomas mess … Bradley’s worst sin last Sunday? He brought out that Willey knew Clinton had the hots for her from an earlier incident when then-candidate Clinton had asked her to bring some chicken soup to his room. But then Bradley neglected to ask the obvious question: since Willey was aware of Clinton’s interest, wasn’t she hoping to use her sexual attraction to help her get the paying White House job she desperately needed? Willey might easily have answered the question–she might have even said, “Yes, but I didn’t expect him to jump me right there in the Oval Office”–without undermining her story. But it would have been nice if Bradley had asked …
INTO THE VOID: If Bradley almost flunked Journalism 101, Paula Jones’ lawyers definitely flunked PR 101. What possessed them to release their 700-page trove of anti-Clinton documents on a Friday? Doesn’t every sentient American know by now that Friday is when you release news you want to bury, because Friday news gets reported in the little-read Saturday papers? … When Chatterbox reveals what it did in the ‘60s, you can bet it will be on a Friday! …
