- By William Saletan - Slate Magazine

HOME / the week/the spin: The week's big news, and how's it's being spun.

By William SaletanPosted Saturday, July 6, 1996, at 3:30 AM ET

(Posted Friday, July 5)

Boris Yeltsin's commanding victory over his Communist challenger, Gennady Zyuganov, in the Russian presidential contest produced "great sighs of relief" (the Washington Post's Lee Hockstader) from political leaders and the media. But the New York Times' banner headline put the second-day spin on the first-day story: "Health Issue Looms for 2d Term." Yeltsin's health quickly emerged as the story as he appeared only briefly behind a phalanx of bodyguards on Election Day. The self-proclaimed "semi-democrat" tendencies of Alexander Lebed, Yeltsin's former rival and now putative successor, came under scrutiny. ("If in his new post as security overseer he can reduce crime, well and good. But Mr. Yeltsin will have to watch his back," cautioned the Economist.) Another media theme was the newfound subservience of the Russian mainstream media, which campaigned openly for Yeltsin and concealed evidence of his recent illness.

Bob Dole re-ignited talk of his "dark side" after engaging NBC interviewer Katie Couric in an argument about whether tobacco is addictive. Dole told Couric: "You [the media] may be violating the FEC regulations by always sticking up for the Democrats and advertising their line on your show." Dole spokesman Nelson Warfield later explained: "I think he was using irony." The spat made front pages everywhere. The Washington Post called Dole "testy and defensive"; the New York Times called the exchange "tense and contentious." Under the subhead, "Supporters are baffled by his stance," USA Today noted Dole aides' chagrin that their candidate had rekindled an issue harmful to his political health. By Thursday, a New York Times editorial was calling Dole "increasingly surly," and the Post front-page headline declared, "In Tobacco Flare-Up, Echoes of the Old Dole."

A dozen members of Arizona's Viper Militia were arrested by federal agents and charged with plotting to attack government offices in Phoenix. Agents also confiscated assault rifles and bomb-making materials--including ammonium nitrate, an ingredient in the Oklahoma City bomb. The early spin was portentous: Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms Director John Magaw told ABC's Good Morning America, "Terrorism has come to the United States." The Los Angeles Times grimly intoned: "The largest number of arrests of self-styled militia members in the nation's modern history suggested that anti-government activists continue to pose a threat to public safety." Officials found no links to factions or incidents outside Arizona, but the BATF, much maligned for previous militia encounters, earned a hug of relief and gratitude from the New York Times for "mov[ing] swiftly to infiltrate, indict and this week disarm" the group.

NASA awarded Lockheed Martin a $1 billion contract to produce a prototype of a new space transport vehicle for the nation's first new rocket ship in 25 years. The agency's claims about the vehicle's potential, accompanied by Vice President Gore's lyrics ("We set sail for the future," "the next chapter in America's ride to new worlds"), were reported with much excitement by the major dailies. Remarks on the aesthetics of the new design were less flattering. The Wall Street Journal said it "looks like a fat wedge"; the Washington Post cited its "stubby little wings."

The impending International Conference on AIDS (opening July 7 in Vancouver) inspired several reviews of the latest progress in fighting the disease. The Wednesday Wall Street Journal detailed the "three-drug cocktail" treatment for AIDS that seems more efficacious than others and focused on the follow-up story: Who will bear the therapy's cost of $12,000 to $16,000 a year? The Journal calculated that supplying this treatment to half of all infected Americans might cost $6 billion a year, and therefore is "certain to raise anew the question of how far the nation is willing to go to care for many of its sickest, especially those who live on society's fringes."

The Supreme Court's term ended, and the annual reviews commenced. Labels were out: USA Today's headline shrugged, "High court's zigzag term defies political labels." The Los Angeles Times' David Savage warned, "Forget the usual labels." The New York Times' Linda Greenhouse mused, "This was a term with not one theme, but many." Still, Greenhouse found a common thread between the court's ostensibly conservative rulings on race-based remedies and its ostensibly liberal rulings on gay rights and sex discrimination: "The Court displayed a deep mistrust of Government efforts to classify people." Savage essentially concurred, construing the court's principle as "strict equal treatment under law."

The feces-borne parasite cyclospora cayetanensis struck consumers of fresh berries, causing more than 1,000 cases of diarrhea, vomiting, fever, and weight loss in 11 states and Canada. Florida health officials cited a "strong association" between Guatemalan raspberries and the outbreak, thereby setting the stage for another debate about the safety of foreign produce. But because no contaminated fruit was identified--and because other reports trickled in blaming blackberries and blueberries, as well as California strawberries--the story exhausted itself within the week.

FBI Director Louis Freeh went to Saudi Arabia to monitor the Dharhan bombing investigation, as the Republicans began to make an issue of inadequate security. Other bombing follow-up angles included rumors of complicity by other countries (Washington Post: "Syrian Link Probed in Saudi Blast"; Washington Times: "Iran's hand seen in wave of Saudi terror"). Editorialists at the Post and the Los Angeles Times instructed that the United States extract more security cooperation from the Saudis. But Cooler Heads also had their say. A Page One analysis in the Wall Street Journal challenged the myth of a "world-wide jihad." Foreign-policy sages Thomas Friedman of the New York Times and Jim Hoagland of the Post both identified the real problem as America's "druglike reliance on cheap energy."

Filegate continued. Republican Rep. William Clinger reported that bouncer-turned-White House personnel security director Craig Livingstone had been a "senior consultant to counterevent operations" in the 1992 Clinton campaign. Most dailies made light of the disclosure, describing Livingstone's operations (sending people in chicken suits and Pinocchio costumes to make trouble at Bush-campaign events) as "heckling" and "pranks." But on Independence Day, the Washington Times reported that House Counsel Bernard J. Nussbaum had ordered 150 longtime White House employees to fill out questionnaires asking about their political proclivities, and the New York Times disclosed that the employees were instructed to send the forms to Livingstone. The New York Times editorial page berated the administration, writing, "Is our belief in motiveless incompetence expansive enough to account for the most egregious tampering with the FBI in 20 years?"

Independence Day, scheduled to open Wednesday, opened Tuesday instead--and was a stunning box-office success. The alien-invasion film sold out in more than 1,600 theaters and earned $11 million in a single night, prompting the Los Angeles Times to invent a new category in film history: most lucrative "pre-opening" night (the film's "official" opening remained Wednesday). Critics (including ours) generally delighted in its unabashed patriotism and old-fashioned cheesy effects. "Phenomenon," a movie starring a telepathic John Travolta, opened Wednesday to less enthusiastic reviews. Time and Newsweek diagnosed both films as evidence of resurgent paranoia in American pop culture. Time's David Ansen attributed the sentiment to technophobia, Newsweek's Rick Marin to millenarianism and thwarted spiritual longings.

Nancy Friday's new book, The Power of Beauty, was published by HarperCollins. Marketed as an answer to critics of beauty such as Naomi Wolf, the book met with generally incredulous reviews. In Time, Wendy Wasserstein observed that it made any female reader who is less confident of her own looks than Friday "very self-conscious." In the New York Times Book Review, Larissa MacFarquhar called it "a hymn to genitalia, a j'accuse aimed at prissy mothers, a paean to the adorableness of men and a plea for the return of the codpiece." The most noted passage of the book was Friday's revelation that she and her husband, Time Inc. Editor in Chief Norman Pearlstine, own a pair of men's shoes with a pink penis painted on each foot, and two large pompoms attached.

E-MAIL

RECOMMEND... Get Slate RSS Feeds

William Saletan is Slate's national correspondent and author of Bearing Right: How Conservatives Won the Abortion War. Follow him on Twitter here.