- 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, June 29, 1996, at 3:30 AM ET

(Posted Friday, June 28; updated Monday, July 1)

Former FBI agent Gary Aldrich's book about the Clinton White House was showcased in the partisan press Friday. The Wall Street Journal editorial page excerpted Aldrich's claims that youthful staffers and Machiavellian supervisors had turned the White House into Camp Runamok; the Washington Times went further and repeated Aldrich's story that Clinton sneaked out to the Marriott for sexual trysts. The press chased the story over the weekend, but the White House reversed the spin Sunday morning by dispatching George Stephanopoulos to face Aldrich down on This Week With David Brinkley. Stephanopoulos' performance helped reframe the "scandal" as a Republican smear, as he noted that the book's promoter, Craig Shirley, had worked as an adviser to Dole. Aldrich's credibility crumbled (Dateline and Larry King Live rescinded invitations to appear) as he conceded that the tryst allegation was only a "possibility."

A bomb blast in Saudi Arabia killed 19 American servicemen and injured almost 400. The major angle to emerge was the instability of the Saudi regime: King Fahd is very ill; the royal family is feuding about secession; religious militants are growing in influence; stagnant oil prices have alienated a middle class used to bottomless government bounty. (According to the Wall Street Journal, per-capita income has dropped from $14,000 a year to $4,000 since 1982.) Toward week's end, more specific questions were being raised about security at the military base in Dhahran where the bombing occurred. But an angle that has not emerged, so far, was any question about the U.S. commitment to keeping 5,000 troops in Saudi Arabia. Meanwhile, world oil prices remained steady, meaning that the market doubts any lasting crises. The Friday Journal predicted that gas prices at the pump would be at least 10 cents below spring's peak prices by September.

Hillary Clinton's imaginary conversations with Eleanor Roosevelt and Mahatma Gandhi were revealed Sunday, June 23, in Bob Woodward's new book, The Choice. By midweek, the story had puddled out in several directions. Human potential guru Jean Houston, who led these "seances" (the irresistible press label) took full advantage of her 15 minutes. But she also came under critical scrutiny: The New York Daily News reported that she had inflated her resume with a nonexistent Ph.D. from Columbia. Another angle was American soul-searching. The Washington Post devoted 1,800 words to the "Experience Industry." The surprise in the commentary was a degree of tolerance for Mrs. Clinton's new-age dabbling. Wendy Kaminer on the New York Times op-ed page: "The interest of both Mrs. Clinton and the president in spiritualism ... locates them exactly where they want to be: in the cultural mainstream." In the Boston Globe, Diane White: "Hillary was trying to get in touch with her inner Roosevelt. Is that really so strange? It's not as if she was trying to get in touch with her inner Elvis."

Campaign finance reform lost in Congress and the Supreme Court. The Senate killed a bipartisan effort to limit spending in congressional races, and the court ruled that the First Amendment prevents the government from limiting "independent" spending by political parties. "Two Defeats for Democracy," mourned a New York Times editorial. But the Wall Street Journal editorial declared: "What is excessive in politics is not the money spent." The Times' view is today's conventional wisdom, but the Journal view--that limits on campaign spending won't work, aren't necessary, and violate free speech--seems to have momentum. Campaign reform's chief Republican backer, Sen. John McCain, told USA Today that only a major scandal or another Ross Perot campaign would give political reform the push that Perot's 1992 campaign gave to budget-balancing.

Sprinter Michael Johnson shattered the 17-year-old 200-meter world record at the U.S. track-and-field trials, helping a grateful media to sustain the Olympics as a Page One story three weeks before the actual event. The U.S. gymnastics trials also helped. The spin: Judges may artificially lower scores to ensure that 1992 silver medalist Shannon Miller and 14-year-old media darling Dominique Moceanu, who are skipping the trials, make the team. "An Olympics without Miller and Moceanu? The chances are better that the NBC peacock will be caught in a love nest with Eddie the Eagle," wrote Boston Globe columnist Kevin Paul Dupont.

Richard Branson was anointed the new Ted Turner as his airline, Virgin Atlantic Airways, inaugurated its cut-rate London-Washington flights. This came just weeks after the British entrepreneur opened the world's largest music store, also named Virgin, in Times Square. And Branson has begun test-marketing of his Virgin Cola in Philadelphia. The Washington Post called the flamboyant Brit "as much pop icon as businessman ... the anti-Bill Gates." Time said that the "fun-seeking tycoon"--who's planning the first round-the-world balloon trip--"has an almost unerring ability to connect with consumers, especially younger ones."

President Clinton called for a constitutional amendment addressing the rights of crime victims. He offered no specifics. The dominant theme in the coverage was political: This is another example of Clinton pre-empting a Republican issue. "Is there really any need ... for amending the U.S. Constitution for this purpose, other than its political irresistibility?" asked a Washington Post editorial (answering itself in the negative).

The Communist menace ebbed in Russia as Communist Party chief and presidential candidate Gennadi A. Zyuganov ran out of money and floundered in the polls. In the Monday USA Today, Zyuganov warned of possible civil war, declaring, "The fatherland is in danger." But in the next day's New York Times, Zyuganov was said to be desperately positioning himself as the loyal opposition to Yeltsin, and his call for a coalition government was dismissed as spin control "by a party in trouble." Meanwhile, Yeltsin and his new political partner, Aleksandr I. Lebed, continued their purges of the old guard as seven top generals--some of them enemies of Lebed--were dismissed.

The Supreme Court declared, 8-1, that civil forfeiture in drug cases (expropriating cars and houses involved in drug deals) does not constitute double jeopardy. It also ruled, by a surprising 8-1, that Virginia Military Institute, as a state institution, cannot exclude women. The justices agreed to decide next term whether President Clinton could postpone the Paula Jones sexual-harassment suit until he leaves office. Since a lower court had ruled against Clinton, the effect of the Supreme Court action was to put off the suit until after the election. A frustrated Wall Street Journal editorial page published excerpts from Jones' two-year-old civil complaint under the headline, "Paula's Day in Court."

The number of FBI files improperly received by the White House approached 1,000. A House committee took Filegate testimony from Clinton security officers D. Craig Livingstone and Anthony Marceca. Democrats at the hearing dismissed the episode as a mistake born of negligence, while Republicans described it as a political intelligence mission, wrote the Los Angeles Times. At Thursday's hearing, Marceca took the Fifth Amendment. Filegate merged into Travelgate as the Senate Judiciary Committee held hearings on an FBI agent's allegation that White House aides pumped him for information on travel office workers before they were fired. A theme of the commentary was that a defense of incompetence is itself pretty telling.

"Was Winslow Homer the greatest American painter of the 19th century?' asked Time's art critic Robert Hughes. The Homer show, which opened last week at New York's Metropolitan Museum, became an occasion for art critics to answer "yes" about the formerly unfashionable painter. New York Times critic Michael Kimmelman: "If you harbor any doubts about whether Winslow Homer was the greatest painter America produced in the 19th century, the Homer show that has just arrived ... should dispel them." The Homer show was at the National Gallery in Washington for months last year, where it generated virtually no fuss. This partly because in D.C., Homer was overshadowed by the Vermeer blockbuster. But it's partly evidence that, even in 1996, a 19th century painter hasn't made it until he's made it in New York.

Two summer movies, Striptease and The Nutty Professor, opened Friday. The big question about The Nutty Professor was: Comeback for Eddy Murphy? The general answer of reviewers: yes. Murphy played against the "frenzied and unfocused energy that has made most of Mr. Murphy's recent comedies so tiresome," said the Wall Street Journal's Joe Morgenstern. Critics praised the sweetness of his obese, bumbling professor but attacked his alter ego as mean-spirited and Jim Carrey-esque. The questions for Demi Moore were: Was she worth her $12.5 million salary (no) and was her muscularity plausible (ditto). Striptease's unexpected darling: Ving Rhames, who according to Todd McCarthy at Variety "develops a vastly amusing character, at first seeming like a gruntingly one-note thug but ultimately emerging as quite a tough-guy wit."

O.J. Simpson hosted a fund-raiser to combat spousal abuse. Some African-American community groups applauded the effort to help the foundation, which combats spousal abuse and other violence. But the Los Angeles Times report prompted a flood of critical calls to local radio programs, and women's organizations labeled the event a "freak show" being held in a home with "blood on the floor," the Washington Post reported. Not one word of this story in the New York Times, as of Friday.

Underplayed: The American Medical Association suppressed a draft report that recommended the legalization of marijuana and the decriminalization of other drugs, reported the Sunday, June 23, New York Times. AMA officials shelved the report after doctors inside the association "expressed outrage" at its findings. Is marijuana legalization--perhaps like gay marriage--a cause whose stealthy progress is measured, rather than disproved, by periodic fusses against it?

Clarification: Last week's column should have credited the Washington Times with covering the "Underplayed" story on Clinton's mistaken memories about church burnings in Arkansas.

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