- 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 Tuesday, June 25, 1996, at 3:30 AM ET

Bob Woodward's new book, The Choice, reports that Hillary Clinton, under the guidance of a New Age guru, had imaginary conversations, out loud, with Eleanor Roosevelt and Gandhi. The conversations occurred during a meeting at the White House. Excerpts from Woodward's book appeared Sunday in Newsweek and the Washington Post, and quickly became Topic A. Emerging subthemes: Is this as silly as Nancy Reagan's astrologer? (Early consensus: no.) Will this be more damaging than the FBI files story? (Early consensus: no.)

The key development regarding White House acquisition of FBI background files was perceptual: It became a certified scandal. Any thought that it might fade away was vanquished. The week began with R.W. Apple declaring in the Sunday, June 16, New York Times, "This is no Watergate. Still ... it does not smell good." The Washington Post ran three hard-hitting editorials in four days. It brushed aside President Clinton's initial "bureaucratic snafu" explanation and his subsequent apology: "It is not good enough for people in the White House simply to profess that they are outraged too." By week's end, congressional Democrats (e.g., Sen. Joe Biden) and pro-Clinton pundits were distancing themselves. (Jack Germond of The McLaughlin Group retracted his earlier defense.) In factual developments, Whitewater independent counsel Kenneth Starr declined jurisdiction, Attorney General Reno asked the FBI to investigate, then said she would try to get Starr to change his mind.

The 800-page Senate Whitewater Committee Report accused Hillary Clinton of impeding the investigation of the Vincent Foster suicide. The Senate Democrats' own 400-page minority report insists that the investigation had pinned no wrongdoing on the first lady. The New York Times editorial page wasn't buying the Dems' apologia, writing that "the full truth has not been told," and though "neither side delivered a knockout legal punch, the Republicans scored more debating points" with their "paper trail of suspicious behavior." Meanwhile in Little Rock, Whitewater Prosecutor Starr's office named Deputy White House Counsel Bruce Lindsey as an "unindicted co-conspirator" in a bank-fraud case.

The winner of Russia's first-round presidential election? Alexander Lebed. True, Lebed came in third behind President Boris Yeltsin and Communist Party chief Gennady Zyuganov. But attention quickly turned from relief at Yeltsin's survival to the surprisingly strong showing by the retired law-and-order general, who was granted Colin Powell-like status as the man most wanted to build a winning ticket. By snaring Lebed's endorsement with an appointment as chief of his security council, Yeltsin "may have hit a political gusher," opined the New York Times. The editorial described Lebed as first in war and first in peace: He resigned last year in protest over Yeltsin's Chechnya offensive, and yet is a top cop who could "help restore order" in the country. Later in the week--amid rumors of a coup-in-the-making--Yeltsin purged three "hard-liners" to improve his chances in the runoffs.

The Likud party's Benjamin Netanyahu took office as Israel's prime minister. How would Israel's conservative prime minister move to consolidate his tenuous May 29 electoral victory? He infuriated hard-liners in his party by denying an important cabinet post to Gen. Ariel Sharon, then capitulated and created a new one for him. Meanwhile the American press began its inevitable remake of the extremist candidate (often paired with Zyuganov) into the statesmanlike statesman. "Some fear [the road ahead] is simply dark, for others it is simply ambiguous," as Time put it mid-month, relying on the classic "threat-or-menace" formulation. But by Thursday--pointing to Netanyahu's appointment of some moderates, and his pledge to "search for genuine peace with all our neighbors"--the New York Times editorial page praised him for a "reassuring start."

Estimates of Sumitomo Corp.'s losses in the London copper markets, thanks to rogue trader Yasuo Hamanaka, rose from $1.8 billion to a possible $4 billion, reported the Financial Times. Even $1.8 billion (as a useful Newsweek chart pointed out last week) puts Sumitomo ahead of Barings ($1.3 billion), BCCI ($1 billion), and Orange County ($1.7 billion) in the dishonor roll of Grand Guignol bankruptcies.

More burnings of Southern black churches prompted the Clinton administration to seek wider federal authority to investigate. Four angles emerged from this continuing story. 1) Generalized hand-wringing. 2) Will all the attention lead to copycat crimes? 3) Clinton's role. Everyone agrees this kind of occasion brings out the president's rhetorical talents. Opinion divides on whether this makes him "presidential" or "exploitative." (Combining Nos. 2 and 3, Newsweek warned that "too much crusading by this president could prompt even more arsons by the loose cannons of the ultraright.") 4) Christian Coalition leader Ralph Reed's offer to help--and his apology for white evangelicals having been on "the wrong side" of the civil rights movement.

Underplayed: President Clinton said in a radio address, "I have vivid memories of black churches being burned in my own state when I was a child." But according to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, there is no record of any black churches being burned in Arkansas. Only the ferociously anti-Clinton Wall Street Journal editorial page and right-wing columnist Cal Thomas have picked this up, so far.

The government shut down ValuJet and forced air-safety czar Anthony J. Broderick to resign. Transportation Secretary Pea said the FAA would give up its traditional role as a promoter of aviation and concentrate exclusively on safety. Follow-up stories on the crash took turns blaming the company and the agency, with stories about the low-cost carrier's poor maintenance record and the safety standards of the FAA itself. The New York Times disclosed (Page One) that ValuJet knowingly flew jets that were in disrepair. Buried inside the Times Business section was a report that ValuJet's shutdown might lead to fare hikes of 70 percent to 100 percent on some routes. At the end of the week, the FAA made Kiwi International Airlines ground four of its 15 Boeing 727s, citing poor pilot training and lack of personnel.

American trade warriors faced down their Chinese counterparts in round-the-clock sessions, threatening $2 billion in trade sanctions unless China agreed to rout its video, CD, and software pirates. China signed the anti-piracy pact, promising to police intellectual property violations and shutter 15 factories that produced bootleg media, just moments before a Tuesday deadline. "United States officials" hyped the trade-peace talks as a Clinton foreign-policy success. But USA Today and the Wall Street Journal shrugged. "China essentially agreed to make all of these improvements to its enforcement of intellectual-property piracy last year, but to no avail," the Journal wrote.

As the Chicago Bulls rolled up the best record for regular-season play in NBA history, sports pages across the country proclaimed them the "Greatest Team of All Time." The hype continued as Michael Jordan & Co. grabbed a 3-0 lead over the Seattle Supersonics. Los Angeles Times columnist Mike Downey called Chicago "better than the 1927 New York Yankees ... better than the 1972 Miami Dolphins." But two Seattle victories quickly reversed the spin: Even famed Bulls devotee and Washington Post columnist Michael Wilbon admitted that Chicago was a "tired, old team." Chicago's Game Six triumph only partly restored the team's superlatives. The Post hinted that the Bulls were "not a team for the ages"; USA Today labeled them only "one of the greatest teams"; the Los Angeles Times demoted the Bulls to "history's most memorable team, if perhaps, only one of its best." The Sonics' boosters at the Seattle Times delivered the sharpest assessment, dubbing the Bulls merely "this season's best team."

By the end of its second week, the question about The Rosie O'Donnell Show was: Will it merely transform daytime TV beyond recognition, or conquer late-night too? The show earned the highest first-day ratings of any talk show in the 1990s. The critics' theme: This is a return to the golden age of nice, decent guys like Mike Douglas and Merv Griffin. Howard Rosenberg of the Los Angeles Times made the point oddly, calling O'Donnell the "antichrist" of today's sleazy daytime talk shows. The Washington Post's Tom Shales even took the occasion to pick on nice Regis and Kathy Lee, which he called "daily episodes of The Kathie Lee Gifford Defense Fund." Only Newsday's Marvin Kitman halfheartedly panned the newcomer, saying O'Donnell was "too good to be a talk-show host." New York Times TV reporter Bill Carter reported that Jay Leno and David Letterman both considered O'Donnell briefly to be guest host when they went on vacation--then decided not to take vacations. O'Donnell is now their heiress apparent.

Ella Fitzgerald died. She was praised for having turned the tunes of Gershwin, Cole Porter, et al., into the universally recognized classics they are today. (Or Rogers and Hart, as in this snippet from "It Never Entered My Mind," in one of the legendary Verve Songbook collections from the 1950s.) She "almost single-handedly elevated the American popular song to the status of art in the tradition of Italian bel canto and German leider," wrote Richard Harrington in the Washington Post. What was earlier seen as a flaw--her failure to attain the tormented depths of a Billie Holiday--became, in death, her greatest asset. The New York Times' Frank Rich wrote: "Unlike pop icons from Sinatra to Madonna, Fitzgerald didn't turn her private life into a melodramatic sideshow for public consumption."

The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Disney's annual animated kid's movie (with a $40 million tag), went head-to-head Friday with Warner Bros.' Eraser, the latest Schwarzenegger action-adventure film, which cost $110 million. Variety called the summer competition between movie studios "the most ferocious on record." Hunchback's reviews were mixed. Entertainment Weekly fretted that Hunchback's lust-crazed, murderous villain and sexy Gypsy might scare children away with too much sex and violence and too "heavy a sense of social injustice." But Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times called it "the most satisfyingly dark and adult of the Disney versions." The critics at the New York Times strongly disagreed. Janet Maslin dismissed the film as a "feel-good movie," and Paul Goldberger went so far as to declare that the animation of the Victor Hugo classic constituted a dangerous assault on high culture by "a maw that grinds all in its path into a form of commercial entertainment." As for Eraser, most critics panned it. Dave Kehr of the New York Daily News said it marks the "abrupt, unpleasant end" of "[t]he era of Arnold Schwarzenegger as light comedian." Turan said the actor "tries his hardest to look formidable, forbidding, and stern, ... but what he mostly looks is tired." Meanwhile, hype soared for John Sayles' latest film, Lone Star. Maslin called the film "a great, stirring epic" with a "scope and overview rarely attempted in American film today." Comparisons of Sayles' border drama to the three classics of Texan life--Giant, The Last Picture Show, and Touch of Evil--are becoming routine.

Underplayed: A scoop by Phil Kuntz and Glenn R. Simpson buried on Page 3 of Tuesday's Wall Street Journal. Financial disclosure statements filed by members of Congress revealed that Sen. Fred Thompson, Rep. John LaFalce, and the husband of Rep. Nancy Pelosi all earned at least $5,000 last year from investing in "hot IPOs." Although the members denied having received special treatment from their brokers, it is nearly impossible for the ordinary investor to get into these "sure thing" stocks.

Underplayed: On Page 14 of Publishers Weekly, a possible new novel by Charlotte Bront. An Edinburgh bookseller says that a book published in 1890 by Mary Taylor, Bront's childhood friend, is actually by the author of Jane Eyre. Scholars mock the claim, calling the book second-rate and pointing out that the only evidence is a computer analysis done by a spell-checker program. But Random House U.S. reportedly is offering a six-figure sum to republish the work, along with a Luddite tract the bookseller also attributes to Bront. PW notes that Random House's London office is "less than enthusiastic" about the books.

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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.