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Walter Shapiro and Jodi Kantor

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Hillary's Jesus Complex; Senior Sex

By Jodi Kantor
Posted Wednesday, Aug. 4, 1999, at 12:18 PM ET

Good Morning Walter,

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The Times editorial board shouldn't bother expounding on the News That's Unfit To Print. That's Maureen Dowd's job, and today she shows us why. Dowd nails the exact reasons why Hillary's Talk interview is distasteful. One, because in it Hillary publicly savages her mother- and grandmother-in-laws. Two, because in it Hillary compares herself to Jesus. And most importantly, Dowd reveals that Clinton's profiler, Lucinda Franks, is married to Manhattan D.A. and longtime Giuliani nemesis Robert Morgenthau. The Times editorial board, I'm sure, would make this ethical boo-boo bleed with ink. But Dowd refrains from any pontification on the conflict-of-interest; she trusts her readers to spot a moral problem when they see one.

I'm less than half your age, so it will be more than a few years before the AARP starts to flirt with me. But like you, I doubt that a come-on as blatant as the new Modern Maturity cover would stir my subscription, membership, or vote.

The list you mention is part of Modern Maturity's September-October "Great Sex" issue, which proposes that older Americans are just as lusty as their younger peers. Yesterday the magazine hyped the issue with a study supposedly proving that older Americans bonk more frequently than anyone previously knew. The stats have already garnered a ton of attention: "If you're under the age of 40 and you go to your parents' bedroom, make sure you knock on the door first!" a CNN anchor gaily warned me this morning.

But a great story on the front page of the Washington Post "Style" section reveals some blatant miscounting behind the PR blitz. It turns out that the study's sampling began at the ripe old age of 45, and that it used 45-to-60 year-olds as its largest polling group. The mean age of those polled is 60, even though the average AARP member is 67. So the study isn't only insulting ... it's also misleading.

Until later,
Jodi

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