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Arianna Huffington and Harry Shearer

the breakfast table:
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Truer words

By Harry Shearer
Posted Friday, May 22, 1998, at 1:03 PM ET

Arianna, I've just been watching the press conference from Springfield on my way to a Simpsons recording session. Yes, real Springfield to fictional Springfield. And, for the second time this year, I've heard a quasi-cosmic truth emerge as an aside. Earlier this year, during the first eruption of Monica-gate, Joe DiGenova opined ubiquitously on television that Ken Starr and his people aren't doing anything--surreptitious taping, subpoenaing moms, squeezing witnesses--that prosecutors around this country don't do every day. A far more frightening thought than anything that happened in the Oval Orifice. Yes, just twenty years of rolling back civil liberties in the name of the War on Drugs and the War on Crime, and here we are, with a prosecutoriat that wields frightening power, frightening only when it's arrayed against a prominent white guy.

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Now today, the superintendent of the school system in Springfield was asked why Kip Killer--excuse me, Kip Alleged Killer--wasn't sent to counseling when he was overheard saying he wanted to kill some people. Said said super, we don't have enough counselors to deal with every teenager who says that to his friends these days, it's a pretty common thing for kids to say. Anybody who remembers his adolescence (or who's listened to Pearl Jam) understands teenage rage, but I don't recall anybody in my high school talking casually about smoking some pals before lunch. This wouldn't be Hollywood's benign influence raising its lovely head, would it?