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Timothy Noah and Marjorie Williams

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Hmmph

By Marjorie Williams
Posted Thursday, July 16, 1998, at 12:15 PM ET

Dear Tim,

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If Salon jumped off the Empire State Building, would you do it too? Your invitation to discuss Jennifer Lopez's endowments was ugly and, come to think of it, unappetizing. I'm female, remember? This is what you have Slate number-two-editor Jack Shafer for. I'll spare you the lecture on feminism (especially because you are at the Safeway, even as we speak, and this morning you actually hoovered up the crumbs under the kitchen table--a blight that I had formerly thought was completely invisible to the naked male eye), but really....

On the Secret Service: As I wrote last week, I'm with you all the way here. With one exception: if it's really true that Ken Starr is trying to get the chief of Clinton's security detail to relate the President's conversation with his own lawyer in the limo right after Clinton's deposition in the Paula Jones case (which is where he may have committed the perjury Starr is pursuing), that's a clear and pretty sleazy effort to circumvent the attorney-client privilege. If this is so, Starr will have done it again: taken an observer (me) whose every sinew is inclined to believe the worst of Clinton's behavior vis a vis Lewinsky, and offended even me with his overreaching. I used to think that Clinton had created the enemies he deserves; lately, I've come around to thinking he has lucked into the enemies he needs. (Note: An AP report tells me the full appeals court in D.C. this morning agreed to hear the Justice Department's appeal of their panel's earlier ruling compelling the agents' testimonies... So these questions are, for the moment, moot.)

The buzz (on the web, in my e-mail, on Imus this morning) is all about Tim Russert's report, on yesterday's "Today" show, that Starr is in fact looking for evidence that the Secret Service "facilitated" Clinton's dalliances with women, in the same way the Arkansas Troopers say they did for him as governor. Russert is such a heavy guy that this gave anyone who wants an excuse to run with this speculation. (By the time Imus, for example, got ahold of it, Starr had practically made his case.) But the major papers, rightly I think, ignored it--including the White House's gleeful on-the-record denunciations of what Mike McCurry called Starr's efforts to "slime" the President and the Secret Service. It was the right call because Russert offered no supporting evidence at all, beyond suggesting that Starr's allies on the Hill are saying this is what Starr is looking for. And hunting for evidence of something this seamy is a lot different from having found it. Take it away, Steve Brill.

The Wall Street Journal scares me this morning by devoting almost its entire second front to stories about kids and guns, under the headline "Is Susie Playing at a Home with Guns?" It advises parents that they should routinely ask the parents of their children's playmates whether they have guns at home. Says Stephen Teret, director of the Center for Gun Policy and Research at Johns Hopkins, "It's an oddity to me that people wouldn't hesitate for a minute in saying, 'When my child is in your care make sure he uses a seat belt' are too embarrassed to ask, 'Do you have a gun and is it locked up?'"

I'm guessing Stephen Teret hasn't spent a lot of time performing the delicate dance that goes on between parents over playdates. Happily, it's illegal to own a gun here in D.C.; and just over the border, in Takoma Park, Md. (the other community of which we feel a part), parental admonitions tend to run to whether you're feeding their children refined sugar. (Takoma Park is, among other things, a nuclear-free zone. Illegal aliens may vote in local elections, and I think there's a sister city in El Salvador.) Willie once actually went to a birthday party where one of the prizes in a game was a toothbrush. So, okay, the Journal only scared me a little.

I've decided not to read Berry on the stock market. Wacko-bull James Glassman is my man. I'm definitely the financial optimist in this family--a position I have no intention of swapping with you.

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