Americans, or at least the most news-obsessed Americans, parked in front of their television sets Monday for the extraordinary sight of the president delivering testimony before a grand jury about whether the acts he performed with a woman just past drinking age constituted sexual relations.
President Clinton’s testimony marked a shocking national moment: the leader of the free world captured on videotape like the unwitting star of a reality-based television show, struggling to maintain his dignity as he answered the most personal questions a president has had to face in public.
Did he ever touch Monica Lewinsky in a sexually arousing way? Did he try to pick up Kathleen Willey on the campaign trail in 1992? What about the cigar, the dress, the personal notes and the unscheduled Oval Office visits?
Yet for all its racy and revealing subject matter, Clinton’s appearance was dressed up in legal robes and, over its four hours, often played out with the dryness of courtroom proceedings. Hairs were split, verb tenses were debated, and words like “deponent” appeared in the same sentence as “oral sex.” Still, there was real drama in the tension between the president and his off-camera questioners.
Unlike the release of the Starr report, which highlighted the strengths of newspapers and especially the Internet, this was above all a visual event. The reactions in TV land seemed to indicate that Clinton’s and Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr’s show was not ready for prime time, and not just because the subject matter merited warning labels.
There were pockets of intense interest, but in public places across the Chicago area, there seemed to be a lot of cold shoulders, noses held in distaste, and exasperated grins at some of the elaborate parsing of the phrase “sexual relations.”
“By the time he finishes defining (sex), I think I’ll learn that I’m actually a virgin,” said Scarlett Thomas, 28, a waitress who was one of the few paying attention Monday at Champs Sports Bar & Grill in Oak Brook Terrace.
The month-old testimony’s combination of the salacious and the stultifying, of titillation and built-in rationalization for airing it made it perfect fodder for news stations in the post-O.J. Simpson television era.
All of the major players in network and cable television news set aside morning programming to show the tape as it was fed to them from a House of Representatives office building beginning at 8:25 a.m. Chicago time. All used warning labels, and several showed it on a delay in case the testimony got too lurid. All except NBC stayed with it until the end, at 12:40 p.m., without interruption.
That network cited schoolchildren being home for the Jewish holiday of Rosh Hashanah and concerns for its viewers’ sensibilities as reasons to cut away twice, for about 10 minutes total, during discussion of the cigar incident and a graphic definition of what “phone sex” entails.
Except for questions of taste and the technical problem of making its grainy sound more listenable, airing the tape was a straightforward matter. With only a handful of two-minute breaks, there was barely time for the channels’ corps of analysts to get beyond conventional wisdom.
There seemed to be consensus that the tape would change no minds but that it would be interesting to see how it affected the undecided. That, most agreed, would depend on which clips were excerpted for replay on newscasts Monday night and beyond.
Some networks, such as CBS, played the testimony’s release a little more as a political story; some, such as NBC, more as a legal one. NBC guest expert Jonathan Turley, a George Washington University law professor, noted for viewers that “we could be watching for the first time” a president in the act of committing a crime, perjury.
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The legal niceties were more interesting Monday, especially with the president so intent on them, but political perception will matter deeply should the House decide to initiate formal impeachment proceedings.
“You cannot overestimate the importance of this day,” said ABC anchor Peter Jennings, one of those who noted that, as the Aug. 17 tape was being disseminated, Clinton was addressing the United Nations in real time.
Polls indicated the public didn’t particularly want to see Clinton’s testimony, and viewers in barber shops and on afternoon call-in shows debated whether airing it was worthwhile.
Unlike other cultural events that have demonstrated how television can unify a nation, this one showed how it can polarize.
Clinton supporters found comfort in his ability to maintain a calm demeanor with none of the raging-bull behavior that advance publicity for the testimony implied. Except for a few moments where he was visibly shaken– most notably when prosecutors raised the question of the cigar–Clinton was measured in his responses.
“It wasn’t anything like the Republicans promised,” said Kim Finke, a 22-year-old saxophonist and music student who watched in a Northwestern University snack bar. “I was expecting `A Few Good Men’: `You can’t handle the truth!’
“We were told we were going to see a Clinton we’ve never seen before. But we’ve seen him evasive before. That’s why he’s known as `Slick Willie.’ “
Detractors said that some questions rarely received direct answers but rather a combination of legalistic answers and public-relations pitches.
“I didn’t believe him in the first place, but now I am sure he’s a liar and a cheat,” said Eddie Ciesla, 57, owner of the Veteran’s Barber Shop in south suburban Worth, where Clinton’s demeanor and performance drew derision from the regulars.
“He’s evading the questions. He’s trying to turn them all around to make it sound like it’s a witch hunt. He hasn’t answered one question straightforward yet, so you know he’s got to be hiding something.”
Some viewers just shook their head in wonder. “It’s just so strange to see the president on TV talking about sex so explicitly,” said Jean Wessells, hostess at Chicago’s Havana restaurant. “I don’t think we should be able to see it. But now that it’s on, how can you not? I thought people everywhere would have been glued to it.”
In the fourth-floor dayroom of Winchester House, a long-term health-care facility in Libertyville, a dozen residents bemoaned the loss of presidential dignity. They pointedly watched a game show on the large-screen television.
After 10 days for the public to ponder the allegations contained in the Starr report, this was the first time the country was able to see and hear the president offer his own version of events, a fact detractors and supporters appreciated.
“Actually, he comes off less calculating and less of a slimeball,” said Patrick Brosnan, 29, an assistant visiting professor of mathematics at Northwestern. “You learn more about Clinton watching this than you do watching his speeches.”
And as much as he seemed at the mercy of questions posed by Starr’s legal team, Clinton was able to hammer home his contention that he has been the victim of a political persecution.
Democrats complained about Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee rushing through release of the tape and a passel of other evidence but it was pretty clear Clinton understood at the time of his Aug. 17 testimony that it was likely to get a public airing.
“There is a videotape being made of this,” he said at one point, noting that he was trying to avoid saying things “which would forever be in the historic annals of the United States,” not to mention in Republican campaign commercials this fall.
It was, argued a Fox News Channel contributor, “a four-hour Clinton telethon. The only thing missing was the telephone number.”
As much as testimony in a legal proceeding, Clinton’s frequent attempts to explain his answers and non-answers suggested he was talking beyond the grand jury and into one of the places he has been most effective, the American living room.
Or the American tavern. At Mickey Finn’s, a Libertyville bar and grill, a small group of regulars and staffers sat and watched intently.
But Jack Amedio, a 48-year-old printing salesman, ate his lunch at the end of the bar away from the television. “I’m making a silent rebuttal,” he said. “Shame on everyone for their interest in this man’s personal life.”