Last Friday's Seattle Times headline--"Did Clinton see her Dec. 28th?"--was the only headline above the fold, and brought local reporting up to tabloid standards. Boost those newspaper sales! It works for Rupert Murdoch! We can hardly wait for the pinups on page three. What would the headlines be like if Clinton were found in the Lincoln Bedroom with a 747? Using Boeing's new high-tech strap-on device, no less. Oooh la la. Where is the news value in any of this?

The next day's "news" in the evolving silliness was that Clinton's semen was not found in Monica's laundry. Well, let's do a random spot check of every laundromat in America! After all, the guy's been screwing working-class Americans for five years--and where have the headlines been? Somebody tell Kenneth Starr; then again, what's his DNA look like?

The sad truth is, this Clinton sex "scandal" is the greatest manufactured political non-story in recent memory. Far be it from us to defend Bill Clinton, but the Monica Lewinsky saga has been controlled from day one by so-called "independent" prosecutor Kenneth Starr, a guy who has wasted millions in taxpayer dollars for over four years trying to find something, anything, to nail the Clintons on for Whitewater (a Reaganesque caper of morally repulsive actions that speculative capitalism encourages, and Starr's patrons in the far right have championed for years). Starr is up to his own neck in conflicts of interest; his D.C. law firm counts much of the Republican National Committee as clients and his sole mandate is to find any excuse to bring Clinton down. In doing so, he has permanently poisoned the concept of an "independent prosecutor" in D.C. This latest story has shown how stunningly unwilling our nation's major media are to look under the surface of any story handed to them. The whole story is disgusting, and not just for its sexual content. It's a shame our country's media can't get worked up into a lather over the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer.

Meanwhile, last week, Gallup surveyed 10,000 randomly selected Americans and asked the question, "If you had the opportunity, would you have sex with the President of the United States of America?" An astonishing 94% replied: "Never again."