Fun with Phrasing

Two Can Play Those Word Games

By Rick Horowitz

So here's a little question you can gnaw on when the turkey runs out: If Clinton is Starr and Starr is Clinton, where does that leave the rest of us?

It was The Hearing That Wouldn't End -- hour after hour (after hour) of slashing attacks and nitworthy defenses, high-volume bloviating and enough self-righteousness to launch a flotilla of TV preachers.

Nobody came out a winner, the experts are saying. Wrong. The winner, by a landslide, was the Ritz-Carlton Hotel -- scene of La Monica's first encounter with the Starr Force, and daylong name-drop before the House Judiciary Committee.

You can't buy that kind of publicity.

"A fairly comfortable and commodious place," Ken Starr volunteered at one point, and at another, "a very pleasant place to have a sojourn" -- though he conceded that he had left the federal-escort portion of this particular sojourn to various lieutenants and FBI agents.

Just how pleasant it was, meanwhile, was a matter in considerable dispute; the committee's Democratic counsel, Abbe Lowell, spent a hefty chunk of time grilling Starr on that very subject. Seems that shortly after the Lewinsky story first broke last January (it only feels like years ago), Starr issued a press statement describing the encounter.

"During the five hours while awaiting her mother's arrival," the statement said in part, "Miss Lewinsky drank juice and coffee, ate dinner at a restaurant, strolled around the Pentagon City mall and watched television."

Sounds like a frolic -- but something was missing, Lowell was quick to suggest. According to Lewinsky's own sworn testimony, she was with the agents for more than 10 hours, not merely the five mentioned in the statement. She was, she said, scared and crying for much of that time, ridiculed when she asked to call her mother, discouraged from contacting her attorney, threatened with "27 years" in jail if she failed to cooperate with her gracious hosts.

All in all, a few frills short of a frolic.

Starr had an explanation. The press statement, he said, was "not designed to provide a verbatim transcript," but merely to respond to allegations that Lewinsky had been treated improperly. The picture he painted was intended to correct that impression.

"And all of this is absolutely true," Starr insisted.

Or to put it another way -- which he certainly didn't -- while his statement was legally accurate, he did not volunteer information. And where have we heard that excuse before?

From the Big Creep himself, of course, in his famous mea non-culpa of August 17. No matter that leaving out a few key details might leave the average person with a misleading view of the proceedings. It was Clinton being Clinton -- only this time it was Ken Starr being Clinton.

Who'd a thunk it?

But then, what about this other business of Lewinsky being asked to wear a wire to try to trap the president on tape? The Democrats -- and David Kendall, the president's own attorney -- went full-throttle at Starr on that one. Lewinsky had sworn to it. Starr had denied it.

No conflict at all, Starr maintained -- not really. The agents had certainly hoped to turn her into a "cooperating witness," Starr explained. And of course there are various things "cooperating witnesses" can do to be cooperative. And of course one of those things is to help gather evidence against other suspects. But the subject was only raised, Starr insisted, with "a high level of generality." There was no specific request, you see.

He used that same phrasing -- "a high level of generality" -- or some variation of it over and over again as the president's defenders came at him. So what if Starr's stand-ins didn't connect the dots? they argued. Their intentions were perfectly clear, weren't they?

Of course, these were the very same Democrats who were clinging like it was a lifeboat to a single phrase of Lewinsky's grand-jury testimony -- "No one ever asked me to lie." Starr had tried to bury those words in his report, they insisted. If nobody "asked" her to lie, the Democrats declared, then there couldn't have been a coverup, or obstruction of justice, or subornation of perjury.

Dots? Intentions? Forget it -- case closed.

Maybe when they're calmer, maybe in some quiet moment between the first scoop of cranberry mold and the last crumb of pumpkin pie, they'll figure it out: Ken Starr was simply doing his best Bill Clinton impersonation.

Posted 11/24/98. Fresh stuff right here twice weekly!

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