After months and months, there comes a point. Guess what?

In Their Celebrated Zoo Period

By Rick Horowitz

So tell me, Ms. and Mr. Opinionated, you with a view on every issue and a side in every fight, what are you supposed to do when you realize you can't stand either of them?

"Them," of course, being that flutterer of female hearts and (in his spare time) chief executive of the United States, one William J. Clinton of Arkansas, and likewise his designated pursuer, the independent counsel, Kenneth W. Starr of Neptune.

I want them both to go away. Now. I want them to leave us in peace, and let the rest of us get back to a normal life watching politicians work themselves into a froth over HMOs, or the IRS, or the IMF. (OK, so it's not exactly a "normal" life -- but I like it.) I want it to be the way it was before we ever heard of Monica Lewinsky.

I don't say this easily. And I don't even say it permanently; by tomorrow morning I may be back in full titil, poring over the latest breathless accounts the way I've pored over all the other breathless accounts all these many months. But right here right now? I want them gone -- both of them. I don't care how. I don't care who wins, who loses. I want them to shut up and shut down. I want them to disappear.

There. I've said it.

What put it over the edge for me is this whole Secret Service thing -- Starr trying to turn presidential bodyguards into snitches, Clinton dreaming up yet another privilege to try to keep someone from spilling the beans to the grand jury. Starr looking for records that might trace the president's every night move during the entire Lewinsky era, Clinton implying that future presidents would risk gunshot to keep agents out of earshot.

"I don't like the looks of that crowd, sir."

"Nonsense, Matthews. I must go out among my people, where I can say suspicious things and perform illicit acts. Stand back!"

"Very well, sir, but be careful out -- "

BANG! POP! BANG!

"If only we'd been near him..."

There's another alternative, of course: A president could actually behave himself. But apparently this option is beyond the current occupant's otherwise fertile imagination -- or, more to the point, he thinks it's beyond ours.

Does it bother you that he insults our intelligence when he insists he's acting to protect The Presidency rather than to save his own neck from possible criminal prosecution or impeachment? It's pretty much the same way he insulted our intelligence at the very start of this little drama with all those slippery tenses and that "no improper relationship" folderol.

In fact, it's the same way he's been insulting our intelligence ever since, with his various Rahms and Lannys and the like taking to the airwaves, trying desperately to change the subject, praying with all the spin that's in them that we'll forget about the allegations being examined and come down hard on the examiner.

Who is, I'm perfectly happy to concede, a self-righteous clown with a tin can where his ear should be, a man totally lacking in any sense of proportion and willing to go to any lengths to bag his suspect, a man not merely possessed, but (what a bonus!) possessed of precisely the kind of smug, self-satisfied grin you'd like to rearrange with a baseball bat.

Have I made my position clear? I don't like him either.

Consider the prizefight metaphor: two heavyweights going at one another with everything in their arsenals, raining haymakers on each other round after round, hitting the canvas and bouncing back courageously for more.

It doesn't work for me -- not even close. What works for me is the chimpanzee metaphor: two chimps battling for dominance in a small patch of jungle, waving branches in the air and shrieking their lungs out. Highly entertaining in small doses, but then you'd like it to stop.

Tomorrow may be different, but for now? Just go away -- both of you.

Posted 7/17/98. Fresh stuff right here twice weekly!

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