Notebook: Aug. 10, 1998

WINNERS & LOSERS

[WINNERS]

MONICA LEWINSKY Cuts the deal that delivers her, and her mother, from legal peril. Must have been lonely there in limbo

LINDA TRIPP She vents, Lucianne crows, soon Monica sings & Bill squirms. It’s The Witches of Eastwick 1998!

CLOTHIERS This week, the dress. Earlier, the beret, the T shirt & the tie. Do we need Starr or J. Crew?

[& LOSERS]

BILL CLINTON Avoiding subpoena, agrees to talk on closed circuit TV. Should’ve held out for pay-per-view

JAMES CARVILLE The Bonaparte in the Starr war has been AWOL lately. Allez y, mon general–to the front!

THE NEWS MEDIA This story is like catnip, but whom will the public blame when there’s no happy ending?

ASK DR. NOTEBOOK Out, Damned Spot!

The President isn’t the only one bedeviled by references to Monica Lewinsky’s besmirched dress. How were news organizations handling the sticky issue of the stain? While some were plain–ABC News, the New York Post and the Los Angeles Times used the word “semen”–others were more circumspect. “Physical evidence” was the phrase favored at NPR, CNN and the Wall Street Journal, while “bodily fluids” prevailed at CBS News. NBC News and MSNBC went with “DNA evidence,” the Washington Post liked “DNA material,” and the Christian Science Monitor said “forensic evidence that might suggest sexual contact.” The Russian news agency ITAR-TASS was quite adroit, mentioning a “dress Lewinsky claims to [have worn] during her meetings…[that] carries traces of the meetings.” For TIME’s choice, see Special Report.

SELLING A BOOK BY ITS COVER

Stanford University Press is publishing the speeches of former Secretary of State Warren Christopher. On the cover: a photo of Mr. Christopher apparently putting President Clinton to sleep.

ON THE ROAD AGAIN

Last week the Rolling Stone Network reported that officials at Pere-Lachaise cemetery in Paris, tired of picking up beer cans and condoms, have decided to disinter the remains of Jim Morrison, the late lead singer of the Doors, when the 30-year lease on his grave expires on July 6, 2001. This raises the question: Where should Jim go? Here are some suggestions:

WHERE ROCK AND ROLL HALL OF FAME, CLEVELAND, OHIO (1)

PRO Could provide the basis for a whole new exhibit, Cadavers of the Stars

CON Might invite controversy: Would they have to display the bodies of the rest of the band? How about back-up singers? [WHERE] HARD ROCK CAFE, NEW YORK, N.Y. (2)

[PRO] The restaurant is decorated with rock artifacts; this would be the ultimate acquisition

[CON] Customers who couldn’t get seated near the casket might complain

[WHERE] POETS’ CORNER, WESTMINSTER ABBEY, LONDON (3)

[PRO] Who there has more gold albums than Jim?

[CON] Might have trouble living down couplets like “There’s a killer on the road/His brain is burning like a toad”

[WHERE] GRACELAND, MEMPHIS, TENN.

[PRO] The King and the Lizard King together for the first time!

[CON] Not enough Morrison impersonators–crowd would look Elvis-heavy

[WHERE] ARLINGTON NATIONAL CEMETERY, ARLINGTON, VA.

[PRO] Although he wasn’t a vet, Jim’s music was very popular with the troops in Vietnam

[CON] Taps doesn’t seem to be a very Jim-like number, and he would hear it every day

[WHERE] OLIVER STONE’S HOME, GREATER L.A.

[PRO] Stone is a big fan–he made a movie about Jim

[CON] Dangerous precedent: Stone might get stuck with Jim Garrison and Richard Nixon

FLASH!

WHERE’D THEY DREAM HIM UP? A new character, Internet gossip Rat Sludge, has joined the journalistically savvy comic strip Brenda Starr.

WEIGHTS & MEASURES

WHEN IN LOVE, TIME IS ONLY RELATIVE The marriage between producer Robert Evans and actress Catherine Oxenberg, whose launch was so optimistically trumpeted in these very pages only three weeks ago, broke up last week. Did the end come suddenly? We put the union’s duration in perspective.

EVENT DURATION

The 1967 Arab-Israeli war 6 days Cher/Gregg Allman marriage 9 days Average space-shuttle flight 10 days Oxenberg/Evans marriage 12 days Barneys New York annual warehouse sale 12 days Shelf life of a professional pedicure 20 days Writing of On the Road 21 days Noncontested Tour de France 21 days Ernest Borgnine/Ethel Merman marriage 32 days Life-span of a fruit fly 70 days

NUMBERS

$40 million Estimated amount spent by Whitewater independent counsels Robert Fiske and Kenneth Starr on investigations since 1994

$37 million Approximate cost of producing a full season–22 episodes–of the TV show Law and Order

$209,406 Lowest adjusted gross income an individual taxpayer needed to rank in the top 1% of wage earners in 1995

$96,221 Lowest adjusted gross income needed to rank in the top 5% that year

$161.5 million; 13 Amount won in last week’s Powerball drawing, and the number of people splitting it

$200 million; 250,000 Estimated value of gold discovered in the California Gold Rush between 1848 and 1853, and the number of people splitting it

10 Pounds of Mississippi catfish the minor-league Greenville Bluesmen traded to the Pacific Suns, along with a player and an undisclosed amount of cash, for pitcher Ken Krahenbuhl

Sources: Agence France Presse, Wall Street Journal, Newsday, Encyclopedia Americana, Scripps Howard News Service

60 SECOND SYMPOSIUM

Travel ’98, beset by fiery cruise ships and bouncing aircraft, led us to ask these intrepid globe trotters about their narrowest escapes from danger.

Former Monty Python member MICHAEL PALIN, host of A&E’s travel series: “While filming in Novgorod once, I submitted myself to 18 straight vodkas. My system fought back. I raced to the washbasin, a monument to Soviet plumbing. It wasn’t attached to the wall. Nausea hit as I staggered round, trying to keep 55 lbs. of basin from breaking both my legs.”

P.J. O’ROURKE, author of the forthcoming Eat the Rich: “Alcoholism saved me from a 1975 terrorist bombing at LaGuardia. Waiting to check my bag, I thought, ‘If I carry it on, I’ll have time for a drink.’ Just as I ordered a bourbon and water, the bomb went off, right where I’d been standing. The bartender said, ‘Wanna make that a double?'”

ROBERT YOUNG PELTON, author of Fielding’s The World’s Most Dangerous Places: “When I was being shelled on a front line north of Kabul, I asked a 23-year-old Taliban fighter, ‘Why don’t we dig trenches to escape the bombardment?’ He looked at me and then asked, ‘If you didn’t come here to die, why are you here?'”