Princess Diana was eulogized and buried. Fifty million Americans got up
in the wee hours of the morning to watch the funeral on television. The big
story was her brother's slap at the royal family: Diana was "someone with a
natural nobility who was classless and who ... needed no royal title to
continue to generate her particular brand of magic." For days, the royals were
scorned as stuffy brutes for failing to display grief in public. When they
relented and displayed their grief, they were likened to President Clinton (for
feeling others' pain) and scorned for pandering to public opinion. Several
American pundits belatedly conceded that they had covered the story obsessively
based on their false intimacy with Diana and their whitewashed view of her
character. They resumed covering the story obsessively based on the public's
false intimacy with Diana and its whitewashed view of her character.
(9/8)
Mother Teresa also died. Reviews of her career were highly favorable.
Pundits paused to pay their respects before returning to the topic of Princess
Diana. The proximity of the two women's deaths inspired a flurry of silly
comparisons, which in turn inspired a backlash of equally silly commentaries
pointing out their differences. Former Zairian dictator Mobutu Sese Seko
died, too. Since Mobutu ended up being only the third-most important person to
die during the week, coverage of his demise was largely buried.
(9/8)
Vice
President Gore is on the hot seat in the campaign-finance investigation .
The Washington Post reported that some of the money Gore raised in phone
calls from the White House went to the Clinton-Gore campaign ("hard" money)
instead of the Democratic National Committee ("soft" money). This removes
Attorney General Reno's rationale for not appointing an independent counsel.
The betting now is that a counsel will be named, and will hound Gore for years.
Scandal questions upstaged Gore's feel-good visit to New Hampshire, giving
pundits hope that he may get a real fight in the 2000 primaries. Gore
sympathizers are shifting from defending his innocence to blaming Clinton for
corrupting him. (9/8)
Paula Jones' attorneys reportedly are withdrawing from her
sexual-harassment case against President Clinton. The issue: They want her to
accept $700,000 and a vague statement from Clinton--which means they'd get
paid--but she's holding out for an explicit apology. Since reporters can't
confirm that Clinton's agents authorized the settlement proposal, the dispute
between Jones and her lawyers is being portrayed strictly as chaos within her
camp. (9/8)
Tennis prodigy Venus
Williams lost in the finals of the U.S. Open. Because she's 17 and black
(her father calls her a "ghetto Cinderella"), and because she's been hyped for
years (she got a multimillion-dollar Reebok contract at 14), she overshadowed
the new men's champion--Australian heartthrob Patrick Rafter--and women's
champion Martina Hingis, who is a year younger than Williams and creamed her in
the finals. Commentators were set to anoint Williams the next Tiger Woods, but
her father screwed it up by calling her semifinal opponent a "white turkey" and
portraying the opponent's collision with Williams during a changeover as "a
racial thing." Pressed about these remarks, Williams parried, ducked, and fled
her press conference. Critics contrast her arrogance with Tiger Woods' good
manners. Defenders see a double standard: Critics don't blame white players
(Steffi Graf and Mary Pierce) for their fathers' misbehavior, so why should
Williams be blamed for her father's? (9/8)
Photographs of: Earl
Spencer from Reuters pool; Mother Teresa by Joy Shaw/Reuters; Venus Williams
and Martina Hingis by Blake Sell/Reuters.
