Sexual Positioning
USA
Today leads with Kathleen Willey's lawyer's defense of her motives in
coming forward. The Washington Post leads with the apparent intention of
President Clinton's lawyer in the Paula Jones case, Robert Bennett, to submit
material to the trial judge today covering Jones' past sex life to rebut her
claim in her previous filings that her alleged encounter with Clinton left her
with an alleged "sexual aversion injury." The Post notes that not too
long ago, Bennett said one of the things he would not do in this trial would be
go into Jones' sexual history. The New York Times
leads with the reform pledges made by China's new prime minister. And the
Los
Angeles Times goes with the purchase of the Los Angeles Dodgers by
Rupert Murdoch.
USAT reports that according to Willey's lawyer, she is "overwhelmed"
by White House attempts to discredit her. Regarding the release of admiring
letters she had written to Clinton after their disputed Oval Office meeting, he
is quoted saying, "We don't pretend we can compete with the White House spin
machine." Reports about Willey on the WP and NYT front also
follow up on the story broken yesterday by the New York Daily News that
prior to her "60 Minutes" appearance, she had been in discussions with a
tabloid.
The NYT reports that the new Chinese Prime Minister Zhu Rongji gave a
press conference in which he laid down ambitious goals for sweeping social
change in his country, including pledges to redesign the government and cut its
staff in half, do away with subsidized housing, and make state-owned industries
solvent, all within the next three years. But he also flatly ruled out, reports
the Times , any reappraisal of the government's crackdown on democracy in
Tiananmen Square. The press conference was strikingly Western-style, says the
paper, complete with Zhu's deflection of a serious question about eventual
national elections with a quip about pictures of him in Time and
Newsweek .
About a third of the LAT front is given over to coverage of the Dodger sale. In an unexpectedly one-sided vote,
major league baseball owners approved the sale of the team by the O'Malley
family to Rupert Murdoch's Fox Group, for about $311 million, the most ever
paid for a sports franchise. The move makes the team part of a world-wide media
empire valued at nearly $27 billion. Among those assets, points out the
LAT , are broadcast and cable rights to games played by 22 of the 30
major league teams. And this is the aspect of the deal that is really
different. A second LAT front-page piece states that the purchase price,
almost double the going rate in baseball, is "so far out of the ballpark that
it's highly unlikely the team will make money," but, the paper explains,
"Murdoch sees sports team as another form of content for his sprawling
television empire...."
The Dodger deal is also on the front at the WP , but doesn't make the
NYT front, which opts instead for a story about how George Steinbrenner
has discussed the possibility of selling a piece of the Yankees.
The Wall Street Journal reports that a jury in Muncie, Indiana
ruled that the nation's largest cigarette makers shouldn't be held liable in
the lung cancer death of a non-smoking nurse. Jurors said that cigarettes
weren't a defective product and that the manufacturers weren't negligent for
failing to tell people that second-hand smoke was dangerous.
Both the NYT and WP fronts carry word of a new study from the
Federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showing a surprising rise in
the suicide rate among black teenagers. The study's authors suggest that the
surge reflects the strain black families feel in transitioning to the middle
class. One odd detail: black teenagers are much more likely than white
teenagers to kill themselves in the presence of somebody else.
The general degree of personality-, sports- and money-euphoria surrounding
the Murdoch Dodger buy is well illustrated by the LAT front-page
effusions of L.A. mayor Richard Riordan who is quoted saying, "I've never met
anybody whose focus is better....He pays the same attention to the waiter as he
does to the most important person in the room." Isn't that the opposite of
focus?
