The misanthrope's corner

National Review, Sept 14, 1998 by Florence King

Miss King can be reached at P.O. Box 7113, Fredericksburg, Va. 22404.

ZZZZT! Foiled again. Today is Testimony Eve and my deadline is the day after Testimony. I can't very well write about what hasn't happened yet, so I'll tell you about the two weeks I've spent glued to the TV.

Be forewarned: the phrase "Testimony Eve" is all wrong. An "eve" is calm and still, with that quieter-than-quiet hush that tells us it's snowing even before we look out the window. I can't look out my windows because the air-conditioners are in the way, and one of them has started making a raspy squawk that sounds just like Bay Buchanan.

Watching the talking heads on CNBC took ten years off my life, a dangerously close shave for someone old enough to remember Information Please on the radio. My favorite panelists were Clifton Fadiman, whose name tickled me, and Cornelia Otis Skinner, whose name fascinated me. I was too young to follow the questions and answers but what impressed me then and still sticks in my mind were the easy chuckles and relaxed freemasonry of the polished, the cultivated, and the learned among us. It was a purely instinctual reaction on my part: they seemed to be having a good time, so I did, too.

Bay Buchanan's Equal Time also triggers an instinctual reaction in me: I want to watch it through spread fingers like a queasy juror looking at autopsy photos. The morbid streak in human nature explains why the show has lasted as long as it has: we tune in to see how much worse it can get.

No other show on television has been rerigged so often. Conceived as Crossfire for girls, its original hosts were Mary Matalin on the right and Jane Wallace on the left, but Wallace laughed constantly and Matalin did not open her mouth wide enough to be understood, much less yell at anybody; Edgar Bergen moved his lips more.

Bay Buchanan took over on the right but her tortuous efforts to imitate her brother without being unfeminine doomed the format to the psychological ambidexterity of the female condition, making it seem more like one of early feminism's assertiveness-training films about coping with recalcitrant home repairmen.

The left-wing chair has seen such a rapid turnover that it now has been held by just about everybody. The reason is not hard to guess. Many a husband has vanished without a trace when a female voice became intolerable, a career move described in the old punchline, "He went out to buy a newspaper and never came back." The producers of Equal Time inadvertently discovered how to get rid of liberal women: sit them next to Braying Bay until they run away and join the ladies auxiliary of the French Foreign Legion.

Then there are the guests. Tony Blankley, who keeps his mouth open in readiness while waiting to get a word in edgewise, swishing his tongue around in limbering-up exercises clearly visible to the viewer. Susan Estrich, who cackles to herself off-camera and nearly demolishes the set with her flailing arms. Joe Conason with all the aplomb of an ax murderer. Michael Isikoff, whose open collar and askew tie project that air of danger treasured by English majors who carry a razor to cut the pages of foreign paperbacks. Jonah "My Mom Says" Goldberg, and Mandy Grunwald, hunched and tragic, the gypsy in every opera, trying to make her whispery deathbed hexes heard over Bay's hoarse screams of "Hold on! Let her finish!"

After Equal Time I watched Hardball, where the leisurely atmosphere of pensive reflection is reminiscent of the Titanic at 2:20 A.M. The machine-gun nest that Chris Matthews calls a mouth is the reason why so many people who loathe Geraldo Rivera watch his show anyway: it comes on after Hardball and we're too wrung out to move.

Testimony Eve and Testimony Day have now passed but Post-Testimony will usher in another eight months of special reports, extended editions, and "Lemme finish!" I'll watch them because I have to, but what I really would enjoy is hearing Bill Clinton discussed on a revived Information Please. The networks aren't interested so I'll have to produce it myself. Here goes:

We should not limit our comparisons of Bill Clinton to history's male rogues, for in behavior and turn of mind he most resembles Caroline of Brunswick, who married the Prince of Wales, later George IV, in 1796.

That Caroline was oversexed from earliest girlhood is evident from her family's efforts to control stud eruptions. According to one source: "They say her passions are so strong that when she dances, a governess must follow behind to prevent her from indecent conversations."

THREE weeks after their marriage the royal couple separated, permitting Caroline free rein for her compulsive bawdiness. She aroused a naval attache under the table with her foot, displayed a pair of wind-up dolls that simulated coitus, and had unconsummated intimate contact with future prime minister George Canning. Being still married, and aware that adultery against the Crown was treason, Caroline protected her loophole.

When later she moved to Italy and had full-fledged affairs, British consuls took charge of the stud eruptions and kept London informed of her lovers, but soon there were so many that one envoy gave up and reported: "I don't know who is rogering the Princess now."