Scheduling problems.

• Author: Durst, Will
• Position: Humor - timing the bombardment of Iraq, etc. - Off The Map - Brief Article - Column

So Bill Clinton nailed an intern. Who cares? Kenneth Starr was determined to pin something on Slick Boy if he had to apply the Velcro himself. American sex lives must be pretty pathetic for all of us to get this excited. The CBS Evening News is making Jerry Springer look like Frontline. The most embarrassing thing is, Clinton's the President of the United States. He could do better. The French are mocking us. Not that Monica Lewinsky doesn't have a fetching kind of pre-Raphaelite luxuriance, but c'mon. Kennedy did the Oval Office Nasty with Marilyn Monroe.

Now they're bringing up the "I" word. If he does step down, turning over leadership of the free world to Al Gore, one might say we went from President Woody to President Wood.

* In Washington, D.C., Congress renamed National Airport after Ronald Reagan, the guy who fired all the air traffic controllers. It's like naming an organ-donor bank after Jeffrey Dahmer.

The toughest job in Washington these days isn't being President or even one of his battery of lawyers and spinners, it's being the First Lady, whose smile is so tight you can hear the enamel cracking. She always been a rock next to her sliding mound of liquid Bubba gel, but now she makes the Rocky Mountains look like Everglades mud. I imagine she's standing her ground no matter what, in order to stay in the old Maison Blanc. It wouldn't matter if she had to walk up to that podium pushing her way through flocks of sheep and packs of nude, slippery interns, she'd still be there telling everybody that Bill was totally innocent and the victim of a phantom rightwing conspiracy: She'd persuade us with charts and graphs that Kenneth Starr was taken over by alien pod people. And some of us would buy it. I can't help but wonder how Clinton's other paramours would have fared as First Lady: Gennifer Flowers: "What's wrong with you people? Hasn't this man swallowed enough crap for you? Hey, hey, do you hear that noise? I know what it is? That's the `screw-you' buzzer. Now get the hell out of here. And don't let the doorknob bang you in the butt." Paula Jones: "I think it's absolutely deplorable that you're asking me these questions while I'm wearing this dress. Let me go up to my room in the North Wing or whatever you call it, to change, then give me three hours to whiten my teeth, and I'll tell you things that'll curl your hair." Monica Lewinsky: "Can't you see I'm finishing up my English Lit Incomplete for Mr. Johnson? Gawd, there's a time...