Archive of Outrages

TWINKLE TWINKLE SLEAZY STARR

first posted 7/1/98

"The stories told by Sarah Hawkins and others to Morley Safer were frightening: police tactics reminiscent of the KGB and Gestapo. That kind of nasty business doesn't happen in the land of the free and home of the brave. Or so we like to think."    Dave Rossie

On May 3, 60 Minutes aired a report detailing abuses committed by Kenneth Starr's Whitewater investigation against some unfortunate folks in Arkansas in efforts to extort false testimony about Bill and Hillary Clinton.  On May 12, Dave Rossie, a writer for the Binghamton (N.Y.) Press and Sun Bulletin, published a column expressing his surprise and dismay at the fact that "the wave of media revulsion" which he was "certain"  would follow the disclosures in the 60 Minutes segment had failed to materialize.  "It has been more than a week now and it hasn't come. If it was going to happen ," declared Rossie, "it would have happened by now."

Well, Rossie was right; seven more weeks have gone by and it still hasn't happened; anybody who has been holding his breath waiting for the names of Sarah Hawkins and Steve Smith to become household words,  or even occasionally mentioned by knowledgeable pundits, is now long dead.

It cannot be said that this broadcast piece has gone entirely unnoticed, but as David Sarasohn, associate editor at The Oregonian, observed, "Somehow that episode of "60 Minutes" has drawn considerably less attention than its interview with Kathleen Willey; apparently groping is more interesting than legal squeezing.   But a pattern does seem to be emerging: The Starr operation will do anything, from destroying an innocent bystander's business to launching unusual indictments to using illegal tapes made by Linda Tripp and trying to wire Monica Lewinsky, to try to get Bill Clinton on something."

Ken Starr's bullyboys tried to drag a 16 year-old boy out of his classroom to put the squeeze on his father to give perjured testimony until a high school principal stood up to them. Steve Smith, a former aide to Governor Bill Clinton, told Morley Safer that Starr's Staff wrote him a script to read before the grand jury.   But Smith refused to cooperate.  "They asked me to lie about other people, "  Smith declared, "and they've lied about what they've done."  Sarah Hawkins, the African-American woman whose business collapsed while she was being investigated and threatened wih prosecution by the Starr Chamber, said, "You cannot force a person to admit something that's not true, and that's exactly what they were trying to do in my case."

For sheer horrificness of detail, the Hawkins saga, which is merely outlined here, was the centerpiece of the 60 Minutes report.- It was a compelling bit of journalism which should have been picked up and pursued further.   Howeever, exhautive full-text searches of the Washington Post and The New York Times through the end of June uncovered no mention of Hawkins or her ordeal.  At the very least, this undermines complaints by Starr's partisans that the "liberal media" are out to get the special prosecutor and will use any available means to accomplish this end.

But the failure of the media to do the job of keeping the citizenry informed in this instance is only a part of the outrage considered here. The stories of Sarah Hawkins and Steve Smith lend credibility to the allegations of another long-suffering Starr adversary, Susan McDougall, and to claims that Clinton opponents bought perjury from David Hale in the Whitewater prosecutions. Now that Kenneth Starr has moved on from Whitewater to a case in which the offenses being targeted are supposedly not sexual misconduct but perjury, subornation of perjury, and obstruction of justice, it is ironic and deserving of wide ateention that the special prosecutor's office has been credibly accused, by several independent individuals, of similar transgressions

CASEY AT THE TEE

first posted 2/12/98

"Casey Martin busted another window in golf yesterday, let a little more air in. "  Mike Lupica

Golfer Casey Martin has won his case in federal court in Eugene, Oregon. Martin, who suffers from a rare circulatory disorder that makes it painful and even dangerous to walk, sued the Professional Golfers Association under the Americans With Disabilities Act to be allowed to use a golf cart to help him get around while participating in PGA tournaments.  For this case to have been decided in any other way, the Americans With Disabilities Act would have to have been gutted. -Further information, including many opinions in wrongheaded disagreement with the viewpoint expressed on  this page, is available here.

What is outrageous is that the insufferably elitist PGA refused to grant an exception to its rules (no, the rules have not been changed and there will be no parade of carts on tournament courses, you morons) to make a reasonable accomodation in the first place, fought the lawsuit in the second place, and now plans to appeal the court's decision.*  This is disgraceful in every sense of the word.

*PGA Tour Commissioner Tim Finchman has subsequently reconsidered his intention to appeal.