NEWS OF THE WEIRD
So Jerry Falwell thinks that Tinky Winky, one of the Teletubbies, "is meant to be a gay role model." This has to be a first: a cartoon character attacking a kids' show.

FACE TIME
Rep. Matt Salmon (R., Ariz.) recently proposed adding Ronald Reagan to Mt. Rushmore. The National Park Service, however, says that Mt. Rushmore is too fragile to support blasting for new carvings. Which means, of course, that Reagan ought to get his own mountain. He deserves better than to be placed beside the overrated Teddy Roosevelt, anyway. Plus, the Ronald Reagan National Memorial should probably be in California. How about carving his likeness into the face of Half Dome at Yosemite National Park?

IN DEFENSE OF THE PUBLIC
Bill Bennett's latest essay on the Clinton scandals in the Wall Street Journal reminds us why so many conservatives have wanted him to run for president: He says things that nobody else in American politics says and that need saying, and he says them well. But as in his previous essays, he is insufficiently charitable in interpreting public opinion. Conservatives who claim that the public opposes Clinton's removal because of an indifference to politics or a concern for stability, he says, are making "wishful assertions [that] do not square with reality." He continues, "The hard truth is that many Americans are not merely tolerating Mr. Clinton; they are embracing him. The president has higher approval ratings and is more admired today than before the Lewinsky scandal broke. . . . In one recent poll, Mr. Clinton ranked first among the men Americans most admire in the world, easily outdistancing the second-place finisher, Pope John Paul II. At every critical juncture during this scandal, when it seemed as if some damaging. . . revelation would lead to the downfall of the president, public opinion rescued him. . . . It gets worse: Four out of 10 Americans say they approve of pornographer Larry Flynt's digging up dirt on Republicans, making him a good deal more popular than Mr. Starr."

Mr. Bennett makes a strong prima facie case. But he puts far too much stock in the "most-admired" surveys, which are really tests of celebrity: Asked an open-ended question, people will respond with the first plausible person they can think of. Certainly the president's *personal* approval ratings do not suggest a public "embracing" him. The approval of Flynt's project is depressing, but is it really that surprising? Democratic partisans no doubt make up the bulk of it, and there must also be many people who support it out of a (terribly misdirected) sense of fair play. And Bennett should know that there is a non-trivial number of social conservatives who believe they have a right to know officials' sins--we've heard several argue that the exposure of Hyde and Livingston's transgressions was completely just.

Finally, Mr. Bennett should consider that while many Americans oppose President Clinton's removal because they support him, many others support him because they oppose his removal. That is, the president's job approval is to some extent a function of the public's belief that the charges do not warrant his removal and, yes, the public's desire for stability. It would explain why his numbers go up when the apparent danger to him does. And it's why Margaret Carlson might be right to predict that those numbers will sink as soon as this is all over.

THE OTHER TRIAL
Democrats have complained nonstop about Ken Starr's spending upwards of $40 million on his various investigations. So they ought to be hopping mad when they hear the price tag attached to the Clinton administration's antitrust suit against Microsoft: as much as $60 million, according to a new report by Citizens Against Government Waste. What's more, the Justice Department is pushing to increase the budget of its antitrust division by 10 to 20 percent, partly to hire 70 to 80 additional lawyers. "It's time for the government to stop spending taxpayer dollars interfering in a marketplace that is providing Americans with better products at consistently lower prices," says CAGW's Thomas A. Schatz.