Signs of profound shifts in our society are everywhere, if you know how to look for them. But the media doesn't know how, and neither do most of us.
What's the real significance of the Paula Jones scandal? It's that after being ignored for generations by journalists, the police, and the courts - and accepted almost as a male birthright - sexual harassment is now increasingly considered a serious crime.
Invariably, however, the media misses social sea changes like this one by focusing on symptomatic events in their narrowest and most episodic terms.
Since we have little social context for these jarring eruptions, we are perpetually off guard and uncertain about how to respond to them.
And our choices aren't always pleasant. Should President Clinton be driven from office if he pressured an employee for sexual favors? Or simply crippled to the point where he and his administration can't accomplish anything?
If Jones' charges have merit, as reports are beginning to suggest, and if it turns out the president is guilty as charged, it's hard to imagine Clinton functioning effectively for much of his second term.
"Should She Be Heard?," Newsweek asked on its Paula Jones cover.
Of course she should. That isn't the question.
On one score, at least - being heard - Jones has little to fear. We'll be hearing more from her than we ever dreamed of or wanted to.
But the rest of us could use some help here. Even gassy and opinionated media critics are confused about how journalism and the rest of the culture should deal with situations like this one.
Stories like the Simpson trial, the Paula Jones case, and recent, apparently inaccurate accusations of rape against two members of the Dallas Cowboys are all entwined with complex moral subtexts and huge tidal-wave-type social transitions - sometimes gender is the issue, sometimes race, sometimes both.
In the case of the football players, journalists in Texas are being criticized for giving so much attention to the rape allegations. Some have suggested that was racist, because both the players are African American. But media and law enforcement have long been bitterly criticized for failing to take allegations of sexual abuse more seriously, especially when aimed at powerful men.
The media is stuck awkwardly in the middle of intense and conflicting social pressures. Rather than acknowledge this or try and respond creatively to it, the media has become manipulable, often trying to appease its loudest and most persistent critics.
More and more, the question that arises from these social-media quagmires is whether the courts should have more control over disseminating information, and journalists should have less. Do we need an offshoot of the British system, which permits almost no reporting or speculation on criminal cases until they are resolved? This is anathema to libertarians and journalists alike. But somebody needs to come up with a better way to handle stories like those presented by Paula Jones, the Simpson trial, or the Dallas case.
Conservative journalists and publications have argued that the mostly liberal Washington media has ignored the Paula Jones story out of sympathy for Clinton. Maybe, but there are enormous issues for journalism and the rest of us when it comes to policing the sexual lives of public people. This new territory for journalism has created a civic nightmare, sending journalists peeking into bedrooms, wantonly invading privacy, destroying reputations, and driving people from public life.
Whether Clinton asked Jones for a blow job is for the courts to decide. The more complicated story is how our political and media system is to function in an environment in which scandal, accusation, and mistrust have become an integral part of political life and a major obstacle to government functioning.
How serious do we now think sexual harassment is? What priority are we supposed to give it in politics and journalism? How does it stack up against the death penalty and education and poverty in terms of moral significance?
What about the many people seeking the government's help and attention in resolving other kinds of problems, and who voted for Bill Clinton and members of Congress in good faith, believing the government would face issues beyond Clinton's sexual improprieties? Who in the media is worrying about whether those people have a right to be heard?
Are we willing to see Clinton's second term paralyzed as much as his first was, as rabid media and politically self-serving wolf-packs overwhelm his presidency?
At the moment, journalism is the last institution we want to put in charge of presenting dramas like Paula Jones v. Bill Clinton; it almost always fails to see the forest for the trees. So far, the press has shown that it's way over its head in presenting stories like this to us. Reporters have no background or training in history, sociology, morality, or philosophy, subjects which provide context and guidance for dramas like this.
So the O. J. Simpson trial is shown to us daily like a play-by-play murder trial, when it is really a reflection of something much more complex and significant.
Mostly, what mainstream media like TV do in situations like this is to cop out - hire armies of paid spokespeople to bombard us with arguments and differing analyses that reinforce our preconceptions, but never help us to advance or confront larger truths.
Charges of sexual impropriety, unlike accusations of other sorts of corruption, often boil down to two people alone in a room or office, leaving us with one party's word against the other's. And while the aggrieved parties talk about truth and justice, they always seem to also want money. Jones is seeking US$700,000 in damages from Clinton, who has already spent $1.5 million in legal fees to fight her suit. This is already another big case nobody but the lawyers can really win.
Journalists have no way to evaluate the motives or credibility of accusers or the seriousness of the charges. But these scandals are disastrous for the presidency, the political system, and for anybody who wants or needs government to function rationally.
They generate cynicism and anger, degrade civics, alienate the young - sure, I'll explain this Paula Jones stuff to you, son - and render government useless. And they do nothing to help us with the increasingly dire task of comprehending the changing social matrix.
This kind of journalism doesn't ultimately serve the media itself, either. Even as the public becomes sated with stories like O. J., survey after survey shows that people can end up hating the institutions that bombard them with so much lurid information, even as they watch and read on.
