European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - January 8, 1993, Darmstadt, Hesse Friday january 8, 4993 commentary the stars and stripes Page 13 you can t win Emall even in Davids. Broder the letter from Walter h. Jones of Pensacola f1a.� was Brief and to the Point. In its entirety it read Quot different from not different this note of reprimand was occasioned by a column in which had suggested a that Dill Clinton would be a very different presi Dent Quot than Quot Ron Aid Reagan Well or. Jones i appreciate the advice and i want to Tell you that this column is going to be different than the 101 others that emerged from this computer in 1992. This the annual accounting of hits and misses. Campaign years always bring out a great array of grotesque mistakes a ver liable museum of journalistic horrors. This 1992 race a with characters As strange As Jerry Brown it Buchanan and now you see him now you done Tross. Perot a was unusually Fertile soil for boners. And i rarely let an Opportunity pass. But before we get to that let me mention one other grammatical error. Quot the House Bank scandal Quot i wrote last Winter a is one of those stories that seemingly requires no a clipping soon arrived with the intimidating return address signature of William f. Buckley or. The offending Quot so at the end of Quot requires was circled for elimination. The biggest goof of 1992 was in a news Story for the Washington Post not a column in which 1 reported that Bill Linton had drawn loud cheers at an a anti abortion rally in Washington . It ran that Way through All editions and the first of approximately 500 Calls on my answering machine the next morning came from the publicist for the National abortion rights action league which had staged the event at which Linton had expressed his support for not his opposition to the Roe is. Wade decision. She wanted to know if 1 had been awake and listening to the speech and i said yes but that it had sort of slipped away during the five minute cab ride to the office maybe because we Hadnot checked into our new York hotel until 2 30 that morning and maybe because of the margaritas someone kept ordering for the press dinner in Tampa the night before and besides i had this really bad head cold truth is Linton kind of eluded me All year. You a think that having anointed him As a future president Way Back in 1980, id have had a Little More Faith in his prospects when he finally made the race. But no. On april 9, for example when he was Well on his Way to Victory i began a column this Way Quot the closer Bill Linton gets to the democratic presidential nomination the More nervous a if not despairing a Many of his fellow partisans become. To hear them talk they re not sure whether their convention will serve As prelude to an election or a political id like to say that was an isolated error but it Wasny to. All year despite a slew of critical columns about Perot and president Bush i kept finding reasons to doubt that Clinton would make it. The columns continued in that vein right up through mid october a right after the final presidential debate a when i wrote that a spurt for Perot would make what now appears to be a near certain Clinton Victory less of a sure that was an exceptional column in Many ways. It also contained a paragraph predicting that a the Brainy selfless and distinctly a egotistical James Stock Dale Perot a running mate will make both vice president Quayle and sen. Albert Core jr., the democrats no. 2 Man seem like Callow youths in their debate. No Margarita hangover can explain that sentence. In retrospect i should have auit after the column that appeared on new years Day 1992. In it i set Forth standards by which the coming election should be judged Quot first the Campaign itself should restore a sense of legitimacy to the Fiol tical processes of this Republic not Urther erode Peoples Trust in the mechanisms of democracy. And second at the end of the game there should be a government in place with both a mandate and a potential to act of the nations those things were accomplished a despite dodos like me a and that a cause for Celebration. And i also like what Ken Young a re a Cully retired Al Cio official Tola me in a letter gently chiding me for saying that Samuel Gompers an Early Leader of the american labor movement had defined Tabor a goal simply As a getting what Gompers really said Young wrote was Quot we want More schoolhouses and less jails More books and less arsenals More learning and less vice More constant work and less crime More Leisure and less greed More Justice and less . Add Quot better grammar and fewer goofs Quot and its not a bad wish for the new year. A the Washington Poal Jean Harris to give you an idea of How Long ago Jean Harris became prisoner 81-g-0g98, try a few cultural markers. It was before Charles Mattied i and before Thelma met Louise it was before smart women foolish choir a a a 1 Ait was before fatal attraction played in the movie theater and sexual harassment played in the Senate hearing room. Before co dependency became a 12-step program and of course before the battered woman a defense was admissible in court. When Jean Harris was convicted of killing a die Quot Herman Tarnower in the Winter of 1981, we Hadnot even figured out that crash diets were crashing failures. Tens of thousands of americans a even Julia child a were following the dictates of the Scarsdale diet Book which Tarnower had dedicated to Jean. And also to Quot Suzanne Phyllis Terry Elizabeth Janet Barbara. Elaine Frances june Sharon Ruth just some of the other women in his life ,. For Long months Jean Harris the Madeira girls school headmistress and scorned mistress of scars Dale was the Star of the tabloid firmament. She was a 57-year-old upper crust blues heroine whose Man done her wrong. She was Ever woman who was Ever dumped for another younger woman after 14 year. There were otherwise reasonable women who did t care whether Harris Dunn it or not she was the victim and they wanted her acquitted. There were others who saw Harris As nothing More than another jealous murdering woman they wanted her convicted. In court Harris testified that she was trying to kill Ellen Goodman herself not her scornful Lover. Later her advocates claimed that she was riot herself that Day but an addict in withdrawal from the amphetamines Tarnower had prescribed. But in the end the Only opinion that mattered was the jury s. They found her guilty of second degree murder. Fifteen years to life. I thought then and think now that Jean Harris was a woman who had Learned too Well How to Swallow mouthfuls of humiliation in return for titbits of attention. She was every woman who Hung onto a relations ii by her fingernails while her self esteem eroded like a crumbling Windowsill on the 18th floor. She fell into the abyss. Now after nearly 12 years in prison 81-g-0098 has been granted clemency by the governor who had refused it three times before. As she was heading into bypass surgery Mario Cuomo set the 69-year-old woman on the path to Freedom. He attributed his act to her health Ana to something else her Quot above average behavioural record during her the irony is that Jean Harris became a Model prisoner by fighting the prison Model. The irony is that she was not by the system but in opposition to it. A Quot one fights to stay whole in prison Quot she wrote from her cel. Indeed the self esteem that eroded in Long years of her destructive relationship with Tarnower was remarkably rebuilt in resistance to prisons attempt to destroy her. A it in one of three books she wrote prisoner 81 -g-0098 described in unsparing Unselt pitying detail the Petty tyrannies of Quot correction she described the constant humiliations of strip searches the deadening routines of waiting before As Many As 18 locked doors on each walk to and from meals with Black humor and compassion she saw life around her in society s warehouse for the criminal the insane the abused and abusive who were allowed one bizarre Courtesy a to be called Quot How do you teach anything to a human being stripped of All personal dignity Quot she asked. Yet she found an answer. In prison she also became an advocate for Reform organized programs As if it were her school taught classes for pregnant mothers worked at the prison children Scenter. In the years that Harris spent behind bars we have become More sensitive to emotional abuse we Label people As a a victims with both More sympathy and More abandon. In some ways Jean Harris strength is a rebuttal to those advocates who chose to see her As a a in other ways its proof that even a seed of self esteem can grow again. Cjene Boston Globe a
