European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - November 08, 1993, Darmstadt, Hesse Monday novembers 1993 commentary the stars and stripes Page 17 nobody stays in the closet in talk show Era Ellen Goodman it is morning when people be Girt to line up atthe daily Tell All talk shows. At 11 . Cheating Fiance s Are on Sally Jesse Raphael. Ostracized pregnant teens Are on Montel Williams. Self die scribed male chauvinist sons Are on Ricki Lake. A bit later a Mother her teen aged son and the Girlfriend he admittedly abused All air their wounds to Maury mothers who can t get dates appear with Jane Whit Ney by afternoon a woman is Tell ing Phil Donahue that she falsely accused her Mother of sexual abuse. Parties in a custody Dis Pute Are pleading their Case i Oprah Winfrey s court of Public opinion. The spirit of boundless openness irrepressible self expression and gawd help us sharing pervades the entire land. We air Dur Linen dirty and otherwise on the airwaves. We live in a cultural climate of True confession yet this is the very culture in which the Clinton administration is now scrambling to defend a Compromise policy Ort Gays in the military a policy that wears the motto Don t ask. Don t Tell. Don t t make me laugh. Such a policy May work in England where people Wear discretion on their lapels As a National insignia. But in America we Are More Likely to Wear our heart son our sleeves. We do ask and increasingly we do Tell. Indeed what brought us to this new chapter what is it chapter 12 on Gays in the military was the revelation by Petty officer Keith Meinhold that hews homosexual. He told on television of course and the Navy pursued. They discharged Meinhold who went to court Tor reinstatement. A California judge then ruled that the Secretary of defense could t discharge or deny enlistment to any person based on sexual orientation months later the same judge extended the ruling to protect All military personnel. His response to Don t ask Don t Tell was Don t the Clinton administration asked for and won emergency Relief from the supreme court. On oct.29, the court lifted the part of the order that went beyond Meinhold s Case to encompass the entire military t ask Don t Tell will be murky until Hearthe future of Don i the ninth circuit court rules on the Appeal it Wil next the Clinton Justice department is now arguing ferociously for a stand the president was forced to accept. If this were a talk show Clinton would appear As what men who Compromise too much last january the new president promised to lift the ban on Gays in the military and All hell broke Loose in the Pentagon and the Congress. Back then Clinto said and apparently believed that allowing Gays and lesbians to serve openly would t harm the , his solicitor general is assigned to argue that it could cause irreparable understand the need for Compromise for politics is the Art of the possible. This is a president who has also appointed openly homosexual people to High ranking jobs. But this is just the sort of double take that make people wonder whether Clinton has More political skills than principles. Like Many a Good lawyer he haste unsettling habit of moving step by logical step until he is arguing against his own original to the Point this is a president who understands the culture of confession. As a candidate this baby Boomer was routinely compared favourably to talk show Host and first came into our living rooms talking about his marriage on 60 minutes. Having passed that openness test he told us his feelings about his Stepfather s Alco holism the abuse of his Mother and his half brother s drug problems. He barely flinched when another half brother popped up from the Distant past. Like it or not the Tenor of times is openness and he sings like a Tenor. This same president cannot possibly believe that policy upholding the closet is going to work. Under the new rules Gays can serve As Long As they can pass. Inthis Nice neat theoretical world no one will ask a sol Dier about sexual orientation nor will any Soldier Ever utter a forbidden word. But silence is not Golden in the 1990s. Silence i considered a taboo to be broken. This is not the age of innocence when discretion is everything and repressions valued. It s the age of Phil Oprah Sally Maury. Don t ask Don t Tell will never survive. But than you anyway As they say for sharing. C the Boston gob Congress fighting losing Battle on term limits. _. _ m4 full fat team stir to a t new York City s political class having failed to master the problems engulfing that City has finally outsmarted something itself. It counted on courts to relieve it of its democratic duty to debate the Issue of term limits. Not smart. Last tuesday the nation s largest City impose limits two consecutive four year terms starting now on its elected political class everywhere tries to prevent term limitation proposals fro coming to a vote because limits almost Al ways win. However new York s City Slife is so permeated by government that a robust anti term limits Campaign might have mustered a majority. The fact that new York s political class failed to Stop term limits is a Monument to the arro Gance of that supporters of term limits got the requisite number of signatures on petitions the City government spent tax dollars attempting to get courts to Den taxpayers the right to vote on limits. Politicians assured reporters who intern assured editors that the courts the first Refuge of the political y unpersuasive would Block the initiative. When the courts did not the Media per haps feeling misled and wanting to make amends to the Public gave the coming vote on limits heavy coverage. By then there were Only 13 Days until the vote. That was not enough time forthe political class to mobilize the Public employees who Prosper from their relationship of Mutual aggrandizement with political careerists. New York City has More full time and part time Public employees 444,000 than Kansas qty has , 13 Days were not enough time for the political class to terrify Al the other people who Are or aspire to be dependent in various ways on the decisions of the City s elephantine government. These people in clude Many differ ent groups who might have been susceptible to this argument you will suffer fro the termination of George f. Will political careerism because careerists Are uninhibited about using Public spending and other government action to Purchase the affections of myriad constituencies including you. The constituencies susceptible to Suchan anti term limits Campaign include people doing business with the City government. A $31 billion budget can enrich Many vendors. The susceptible constituencies include developers construction unions and anyone else needing govern ment s approval to do business. And of course welfare recipients Are a constituency for political careerists. John fund of the Wall Street journal notes that if the City s 1.1 million welfare recipients were themselves a City it would be the nation eighth largest. The new York times attacked term limitation warning that limits can Foster mediocrity an argument particularly unpersuasive in new York City where mediocrity would be a distinct improvement. Reporters too seemed hos tile to term limits perhaps because limit mean disruption 01 comfortable relation ships with familiar sources. Also Ter limits rest on the Assumption that govern ments can be run by raw amateurs rather than seasoned professionals two favorite phrases of opponents of term limits. If so government is not such a High mystery after ail. A mystery requiring a Clerisy of journalists to decipher it. Anyway last tuesday new yorkers did what voters almost invariably do when Given the Opportunity they imposed Lim its. Also on tuesday three other Large jurisdictions were Given a Chance to impose limits and All three did. Two Are counties in new York state Suffolk on Long is land and Monroe which includes Roch Ester. Maine imposed limits on its state legislators and some other officials. So term limits came to jurisdictions con Taining 10 million americans. Fourteen states have already impose limits on their state legislators. Fifteen have imposed limits on their . Representatives and senators. Next year other states almost certainly will join the year when term limits for . Con Gressmen and senators were on 14 states ballots limits won in All 14 and got More votes in the 14 than Ross Perot got in so. Among the hundreds of municipalities with term limits extending beyond their mayors City councils Etc. Are Anaheim Anchorage Billings Cincinnati Colorado Springs Dallas Elpaso Fargo Fresno Galveston Honolulu Houston Jacksonville Kansas City Long each. New Orleans Phoenix St. Peters Burg san Diego san Francisco Sanjose Santa Barbara Syracuse. Tacoma Tampa and Wichita. All of this raises the question. When will Congress abandon the pretence that it is so different or so successful or so something that it must be forever exempt from limits c the Washington Post
