By Michael Miner
“Is the public fed up? It’s not quite there, but almost,” said Trunzo. “I think the public is saturated with it, and they’ve let the press know from the beginning that they weren’t too overwhelmed with the idea that the president they found satisfactory in many ways had been caught with his knickers down. The public is definitely moving away from it.”
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Ivone, who’s editor of the National Examiner, agrees that the super-market-going public is displaying what he calls “Clinton-Lewinsky fatigue.” He told me that even though the tabs dutifully put Monica on their covers, they never warmed to her. “The supermarket tabs and TV tabloid shows didn’t jump in with great enthusiasm, because it was already being covered with such enthusiasm,” he said. “It was a tabloid story with a ribbon on the top for the conventional media.”
Was it ever as good a story for you as JonBenet? I asked.
“Apparently,” Ivone said cautiously. “If you talk to ten people you get ten theories. What is it, Pirandello? Or is it Rashomon?”
“It’s on the cover,” he said.
Now Ryan is running for reelection, and the Tribune has had to choose between him and Miriam Santos, a Democrat with problems of her own. Given the Tribune’s adeptness at forgetting every critical word it’s uttered against Republican officeholders when they run for reelection, I expected the worst.
