Too Much Bill and Too Many Blunders

It was the year of You Know Who and What He Did You Know Where with You Know Whom.

All of which made William Jefferson Clinton at once the fattest TV topic of 1998 and the fattest target. How would Jay Leno have survived, for example, without Mr. Bill to terrorize?

Actually, Leno’s fixation on Clinton in his monologues mirrored a yearlong laser-lock by the media, especially television, on the president’s destructive misbehavior. In fact, the “Tonight Show” host may have been TV’s most reliable source on Clinton in an exotic year that historians may come to regard as seminal in the regression of U.S. journalism.

It wasn’t that those lovable, rambunctious kids--Clinton, Monica Lewinsky, Linda Tripp and independent counsel Kenneth Starr--were not a big story. Only that the way it was sold on TV for much of the year--largely through rumor and speculation driven by those 24-hour news monsters CNN, MSNBC and the Fox News Channel--became at least as important a story.

CNN was the lowest of the lot. With the most individual programs to sustain, it feasted ferociously on untruths, half-truths and wild conjecture--a likely “Larry King Live” panel on the Clinton scandal consisting of Alan Dershowitz, Wolf Blitzer, Dee Dee Myers, Jerry Falwell and the Olsen twins.

It’s a tossup which was more disgraceful and crippling to the nation in 1998, the president and some of his most fanatical political enemies or much of a mainstream media whose news priorities nose-dived along with Clinton’s credibility.

Meanwhile, 1998 provided other indelible TV moments, some of which were:

The sounds heard around the world: this month’s widely televised air attacks on Iraq ordered by Clinton in the same surreal week that the Republican-tilted House voted to impeach him and place the fate of his gasping presidency in the hands of the Senate.

The two TV appearances that shouldn’t have been made: Clinton vowing to the nation that he had no sexual relations with “that woman,” and his subsequent back-to-the-wall concession that he did, the latter an admission of deceit couched in an ill-advised slamming of Starr that came back at the president like a razor-edged boomerang.

The TV series debased by a feature-film remake: “The Avengers,” a grandly funky and whimsical Brit-bred delight from the ‘60s that deserved much better than this year’s pulseless, humorless movie homage in which Ralph Fiennes and Uma Thurman failed the taste test with their TV counterparts, Patrick Macnee and Diana Rigg. Fortunately, the series is available on video.

The feature film debased by a TV remake: “Rear Window,” more of a brick even than this year’s small-screen rendering of “David and Lisa.” This new “Rear Window” had Christopher Reeve heading a ‘90s-style story that was unable even to approach the mastery of Hitchcock’s 1954 original with Jimmy Stewart.

The TV movie that you’d never find on ABC, CBS or NBC: Showtime’s “The Baby Dance,” not just a stunning, superbly acted adoption odyssey driven by class and ethnic tensions, but one bravely refusing to soft-shoe its dark, devastatingly sad ending.

The docudrama about a life not worth documenting: “Bad as I Wanna Be,” a movie about loopy basketball star Dennis Rodman that equaled its subject’s banality and affirmed that notoriety at even the lowest level can bring extended fame, profit and a TV biography.

The miniseries that wasn’t mini enough: “The Last Don II.” More caricaturish, needlessly violent, recycled Corleone for Mafiaphiles in a CBS story whose level of creativity was epitomized by its Hollywood figure awakening in bloody bedsheets with two human bodies at the foot of his bed. Instead of a horse’s head. (Get it?) A bigger corpse was the script.

The great comedy series with a great finale: “The Larry Sanders Show.” Garry Shandling’s HBO series about a talk-show host’s gnarled universe was that extremely rare TV comedy so urbane and smartly written that it could soar even when not funny. As a bonus, its final episode was very funny.

The great comedy series with a grating finale: “Seinfeld.” Its departure last season left a Thursday night ratings hole from which once-dominant NBC has been unable to recover. However, the planet’s funniest sitcom was seldom funny during its stretch run and its disappointing farewell episode reflected that creative malaise.

The new comedy series I should have reviewed but didn’t: Showtime’s oft-witty “Rude Awakening,” the most original sitcom on TV and one in which Sherilyn Fenn shines as an outrageously wild party girl and recovering lush, and Lynn Redgrave is a flamboyant hoot as her equally excessive mother. Evidence mounts that TV’s most provocative work originates on cable.

The documentary I should have reviewed but didn’t: “Dying to Tell the Story,” an important, deeply moving work that aired on TBS and CNN, celebrating 22-year-old photojournalist Dan Eldon and other media members who put themselves at risk while covering global conflict. Intimately involved in making this documentary were the mother and sister of Eldon, who covered only one war. It was in Somalia, where his photographs illuminated the plight of a starving, war-ravaged people. And where he was one of four Reuters journalists stoned to death by an angry mob in 1993.

The talk show that couldn’t talk: “The Magic Hour,” a widely anticipated, wildly bad late-night bomb headed by basketball hero-business mogul Magic Johnson, a series that inexplicably got on the air even though the host’s camp knew he wasn’t up to the task. The message? A big smile and big talent are not necessarily synonymous.

The news story that shouldn’t have aired: “Valley of Death,” the widely promoted joint CNN-Time magazine expose charging that the U.S. used nerve gas on American defectors during the Vietnam War, an accusation they were forced to retract after investigating their own investigation.

This was a 1990s metaphor for media perilously in a rush. The CNN producers were fired, and star correspondent Peter Arnett--forced to admit he contributed little to the story he fronted as an on-screen reporter--came within “a half-inch” of being jettisoned, said CNN News Group President Tom Johnson. However, the captain of this Titanic, CNN President Rick Kaplan, shoved his way onto a lifeboat and escaped this debacle without even a reprimand.

The spokesman who shouldn’t have spoken: Los Angeles consumer reporter David Horowitz, who traded credibility for bucks by signing on as a paid TV (and direct mail) mouthpiece for the successful campaign against California’s Proposition 9.

The fearless fuss over nothing: charges that the short-lived UPN comedy “The Secret Diary of Desmond Pfeiffer” demeaned African American suffering during slavery, when, in fact, its only visible sin was stupidity. It was canceled not because of pressure from the black activists who loudly condemned it, but because its ratings were as low as its IQ.

The compelling evidence that Howard Stern should limit himself to radio: his Saturday night CBS TV series.

The shot we shouldn’t have seen live: a self-inflicted shotgun blast to the head by Daniel V. Jones on the transition loop from the Harbor Freeway to the Century Freeway, a big kablooie telecast by ghoulish Los Angeles stations after a police pursuit. It was the ultimate media high-wire adventure without a safety net, a blind spin of Russian roulette that epitomized news driven by technology. They could have taped it and decided later whether to show it. Instead, they showed it live because they could show it live.

The distinguished hour from the undistinguished show: longtime Texas death row resident Karla Faye Tucker being interviewed by Larry King on his CNN series just days before her execution. We’ll never know whether Tucker was as sincere as she appeared or a skilled actress who faked her metamorphosis in the hope of earning a reprieve. Regardless, it was impossible to square the goodly, repentant, deeply religious gentle spirit who chatted with King that night--her demeanor arguing eloquently against capital punishment--with the vicious drughead who committed a brutal crime years earlier that she was about to die for.

The evidence of prissy boobs running cable’s Bravo channel: “Inside the Actors Studio,” where host James Lipton ends his interviews of film and theater luminaries with a series of lighthearted personal questions, including, “What is your favorite curse word?” When the guest replies, Bravo bleeps the word.

What a bleeping joke--as was much of TV in 1998.