True or false? High-profile Irish-American journalists are hammering President Clinton over his dalliance with Monica Lewinsky because their Catholic consciences are scandalised.
It is true that celebrated pundits such as Mary McGrory, of the Washington Post; Maureen Dowd, of the New York Times; Michael Kelly, editor of the National Journal; Chris Matthews, of the San Francisco Examiner; Tim Russert, of NBC's Meet the Press; and Pat Buchanan, of CNN's Crossfire, and twice a candidate for the Republican nomination, have been scathing about the President's behaviour with Monica.
But when the Italian-American Gay Talese, famous for his book on the sex life of Americans, Thy Neighbour's Wife, railed at this "high-minded pontificating from Irish Catholics" and pointed out that "Italian Catholics remain more firmly in the embattled President's corner" all hell broke loose.
"The Irish media want the President to climb up the hill on bloody knees like the Stations of the Cross," Talese adds defiantly in Washingtonian magazine, under the headline "Irish eyes aren't smiling on Clinton".
Niall O'Dowd, of the Irish Voice, has fired back at these "cheap shots at the Irish to get a cheap headline". Talese "believes there is a witch hunt against Clinton partly fuelled by the Irish sense of punishment", writes O'Dowd, who slams this stereotyping by pointing out that "President Clinton's most capable defenders have included Senator Edward Kennedy and former Senator Mitchell".
This shoot-out began with an article in Michael Kelly's serious National Journal shortly before President Clinton's public repentance at the White House prayer breakfast on the day of the release of the Starr report, with all its lurid details of sexual encounters. The article by yet another Irish-American journalist, William Powers, focused on a sub-group of the "politico-media class" which is agonising over the sinning of the President.
Among these pundits are: the vengeance-is-mine conservatives who are fighting a Watergate grudge match; the Clinton-unto-death loyalists; the Lechers United, scribes notorious for having had many Monicas of their own; and "the pundits from Roman Catholic backgrounds, most of whom have liberal-to-moderate Democratic leanings, and yet have noticeably not come to Clinton's defence in this scandal".
While Powers goes on to analyse this latter group, nicknamed "The Roman Legion", and identifies their distaste for Clinton's behaviour with a Catholic moral sensibility, he does not point out that most of them have given the President generous praise for his role in the Northern Ireland peace process. Michael Kelly, who has been savaging the President over the sex scandal and campaign financing, devoted a column to retracting his previous criticism of Clinton's Northern Ireland policy.
Gay Talese also ignored this important element in Irish-American attitudes to the Lewinsky scandal. A member of Irish-American Democrats, Mary Roddy Betzler, has written to the Washingtonian pointing out that on the very day the Starr report came out, more than 700 Irish-Americans gathered at the White House to honour the President for his role in the peace process. "President Clinton has become a hero to millions of Irish around the world for his efforts to bring peace to Ireland," she reminded Talese.
Talese is sorry he ever got into this wasps' nest. "Do I regret this!" he told this correspondent. "I was writing about a wretched little clique in the media, not making an attack on the great Irish nation to which I am related through my wife.
"The media has been disgustingly prurient on this sexual matter with Clinton. Not that I'm a Clinton advocate," Talese says. His swipe at the Irish-American pundits came from his "exasperation with the endless obsession of the media with this story. It just won't go away." His book showed "how hypocritical this nation is" about sex with its "puritan streak". But he was wrong to generalise and now "I feel remorseful about the anger of my Irish wife."
Whatever about the Clinton sex story not going away, this debate about the role of Irish-American pundits won't go away, either. Eric Alterman, in the left-wing Nation magazine, writes about the demand for Clinton's head coming from "five separate camps of would-be executioners" of which the "most enthusiastic is an increasingly influential Catholic mafia", including Kelly, Dowd and Matthews.
With their "moral absolutism", they "pass out moral judgments the way Michael Corleone issued death sentences", Alterman wrote. This labelling annoyed Terry Golway, in the New York Observer, who consulted the former governor Mario Cuomo. He conceded that older Catholics are "inordinately sensitive on the subject of sex". But he objected to references to Catholics in the media as a mafia.
When all is said, however, the argument that the Catholicism of high-profile Irish-American pundits is motivating their antipathy to the Clinton philandering is not really convincing. Most of his political supporters, regardless of their religious affiliation and even if they have none, also denounce his behaviour as reprehensible but not impeachable.
The fact is that the dislike of many American journalists for President Clinton predates Monica Lewinsky. Many of them have voted twice for him but they hate the way he twists and turns the truth when under pressure.
Not surprisingly he has little respect for the media, either. His former adviser, Dick Morris, described his attitude as "contemptuous of reporters. He feels they're a sleazy group of people who lie a lot, who pursue their own agendas, who have a pack mentality. He feels they are a necessary evil."