Lost in the Hoopla : Trial: The ribald T-shirts and international media surrounding the case of Lorena and John Wayne Bobbitt has obscured the genuine emotional pain and suffering.

It is already being called the Mother of All Marital Disputes, a battle royal of the sexes that has captivated and--let’s admit it--titillated the attention not only of the nation but of the world.

Lorena Bobbitt’s lawyer, James Lowe, refers to it in his courtroom questioning simply as “the Cutting,” a decorous if somewhat awkward description that makes it sound as if he is talking about a major made-for-TV movie--which doubtless it will soon be.

Could Andrew Lloyd Webber make a musical of this?

What Lowe is referring to, of course, is the fact that Lorena Bobbitt cut off her husband’s penis on the night of June 23 in retaliation for what she says were years of marital abuse that included beatings, forced anal sex and torture with “Marine-style” martial arts techniques that John Wayne Bobbitt picked up during a hitch in the Marine Corps.

Now she is on trial in a courthouse 30 miles west of Washington, facing a future that could include 20 years behind bars. And while the verdict is still in doubt, one thing has become abundantly clear: This small Southern town, renown for its Civil War history, has not seen an invasion from the North of this magnitude since the Battle of Bull Run.

Hundreds of reporters, reinforced by caravans of satellite trucks, have converged on Manassas, whose entrepreneurs have wasted no time in figuring out a way to commemorate their newest if somewhat dubious claim to national fame with T-shirts that depict a Civil War canon, its barrel quite obviously cleaved in two, under the inscription: “Remembered Again! Manassas, Va.”

It is, of course, only one of a number of T-shirts and other souvenirs--most of them unmentionable in a family newspaper--that profiteers and partisans on both sides of the Bobbitt battle line are hawking outside the Prince Williams County courthouse.

There is the “Official John Wayne Bobbitt T-Shirt,” autographed by the victim himself, with proceeds going to the John Wayne Bobbitt Legal Support Fund. The front of the shirt depicts a maniacal-looking woman wielding a carving knife; the back says, “Love Hurts.”

A few yards away, on the other side of the grassy hillock, a local rock band is entertaining reporters with “50 Ways to Cleave Your Lover.” Meanwhile, Lorena’s supporters are busy hawking their wares, which include “Lorena Bobbitt for Surgeon General” lapel pins and other things that are more clever but less mentionable.

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Somewhere in the middle of this circus of microphones and TV cameras, of X-rated souvenirs and shameless publicity stunts, of slick media advisers negotiating the price tags for their clients’ interviews and journalists from foreign lands so desperate for color that they are interviewing other journalists from foreign lands about all the media hype, somewhere in all of this a serious trial is supposed to be taking place.

A trial laced with genuine emotional pain and suffering; a drama--dare one use a pun--about the dismembered dreams of a young and strikingly handsome couple who fell in love at a Marine ball four years ago but somehow stumbled over the edge of a dark psychological precipice soon after they were married.

If only it didn’t involve a penis, if only Lorena Bobbitt had plunged the knife into her sleeping husband’s heart instead of that other part of his anatomy, this would be a trial about murder and spousal abuse without the T-shirts or the stand-up comedians or the chocolate bars shaped in the image of a you-know-what and sold in wrappers bearing the slogan, “Melts in Your Mouth, Not in Your Hand.”

But regardless of who is more to blame and no matter what the verdict (now expected sometime next week), John Wayne and Lorena Bobbitt are destined to lead the rest of their lives as jokes.

Long after the reporters have gone and the satellite dishes have been packed up and sent off to other stories, the Bobbitt name will live on in late-night TV monologues and comedy club routines. Hey, let’s face it: Neither of them is going to have an easy time from now on getting dates, right?

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Under more normal circumstances, one might expect women’s groups to be rallying around Lorena’s cause, especially now that the defense has done what legal experts agree is a convincing job of portraying her as a classic case of the battered spouse. But at the Washington office of the Women’s Legal Defense Fund, calls to Director Judith Lichtman are deflected by press aides who say: “Sorry, but we’re not commenting on that.”

The case in some ways represents “the flip side of violence against women” but the “carnival-like atmosphere and the heinous nature of the act . . . have completely obscured the issues,” laments Judith Olton Mueller, director of the Vienna, Va.-based Women’s Center.

Unlike the Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas controversy, the Bobbitt trial is likely “to set back the course of gender relations because there is nothing good to say about it,” says Mueller, adding: “We’ll all breathe a huge sigh of relief when it’s over.”

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In the meantime, the trial is providing what appears to be a welcome change of pace for hordes of Washington-based reporters weary from covering budget battles, health care debates and complex trade issues with funny-sounding acronyms. Why, even the venerable Economist of London was at the trial one day--although its somewhat embarrassed bureau chief quickly explained that he was there only because the Home Office had ordered him to go.

“Just trying to find out if this sets some sort of legal precedence,” he sniffed.

Uh-huh.