News Operas Are Theater of the Absurd

Is this Watergate or “Peyton Place”?

--Rep. Lindsey Graham

(R-S.C.)

The year was 1991 and spring was in the air. Monica S. Lewinsky, now the femme fatale of the most highly rated soap opera of our times, was just another pretty face in the crowd at a “Days of Our Lives” confab at the Beverly Garland Holiday Inn in North Hollywood.

My colleague Robert W. Welkos covered the event, interviewing fans who traveled from as far away as Milwaukee; Tulsa, Okla.; and Springfield, Mo. Welkos now laughingly boasts he may be the only journalist in the world who has interviewed Lewinsky. Here’s how he ended his article:

Monica Lewinsky, 18, of West Los Angeles said that she doesn’t really identify with obsessed soap fans, but believes watching daytime dramas can be therapeutic.

“People who are always saying daytime TV is something that is not to be credited are wrong,” she said. “ ‘Days of Our Lives’ adds spice to a life, rather than being the essence of a life.”

As she spoke, dozens of women crowded around a seated [Matthew] Ashford, who signed autographs and put his arm around their shoulders as their friends snapped photos.

“I really think there is magic,” Lewinsky said. “Daytime really wants to give something to the audience, and I think that in nighttime they want to take something.”

Now, can we be certain this is the right Monica Lewinsky? Name and age fit, and Brentwood may be construed as West L.A. Then again, she doesn’t really sound ditsy enough for the Valley Girl she is alleged to be. But Welkos, recalling the dark-haired woman, has become convinced it was her.

And we also know that in her senior year she wrote a tribute in her high school yearbook to, yes, “Days of Our Lives.” What’s more, since Lewinsky has become famous, it has been reported that she was once a member of the “Days” fan club.

So it seems safe to assume that this was indeed that woman, Miss Lewinsky.

Now, what this tells us about her character or the corrupting influences of the soaps may not be much. Anecdotal evidence at best. But it’s interesting, isn’t it? There’s something perfectly surreal here about a young woman who used to escape into fictional love, lust and betrayal and then found the real thing in Washington.

This is surely better--and surely worse--than a soap opera. This is a news opera.

News operas, of course, are now the dominant form of TV entertainment. Time was when Hollywood made a fortune cranking out those movie-of-the-week docudramas that opened with the words “Based On A True Story.” What better than the story itself? On a small scale, see the narrative flow of “Dateline NBC.” On a grander scale, see the O.J. Simpson case, the death of Princess Di and now the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal.

There’s always a kernel of real news in a news opera, but it’s not hard at all to separate these larger-than-life dramas from the true crises.

Quick, major news or news opera? You be the judge:

Iran-Contra. The Menendez brothers. The Persian Gulf War. The Bobbitts. Tonya Harding. Rodney King. The L.A. riot. Heidi Fleiss. The Northridge earthquake. O.J. Simpson. The Mideast peace accords. Haiti. Somalia. Princess Di. The global economic crisis. Bosnia. Rwanda. Kosovo.

Simple, isn’t it?

It isn’t just news operas that get epic coverage. The Gulf War may have looked like a video game on TV, but thousands of dead Iraqis are proof this wasn’t so. The great L.A. story of the early ‘90s also received epic coverage. The reverberations of the Rodney King beating would include the deadliest American riot of the century. It received epic coverage.

But the size of the coverage isn’t what distinguishes news from news opera. It has more to do with tone and content of the news. That’s why the better parallel to Lewinsky-Clinton isn’t Watergate, though some have suggested as much. It’s the O.J. Simpson murder case, but without the dead bodies.

Instead of a bloody glove, we now have a stained dress. Instead of Rockingham, the White House. Instead of Mark Fuhrman, Linda Tripp.

Both news operas feature audiotaped evidence. And both have magical lawyers. Watch Johnnie Cochran turn proof of murder into reasonable doubt! Watch Kenneth Starr turn proof of sex into an impeachable offense! (Interesting how, in the Tripp tapes, the two women actually refer to the Simpson case in discussing the significance of DNA evidence. What’s more, Tripp’s confidant, book agent Lucianne S. Goldberg, also counted Fuhrman as a client.)

The Dancing Itos helped lift Leno’s ratings over Letterman’s. Not long ago, the show introduced the Dancing Lewinskys.

Weird how these news operas get blended together. Remember when the media were staking out the Lewinsky home in Brentwood and Simpson, neighbor that he is, drove by to say hello? Channel-surfing one night, I caught Daniel Petrocelli, the lawyer who nailed Simpson in the civil suit, talking to Geraldo Rivera about the president’s legal troubles.

But there is a key difference between the two news operas. While the Simpson case was a tragedy that took on the elements of a farce, the Clinton mess is a farce taking on elements of a tragedy.

There’s a lull now, but once the impeachment hearings start, daytime television will be awash in tales of sex and lies, just as it was during the Simpson trial. News opera again will bounce soap opera.

“We could be preempted for weeks at a time,” David Sperber, a publicist for “Days of Our Lives,” told me.

Only three years after a starry-eyed young woman waited in line in North Hollywood to meet a hunky star of her favorite soap, she goes to Washington and meets another leading man. Alas, he is married. Alas, he is the President of the United States. Their star-crossed private lives would become a very public drama with monster ratings.

Even people who can’t stand it can’t resist it. And so go the days of our lives.

Scott Harris’ column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. Readers may write to him at The Times Valley Edition, 20000 Prairie St. , Chatsworth, CA 91311, or via e-mail at scott.harris@latimes.com Please include a phone number.