Explaining to the Children

It was Friday midmorning. The house was quiet. The 6-year-old turned the TV on. The camera was zoomed in on someone’s computer, and there was a breathless voice: “Monica Lewinsky” . . . “Oval Office” . . . “sex with the president.”

“Mama,” she said in confusion, cuddling her kitten, “I thought the president was married. Does this mean Monica Lewinsky is having a baby now?”

I stood there, flat-footed.

“Mama, why do you have that look on your face? Did something bad happen?”

“Kinda. Not really. Let’s turn off this dumb TV. I’ll explain later, sweetie-pie.”

*

Later is right. Maybe someday we’ll all be able to explain to our children why, one Friday, we let the nation’s business degenerate into soft-core porn. Why parents across America suddenly found themselves stammering: Um, how can we put this? See, the president isn’t like Mommy and Daddy. See, the world is run by people and people mess up.

It wasn’t too bad if your kids were older. What’s left to explain to a generation that was weaned on “Melrose Place”? But the littler ones who knew the words but were only beginning to get the meaning--theirs were the questions that made you wince.

Funny how what goes around comes around. Today’s parents, children of Watergate, have made a religion out of facts. It has been our gift to the world: unlimited data. Now the man in the White House has literally been stripped naked before us and our families. We got what we wanted. What do we do with that?

Barraged with information, we parsed our confusion. How to make sense of a “crisis” that reeked of phoniness? Oh, we knew. We were supposed to be shocked--shocked!--that the leader of the free world would let himself be seduced by a Brentwood cream puff. Or, failing that, we were supposed to be sickened--sickened!--that he’d lie to cover it up.

And yet--well, how can we put this?--we were shocked and sickened, and then again, we weren’t. Who didn’t know, deep down, that the president, while hard-working, was also a pushover, caving to this one, caving to that one? Caving to Monica. (“I don’t want to disappoint you . . .”) Caving to pollsters. Messing up.

No, it’s not what you want in a commander in chief, but it sure does peg him as a fellow human being. (Everyone wondered how so many women could root for a guy like Bill Clinton. It was easy. Women know all about how it is to feel pushed around.) Which doesn’t excuse the behavior, but which does raise an issue for us: Why, with all these facts, are we so disingenuous when it comes to human behavior? If we care so much about adultery, why didn’t we insist on a classier guy?

Why do we settle for a system in which the spoils go to the candidate with the best commercials? At least the party bosses in those old smoke-filled rooms knew who had character and who did not. Again, we’ve gotten what we wanted: In modern America, anyone can be president.

All day Friday, the scandal dogged us. It was like a dirty book we couldn’t put down. We locked the kids out of the bedroom while we logged onto the Starr Report, grimacing as we scrolled on and on and on. When we took the teenager out for a drive with her learner’s permit, it was all over the radio. She avoided eye contact, wending her way down the cul-de-sac and past the middle school, while commentators discussed whether you’re technically having sex if you don’t . . well, you know.

Tentatively, we asked if she wanted to talk. She looked at us as if we were insane. “It’s just porn,” she said. The last thing she wanted to do was talk to two geezers about another geezer’s sexual escapades.

Still, we couldn’t help wondering how long our luck would hold out. We remembered the days when the dirty-deed-doer was our parents’ president. Our generation made a career out of throwing stones at the weak people who were running the world. Now it’s our turn. And we find that our leaders are as imprisoned by their failings as our parents’ leaders were.

*

Which is not the kind of thing you can communicate to a 6-year-old with a kitten in her lap. Every time we turned on the TV, she’d appear, looking curious and confused. Every broadcast would start out seriously, only to remind you why the good Lord invented V-chips.

“Where is the outrage?” some commentator demanded.

“Mama, what’s outrage? Is it kinda like when you’re frustrated and have a tantrum?” she asked.

So many facts. So much furor. Where is the wisdom?

“Yeah,” I smiled wistfully. “Something like that.”

*

Shawn Hubler’s column appears Mondays and Thursdays. Her e-mail address is shawn.hubler@latimes.com