Starr’s Report on Clinton

There is no question that the disgusting but private personal misbehavior between President Clinton and Monica Lewinsky is indefensible, but even more disgusting is Kenneth Starr’s public, prurient and pornographic account of the affair. The president should not capitulate by resigning. He needs to defend himself and the nation against the hypocrisy of his sanctimonious political enemies, who simultaneously use moral outrage and titillation as a means to further their extremist agenda.

DAVID NELSON

Santa Barbara

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Character does matter. If one’s private life is no one else’s business, then have the honesty to say so. Americans should never accept as normal a president who betrays his public duties in order to maintain a patently false image of private virtue. Lying by our president is indefensible in a society where integrity and truthfulness should carry as much weight as a good economy. Man does not live by bread alone and neither does the United States.

MICHAEL C. POULIOT

Redondo Beach

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If there is any impeachment to be done, it should be executed by the public to Starr and Co. and to the media: Starr for his scurrilous obsession with our president and the media for printing and airing the prurient “testimony” that the hate-filled man obtained. These are the tactics that will damage our society. Clinton was wrong and should be censured, not crucified.

NANCY LEE FREED

Los Angeles

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What have we learned from the Starr report? For $40 million of taxpayer money, we now know that a politician enjoys consensual, extramarital sex and that he’ll lie and deny it to protect his reputation. Move over, Larry Flynt. After producing the most expensive pornographic text in history, the new king of pornography is the U.S. government!

JEFF SCHWARTZ

San Clemente

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Re the Times Poll, “Americans Still Back Clinton,” Sept. 14: No matter what the favorable polls say, he’s a “polecat”!

LYLE TALBOT

Lancaster

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If President Clinton is given permission to break his oath to God, his wife and the American people by lying in front of a grand jury, our legal system will become laughable. I thought our laws applied to all the people. The president’s defense is an emotional one; not a cognitive one based on the facts. He may again fool the American people, but at what price to our system of laws?

PATRICK McALLISTER

Alhambra

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Clinton’s lawyers are attempting to hide his behavior behind a fog of legalistic arguments. This man has lied; he can no longer be trusted. He has shown by his reckless, immoral actions that he is not fit to be president. He must go.

WILLA COTRILL

Vista

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The report makes one thing perfectly clear: Starr is a man with an ugly compulsion to humiliate the president and drive him from office at any cost. Starr used the powers of his office to extract sordid details of the affair from Lewinsky, her mother and friends under threat of imprisonment. He rummaged through bookshelves, closets and computer records, interrogated Lewinsky’s therapist, and subjected the president to a physical evidence test normally reserved for rapists. And he released a report replete with frivolous gossip irrelevant to the issue of impeachment by any stretch of the imagination, including graphic reports of masturbation and Lewinsky’s hearsay about the state of the Clintons’ marriage.

The independent counsel’s prosecutorial excesses represent a far greater threat to the republic than any of the supposed “high crimes and misdemeanors” disclosed in the report.

RAJEEV TALWANI

Los Angeles

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The president’s conduct was immoral and inexcusable and the Starr report full of unnecessarily lurid details designed to embarrass a man who the prosecutor and his staff feel deserves to be humiliated, but I blame the sick feeling in my gut mostly on the Republican congressional leadership for their poor judgment in releasing the report without first reviewing and editing it. By publishing the unnecessary sexual details, they have done far more to debase the presidency and our institutions of government than the president or Starr.

ANDREW CUSHNIR

Los Angeles

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This trashy document shows that the independent counsel will go to any length to discredit a decent but flawed man and justify millions spent over a seemingly endless period. Where has our sense of fair play gone! Attack a person in an area where we are all most vulnerable and expose even the most intimate details for all the world to see.

This is a sad day for all Americans who value their personal privacy. I continue to support our president!

BOB CONSTANTINE

Placentia

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The president has lied under oath. Justice demands that impeachment hearings be held. Common sense suggests he resign. He has lost his integrity and credibility.

BERNARD PETERS

Placentia

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Despite their earlier votes, we now know that Congress has no objection to distributing indecent material on the Internet, as long as it embarrasses the president.

STEPHEN DAVID SIEMENS

Monterey Park

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We paid $40 million for Starr to write a sex novel? I expected to read a report about Starr’s investigation into the Whitewater land deal or foreign funds going into campaign coffers. There is nothing in there about that. Just sex, sex and more sex. I had no idea he was trying to top Danielle Steele.

CHRIS CHABOT

Redondo Beach

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I don’t think much of Clinton, but what was more harmful to the country--his sexual escapades, or the shelving of campaign finance reform by Sens. Trent Lott and Mitch McConnell? The answer is obvious. But the media’s gross disparity of coverage, reserving screaming headlines for the nonsense, mutes the continuing erosion of democracy by the Lotts in our midst.

H. STONE

Ventura

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What a sad day for the U.S. Voyeurism displayed around the world as if it has something to do with the Constitution and the running of government.

There is something very wrong with this entire sick picture. Forty million dollars to humiliate, dishonor and embarrass a president. Is this the most expensive political “marketing” ploy ever? It is my desire that my tax dollars be spent for the betterment of humanity, rather than explicit details of someone’s sex life. Thank you, but I’m not interested. Clinton’s behavior was foolish, but Starr’s “report” and behavior are repulsive, as is the behavior of Linda Tripp and Lewinsky.

THE REV. YVONNE GOODALE

Pastor, Metaphysical Fellowship Church, Anaheim

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I believe that the time has arrived to ask him the question: Mr. Starr, have you no decency?

DAN MARCUS

Claremont

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Thanks for publishing the Starr report in one complete section. This afforded me the opportunity to dispose of this section, intact and unread, in the garbage--where it belongs.

EVELYN LANE

Los Angeles

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I believe that President Clinton’s biggest mistake has been in not facing up to and admitting that he has a serious sexual compulsion or addiction, and in not seeking professional help to overcome it. I believe that he is a decent man and far too smart to have indulged in such foolish behavior otherwise.

MARY C. TRINNAMAN

Pasadena

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Clinton has shown utter contempt for the rule of law, his oath of office and this country. I find him to be a liar, a coward, immoral and psychologically unstable. He must leave office.

GAIL E. CONDREN

Los Angeles

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As a grandmother of two teenage girls and former university professor, there are elements of the Starr report that can prove useful to young women. First, affairs with married men rarely lead to a fantasied long-term relationship, much less marriage, which will cause the young woman pain. Second, many men lie about sex--see the research showing that in the heart-to-heart talks about past sexual partners, many men feel no obligation to tell the truth. And third, according to the report, women can have orgasms with a partner without intercourse. Furthermore, I don’t think it’s harmful for them to learn about oral sex, if they don’t know already.

PAULINE B. BART

Culver City

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Susan Carpenter McMillan (Commentary, Sept. 13) deserves no space to disseminate her biases against the Clintons. Her participation in the failed and judicially discredited Paula Jones business certainly proves her dearth of objectivity. For her to suggest any course of conduct for Mrs. Clinton is the ultimate in chutzpah.

GENE R. TOUCHET

Cathedral City

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I suggest that Clinton need no longer rent out the Lincoln Bedroom. Just charge the average citizen 10 bucks or so for a tour of his private study, the Oval Office, the hallway and the bathroom. Proceeds would balance the budget in no time.

LISA and JEFF HARMAN

Palmdale

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If anyone should be apologizing, it’s Lewinsky.

JAMES ANTONIO

Los Angeles

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Let’s cut to the chase and send a message to Congress to censure Clinton by the end of this week, so that the president can get back to work ASAP.

JOEL KAYE

Sherman Oaks

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It looks as if the radical Republicans of 1868 are back in power. This time they are trumping up unimpeachable offenses against Clinton, a Democrat, instead of Andrew Johnson.

DONALD ROSENBERG

Studio City

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In assessing blame for the ordeal the nation is about to endure, it is well to remember that it came about because the Supreme Court, in its infinite wisdom, declared that a civil suit brought against a sitting president would not constitute an undue distraction. I say we ask for a revote, which, by reversing the original vote, would annul the events of the past few years.

MICHAEL HORNSTEIN

Los Angeles