Word: prurient
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...thinking with his--how can I say this politely--body instead of his head, America is becoming the laughing stock of Europe. People there see a government too divided to govern and too obsessed with its image to tell the truth. They see a people too fascinated by the prurient sexual details to focus on the world's economic crisis or the new era of European unification marked by the debut of the euro. In the face of such disarray, many Europeans are beginning to turn away from the country they once respected as a defender of democratic ideals...
...love this particular sinner. But they see how a guy can go from succumbing to momentary temptation to lying about it to a grand jury, and they see it as a seamless human story, not as a series of discrete actions. That's why the Starr report's prurient narrative backfired so badly: by putting flesh on the bones, it made the story plausible. And that is the fatal first step toward empathy. Comic details like gifts of poetry and the semen-stained dress make it harder, not easier, for reasonable people to remain solemn enough for an impeachment...
There is little of prurient interest. Starr has scrubbed out the sex, offering a PG-rated, made-for-TV version. There are no fireworks, little crankiness and none of the verbal slips you might expect after 12 hours of testimony. Hardened attorneys don't crack. Starr is eerily Clintonian at times. He hides behind his "professional staff," and when confronted with the charge that he'd intimidated a witness by questioning the legitimacy of her long-ago adoption of a Romanian orphan, he shifts responsibility to them, saying, "I don't go with my FBI agents on every single interview...
...they were planning to do. But the real power of the dress was not to punish Clinton but to smoke him out of his denial. Her privacy destroyed and her dignity under siege, the last thing Lewinsky wants to do is spend the fall and next spring answering prurient questions from Congressmen about her private life. The sheer possibility of semen on the dress would be like truth serum in Clinton's orange juice: Nothing like a DNA test to bring out the best in a man. Sure enough, no sooner had the dress made...
Thought the Supreme Court's decision to allow "indecency" online meant the Web was safe for porn? Not any more. The Justice Department has told federal prosecutors it's time to stamp out more prurient forms of titillation. "Investigation and prosecution of Internet obscenity is particularly suitable for federal resources," Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder wrote in a June 10 memo to all U.S. attorneys, obtained by TIME's Netly News...