From: "Holly Peterson" -Mil lMa> To: "Ma l `Mil IMIEIM Subject: FW: Tina Brown's Column - The Washington Post Date: Thu, 01 Apr 2004 18:06:44 +0000 Importance: Normal Fyi hp Original Message From: Kara Simonetti [mailto: Sent: Thursday, April 01, 2004 6:23 AM Subject: Tina Brown's Column - The Washington Post washingtonpost.com The Story That Puts Other 'News' In Perspective By Tina Brown Thursday, April 1, 2004; Page CO1 The best thing about Richard Clarke's testimony was that we were finally shocked by something important instead of pretending to be shocked by something ridiculous. After the Dean scream and the Jackson nipple and the many TV hours invested in such incendiary issues as the rightness or wrongness of reconstructive breast surgery for teenagers with self-esteem issues, the Clarke Chronology was a sonic boom that will go on reverberating through the op-ed classes, whether or not the Clarke Apology to the 9/11 families moves the polls. We were about to OD on hearings, at least the courtroom kind -- Martha, Kobe, Michael, the wacko trial of Tyco boss Dennis Kozlowski. Who, in the end, can relate to the date-rape complications of a zillionaire basketball giant, the financial finaglings of a domestic dominatrix-tycoon, or the alleged pedophilia of a loony recording legend who makes up his face like Joan Crawford and maintains a private zoo? For news junkies numbed by the freak shows of celebrity justice, the Clarke story has been bracing. "Mostly, TV languishes in an area that doesn't much please me, but once in a while it rises to the occasion and moves beyond the 'Fear Factor' or 'American Idol' or 'Survivor' and becomes more or less what we thought it would be when we all got into this goddamn business," Don Hewitt, czar of "60 Minutes," said to me about Clarke's explosive debut on the show with Lesley Stahl. "Dick Clarke taking on George Bush was a great big moment." The stakeout culture needed this moral lift. Cla