UNLESS youve been seriously caffeine-deprived this week, you wont have failed to notice the latest liquid-based scandal to engulf the Presidency. Yes, there was something really sinister about those Coffee Tapes, and I dont mean their grainy, out-of-focus, shot-by-Chelsea-on-a-handycam appearance.
It was, rather, the speed at which this lets be honest utterly innocuous collection of quaffing clips became another -gate. If history repeating itself is tragedy followed by farce, no prizes for guessing which category houses Water- and Iran-, and in which the Travel- and Coffee-gates lie.
But America loves its presidential impropriety, and when Harold Ickes stuck his hand up in a Senate hearing to point out that its actually stilllegal to sip joe with George Steinbrenner, he came across like the really nerdy guy in your class at school everyone knew he was right, but they still wanted to beat him up.
For Whom the Nobel Tolls
If Harold wasnt going to win any popularity contests, he had nothing on the wacky folks at the Nobel Academy who spent their week sticking it to every establishment group going. Mondays medicine prize offended many in the medical profession, Thursdays literature prize upset the Vatican, and Fridays Peace Prize to anti-land mine campaigners was one in the eye for the U.S. military. What could the Scandinavian eggheads do for an encore? How about a cup of latte in the Lincoln Bedroom with Dean Smith caught, of course, on candid campaign finance camera.