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The rules of Congress are arcane, often unwritten, and demand a lifetime of male bonding to understand. It's bad form to call one's deepest philosophical enemy anything but "my distinguished colleague," or to continue a political argument after hours. When cries went up for a list of Capitol Hill check bouncers, House Speaker Tom Foley protected Democrats and Republicans alike, as does the Ethics Committee. So ingrained is the clubbiness that partisanship often seems like a Hulk Hogan spectacle, faked for the C-SPAN audience.
But something happened last week that may, for better or worse, permanently destroy all that comity. Senator Hatch opened the hearings in disgust, saying that if the Democrats had only asked for a closed executive session, the committee would have been spared its Friday circus. Senator Alan Simpson, who usually manages to hide his meanness behind an Andy Rooney facade, warned Hill that she would be "injured, and destroyed and belittled and hounded and harassed -- real harassment, different from the sexual kind, just plain old Washington-variety harassment." What debates over the budget, arms control, abortion or the gulf war did not destroy was finished off by televised hearings that stripped bare the sensibilities of two witnesses and the Senators who questioned them. The club may never be the same again.
CHART: NOT AVAILABLE
CREDIT: TIME Graphic by Nigel Holmes and Leslie Dickstein
CAPTION: HOW ANITA HILL'S ALLEGATIONS CAME TO LIGHT