Clinton Scandal Leaves Mom Worrying What to Say to Child

The Boston Herald

"Next to God, he is the most important man in the whole world." That's what Kait says. That's why, when her fourth-grade teacher announced the assignment, to go home and read and research, then write a report about the person you most admire, Kait never hesitated.

She chose President Clinton.

Clinton is her hero. She has a picture of him when he was young shaking President Kennedy's hand. "President Kennedy was Bill Clinton's hero," she'll tell you, adding that she thinks it's neat that she goes to the Kennedy School, which was named after her hero's hero.

Next week Kait will stand in front of her class and share all she's learned about our 42nd president. So far, all she's learned is straight history: "William Jefferson Clinton was born William Jefferson Blythe IV on Aug. 19, 1946, in Hope, Ark. He was a Boy Scout, sang in the church choir, played touch football and liked Elvis Presley. He went to Georgetown University because it was in our nation's capital. He married Hillary Rodham when he was 29 and was attorney general in Arkansas, and then he was governor, before he was elected president of the United States."

So far, all she's learned could be G-rated.

But now? Now is what has her mother worried.

"Mom, is this something I should be watching? Should I be taking notes?" Kait yelled from the family room Wednesday afternoon. Her mother came running.

"I had to turn off the TV. I said to Kait: 'This isn't important. Why don't you go finish some other homework.' I didn't know what to say. The next morning I hid the Herald. When she asked if it had come yet, I told her no."

Kait asked her mother to take her to the Party Store today because a few months ago, Kait saw a President Clinton mask there. "Part of the assignment is to dress up as the person you most admire. Most of the other girls in the class chose Princess Diana. I'm beginning to wish she had."

When you ask Kait why she admires Bill Clinton, she says, "Because he's the president of the whole United States, because he was real nice to his mother and brother, and because he is wicked smart."

So what do we tell Kait now? Do we say it doesn't matter that he was nice to his mother and brother and it doesn't matter that he's smart? He's a bad man and a bad president and he's done very bad things.

"What bad things?" she'll ask.

Who wants to explain this to a child?

"Statement catches president in a lie, sources say." Kait reads this on the front page of the paper and runs to her mother. "Did President Clinton lie, Mom? What does 'sex scandal' mean?"

All the efforts to monitor television shows and to grade movies and to protect our children from things they shouldn't know, not yet, anyway, not at the tender age of 9, and here is everything, in lurid detail, about the man who holds the country's most esteemed office. Local TV stations actually called reporters back from Cuba so they could focus on this story. Castro and the pope are making history but all America is talking about is Bill Clinton: Did he or didn't he, and how many times?

Maybe we need to know this, maybe not. But is this all we need to know? Rome burned while Nero fiddled. What do you suppose Saddam Hussein is doing these days? How does knowing intimate details about the president's sex life make our world and our lives any better?

"Kait is so into her project," her mother says. "She told me last night that for the cover she's going to draw a big American flag and cut out a picture of Clinton and put him in the middle. Connor heard this and said, 'Are you gonna put Paula Jones beside him?' "

Connor is Kait's 12-year-old brother.

"I don't know what I'm going to tell her," this mother says. "I wish her project had been due last week, before all this."