People in the News for February 10, 1998

Tuesday, Feb. 10, 1998 | 8:55 a.m.

What does it mean that O.J. Simpson drove past Monica Lewinsky's house Monday? What does it mean for the tabloid mediaverse when two of its largest stars veer so perilously close to each other -- reporters torn asunder in the resulting gravitational fluctuations? What does it mean when even Simpson -- a man whose own experiences in the white-hot glare of the spotlight must have approximated standing on the sun -- stops outside 12224 Darlington Ave., rolls down the window of his black sports utility vehicle, and, smiling, asks, "Is that the Lewinsky house?" And what does it mean that as Monica Lewinsky cowers inside, pondering internal affairs and ducking the media shower she started, Simpson is idling outside, chatting up cameramen mere blocks from where Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman were murdered? What it all means is this: O.J. Simpson happened to be picking up his son's playmate two doors down.

Briefing

"Titanic" -- it's a phenomenon, it's a happening, it's a genuine cultural moment. "(It's) the most expensive piece of inflammatory garbage ever served up." So harrumphs London Daily Mail columnist Michael Dobbs, even as the movie racks up an impressive and record-tying 14 Oscar nominations. A stirring tale of romance and courage and the hubris of man, bah! Michael Dobbs sees the film for what it really is -- anti-British propaganda! "The English are evil," is how he reads its message. "Utterly and irredeemably evil." The good guys are all American, he points out, the bad guys all British and the victims all Irish. It is, he says, "a crude example of Hollywood's fashionable racism, distorting every event and twisting every word." Darn that chic Hollywood Brit-bashing! We'll never see "Howard's End" in the same way again. Meanwhile, what does it mean when Dobbs hisses of "Titanic," "This is not just a film ... it is a bellows blowing across the embers of old hatreds. ... This film should never have been made"? What it means is this: He had a column to fill.

Compiled by Scott Dickensheets