I wish I had asked Ken Starr a different question when I met him
a couple of years ago at the annual dinner of the Massachusetts
Family Institute (MFI). Starr gave the featured address, a riveting
lecture on the Michael Newdow Pledge of Allegiance case, where he
was part of the defense team representing the Newdow child’s
mother, Sandra Benning, before the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court punted, as you will recall.
Afterwards, the MFI let a bunch of us line up at a mike and ask
questions. I got there third, determined to ask one I had been
thinking about for a long time.
I HAD ACTUALLY MET JUDGE STARR one on one about an hour before, in
the men’s room. He and I had both done the same thing: retired
there a bit earlier than was polite, right in the middle of a (bad)
dessert. I was doing the usual. The judge was grooming himself for
his appearance onstage.
“Oh, hello, Judge Starr,” I said. “I’m Lawrence Henry of The
American Spectator.”
“Hello,” he said, beaming. Given the circumstances, we did not
shake hands. (Long ago, I was reminded, I had met the late Judd
Rose, ABC TV news correspondent, in a restroom before a wedding.
Once again, I was doing the usual. Rose was pulling off jeans and
sweatshirt and changing frantically into a tux. He was the best
man.)
Before I could say more, Starr said, “You’ve got a new format,
don’t you? It looks good.”
I made some response about the magazine’s restored status under
Bob Tyrrell, and remarked, “I guess we started your troubles
inadvertently, a long time ago.”
“Ah, well,” he chuckled.
“Nice to meet you,” I said. “I’ll be looking forward to hearing
you.”
“Nice to meet you, too.”
And I left.
SO I WAITED IN THE LINE, rehearsing my long-thought-out question,
which was:
“Judge Starr, back during the troubles, someone said you had a
‘tin ear for politics.’ Everybody picked it up. Do you think, in
fact, you have a tin ear for politics?”
Lesson here, journalists: Do not ask veteran political figures
sophisticated political questions to show how clever you are and to
elicit, as you hope, some breakthrough response. Practically, it
will get you nothing. Even if you make an experienced politico
think an unexpected thought, he will not say it in public now,
without thinking it over a long time first.
For the record, Starr said, “I had written instructions (as
Special Prosecutor). I had a job assignment.” And his instructions
didn’t include political game-playing, which he said, he did not
do.
Somebody else asked him a much better question, which you can
find answered in my column, “Make Them Fear You,” here.
WHAT I SHOULD HAVE ASKED, in the spirit of what the French call
“esprit de escalier,” or “staircase wit,” a clever remark you think
of too late, was this. It had the additional virtue of my really
wanting to know, and now I still do:
“Judge Starr, during the troubles, James Carville called you a
‘hymn-singin’ Fundamentalist.’ You had told an interviewer you
liked to relax in the evening by taking walks and singing hymns to
yourself. What hymns did you especially like to sing? Were they of
the ‘find a solace there’ variety, or more like ‘put on the Gospel
armor?’”
Starr would have known the larger implications from the lines I
chose. We Christians do signal one another like that. (See my
column, “Sweet Hour of Prayer” here.)
The first comes from “What a Friend (We Have in Jesus),” Joseph
Scriven and Charles C. Converse, third verse:
Are we weak and heavy laden, cumbered with a load of
care?
Precious Savior, still our refuge — Take it to the Lord in
prayer.
Do thy friends despise, forsake thee? Take it to the Lord in
prayer.
In His arms he’ll take and shield thee. Thou wilt find a solace
there.
The second, from the third verse of “Stand Up for Jesus,” G.
Duffield and G.J. Webb:
Stand up, stand up for Jesus, stand in His strength
alone;
The arm of flesh will fail you — Ye dare not trust your
own.
Put on the gospel armor, and, watching unto prayer,
Where duty calls, or danger, be never wanting there.
Ken Starr is a hero of John Wayne-like proportions to the
members of the MFI, who are themselves in large part hymn-singin’
Fundamentalists. The question would not have embarrassed him, and I
expect he would have answered it with a careful selection of hymns
straddling the prayerful and the exhortational.
The follow-up might have caught him off-guard: “Would you care
to lead us in a hymn?”
Because the crowd wouldn’t have let him back out. No matter the
quality of the Starr singing voice. (N.B. His speaking voice is
much richer and less nasal in person than on TV. I wonder if
broadcast engineers had it in for him, the way press photographers
did for John Ashcroft when they regular focused on the A.G. with
Justice’s boobs in the background.) He would instantly have been
joined by a thunderous chorus of hundreds.
He might have thrown it back to me: “Why don’t you do it?”
Gotcha. I’m a singer. I would instantly have sung “Stand up,
stand up for Jesus, ye soldiers of the Cross…”
Or maybe he would have led a hymn without hesitating. Maybe Ken
Starr leads hymn sings all the time.
Just picture it. Ah, well.
