Molly Ivins July 17

AUSTIN — What this country needs is another investigation into the alleged suicide of Vincent Foster. Independent counsel Kenneth Starr has just come out with another whitewash saying that Foster offed himself.

We know this can't be true because that's the same conclusion the last independent counsel, Robert Fiske, came to, and the same conclusion the congressional investigating committee reached, and the same conclusion the National Park Service police, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Virginia state police all reached. So, obviously, we need to spend even more of the taxpayers' money until someone official reaches a different conclusion — the one supported by all the conspiracy buffs of America.

Now, these conspiracy buffs are a truly well-trained and well-informed group. They get their information from the Internet — no one knows who puts it there, but it's clearly more reliable than the physical evidence in the case. And if it weren't for these same well-trained, well-informed conspiracy buffs, we wouldn't even know that space aliens had landed at Roswell, N.M. — so there.

And another thing this country needs to do is keep Susan McDougal in prison longer. If that woman were serving time for the only thing she's been convicted of, she'd be out by now, so it's a good thing we're keeping her in the clink with a lot of child-killers and mother-stabbers for the crime of refusing to help Starr — who, after all, couldn't even prove that Vince Foster was really murdered by Hillary Rodham Clinton in their love nest at the Watergate building, which everyone knows. With the assistance, of course, of the Umbrella Man, who was also on the grassy knoll in Dallas.

Besides which, as the previous known record for serving hard time for the offense of contempt is a mere six months, and McDougal will shortly have served one year for same, we're talking a new record here — we're talking She's No. 1, and this is like Hank Aaron's home-run record, so she should be grateful and proud.

As long as the lunatics are running the asylum here, let me alert the independent counsel to the alarming fact that there are other citizens besides McDougal who hold him in contempt. They, too, should all be in maximum-security pens, held in isolation with only two hours a week exercise time in the company of child-killers and mother-stabbers, because contempt for Kenneth Starr is one serious crime.

The only problem is that there are just so many, so very many, who hold that man in contempt.

Far be it from me to put a damper on the Hate Clinton Industry. After all, it has provided full employment for so many for so long. Starr alone has spent three years and $30 million trying to prove that the Clintons did something wrong in a 1978 land deal, on which all the statutes have long since run. A land deal previously investigated by the Resolution Trust Corp., the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., Sen. Alfonse D'Amato and half the journalists in America. This is not to mention the employment provided by Filegate (still no charges), Travelgate (still no charges) and Troopergate (still no charges), plus all of Paula Jones' lawyers (Starr volunteered to be one until he got a paying job, which is the Republicans' idea of proof of objectivity). When President Clinton tells you he has created jobs in America, you had better believe it.

In this, the summer of our paranoia, the best movie on screen is "Men In Black," starring Tommie Lee Jones, who was Vice President Al Gore's college roommate at Harvard, and if you can't get a conspiracy theory out of that, you are clearly out of touch with the cultural zeitgeist. In this film, a documentary about a secret government agency, we learn that the only media to be trusted are the supermarket checkout-line tabloids. Well, obviously. But I warn you that even the tabs are not entirely reliable; I happen to know that Elvis is dead. My greatest claim to fame: I saw him in the box. (Unless that was Col. Parker's body with Elvis' face on it — a real possibility, according to another hit movie, "Face/Off.")

As one who stands foursquare for fact, evidence, reason, logic and the premise that astrology is a crock, let me say that these are hard times for rationalists. Truth is a slippery critter at the best of times, and I have never believed that Established Authority is a particularly good source of same. If I were part of Established Authority, however, I would spend some time meditating on the fact that American paranoia, a proud part of our cultural heritage, would be at a considerably lower ebb if our own government had not lied to us so much. As they say in another small town not far from Roswell, truth or consequences.

CROW EATEN HERE: In a recent column, I gave the entire credit for an excellent report on the inequities of Congress' tax proposals to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Half the credit should have gone to Citizens for Tax Justice, which collaborated with the CBPP. Good on both groups for proving just how disproportionately the congressional proposals benefit the wealthy.

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Molly Ivins is a columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

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