When Bill Clinton announced the signing of the Bosnian peace agreement in November, he said a curious thing. He said that the negotiators in Dayton had at last brought about an ending to the horrible things that “we had to watch night after night after night for four long years” on our television screens. Granted, he was trying to bring the thing home to people whose support he needed in order to play what he considered an essential part in effecting the peace. But this only suggests that he is not the only one whose first concern is for his own tender feelings. Probably for Clinton himself but certainly (in his own and his advisors’ view) for those to whom he wished to appeal, the ending of bloody slaughter in Bosnia might or might not be a good thing for the Bosnians, but it was certainly a good thing for those in the distant and comfortable U. S. of A. who had grown weary of watching it over their suppers on television.

I had not thought that narcissism had undone so many. Yet such appalling indications of its progress go unnoticed in the press and the media because there the people are mostly sufferers themselves and see nothing unusual in the same affliction’s visiting anyone else—not even the President of the United States. This must also be the reason why otherwise intelligent critics like Charles McGrath, whose opinions I discussed in this space last month, persist in treating