Remember when the so-called "character issue" was all Republicans wanted to talk about? By character, of course, GOP culture warriors meant sex, the one area in which Bill Clinton's naughty behavior made him vulnerable. Well, they don't want to talk about it anymore. Especially not Arkansas Republicans. And no less an authority than Laura Schlessinger, the well-known talk radio moralist, says they shouldn't have to. Or that Sen. Tim Hutchinson shouldn't have to, anyway.
 
 According to The Morning News of Springdale, "Dr. Laura," as she's known to fans who tune in to hear her belittle and scold the sadsacks who call seeking her advice, told a gathering of GOP women that nobody can judge Hutchinson without knowing the whole story of his divorce and remarriage, and that he's entitled to keep it secret. "The family has a right not to discuss this matter in public," Schlessinger opined "and that's a line we don't cross."
 
 Oh don't we? Has Dr. Laura read the "Starr Report?" Given her ranting about Clinton's sins, you'd sure think so. Hutchinson, meanwhile, clearly has some explaining to do, although it's equally clear he's not going to do it. Scant weeks after voting to remove Bill Clinton from office, the one-time Baptist preacher made a fortuitiously-timed announcement of his impending divorce from his wife of 29 years. Having cast a stone at Clinton, he called his own divorce "intensely personal" and refuses to answer questions. Also unavailable for comment was the much younger member of Hutchinson's staff with whom he'd been "romantically linked," as people said in a politer era. Reporters couldn't find Randi Fredholm anywhere. She'd flat disappeared. A suspicious person might wonder if she'd gone into hiding.
 
 After Hutchinson spent a relatively brief interval as a Washington bachelor, Randi reappeared as the new Mrs. Tim Hutchinson. Chances are, however, that you won't be seeing her in those warm, fuzzy TV ads in which the Senator tries to reposition himself as defender of Social Security, protector of the environment, and champion of the little man. Given the outlines of the tale by reporters, Dr. Laura all but stopped her ears. "I've had things said about me by people who knew 1 percent of the facts, and I'm the last person to do that to somebody else," she huffed. "This is just gossip."
 
 Actually, gossip is more like what Schlessinger does on the radio every day-dispensing pharisaical "infotainment" to the guilt-ridden and the gullible. Even so, Dr. Laura's point is well-taken. Or would be if she offered it sincerely, anyway. The problem with bringing private sexual behavior into the public realm has always been twofold: First, the objective truth is all but impossible to determine short of the kind of repugnant inquisition run by Kenneth Starr. (Although it does have to be conceded that when porn merchant Larry Flynt did openly what GOP operatives had done covertly, i.e. paid women to deliver the dirt on pro-impeachment politicians, Republicans began toppling like bowling pins.) Second, even when the bare facts of people's sex lives are dragged into the open, their subjective aspects remain elusive.
 
 A man, even a Republican U.S. Senator, can be a predatory skirt-chaser, or he can find himself frozen out of a loveless marriage. Just as "the other woman" can be a scheming, ambitious man-trap or an individual of personal integrity surprised by love. Dr. Laura-style instant moralizing aside, most adults recognize that few individuals fit the pure stereotypes, and that most sinners have, at the very least, complicated alibis.  Making judgements becomes an exercise in point of view. It's made harder by the universal temptation to see one's own sex life as a drama, everybody else's as a farce.
 
 Short of a lawsuit brought by a disgruntled staffer or a federal investigation, Arkansas voters can't know all the facts of Tim Hutchinson's divorce and remarriage. Had the Senator, as John Brummett so memorably put it, gotten as far as third base with Miss Fredholm when he cast his vote to remove President Clinton? Or was he merely rounding second? Hutchinson certainly hasn't given us the score, and he won't have to as long as his high-minded Democratic opponent, Mark Pryor, keeps playing slow-pitch softball.
 
 Nevertheless, the suspicion persists that Hutchinson hasn't made a categorial denial because he can't. There may be a touching human story behind the Senator's actions, just as there's probably a complex tale explaining how those Penthouse-style nude photos of a woman closely resembling a younger-albeit quite shameless-Dr. Laura came to be all over the internet. (Gentlemen, start your search engines.) It couldn't be that Arkansas' Republican senator and talk radio's most censorious moralist are a matched pair of pious hypocrites, willing to join the public condemnation of another man for sins they found a way to forgive in themselves.