Essay

By Charles Krauthammer

Of the many measures of fame, one of the more useful is the injury-report index. A star makes the papers by dying. A superstar need only be hospitalized: when Sinatra's diverticula act up, you know about it. Higher up the celebrity scale are stars of a magnitude for which we have no adequate word and for whose well-being we can never have enough concern. Sitting monarchs and Presidents, for example. Two weeks ago Ronald Reagan incurred a "small, red bump" on his eyelid (caused by a contact lens). You could read about it on page 3 of the Washington Post. A classic of the genre is an item that ran in the New York Times a couple of years ago: GLASS CUTS KISSINGER'S NOSE. Only a nick really, and he'd been out of power for nine years.

Today and for at least 15 more minutes, Ollie North is in that class. If he were to sustain a paper cut, presses would stop. His rise proves once again that by far the most interesting and mysterious American institution is not the National Security Council or the congressional investigation but celebrityhood. Ollie North was made, as Gary Hart was unmade, in less than a week. Only in America can a man be created between two Sabbaths. And not just the man but the cult. The gavel has barely fallen on the last senatorial reproach to North and we already have Ollie dolls, an Ollie video, the "Ollie cut" and Ollie songs (Hooray for Olliewood, Ollie B. Good).

This has offended many deep thinkers. Crucial constitutional questions of official secrecy, separation of powers, chain of command and the like were highlighted by North's testimony. Deep thinkers are offended that the masses have lost sight of them in Olliemania. But these questions have hardly been neglected. For the past eight months the country's op-ed pages have conducted a national seminar on the conflicting demands of secrecy, democracy and constitutionality.

Ollie's rise has made grumpy those for whom the past month of conservative discomfiture had been a time of glee. They are dismayed that the country will not focus on important matters, say, on whether the presidential finding authorizing the Israeli second arms shipment was in compliance with the Hughes-Ryan amendment. Such matters, often referred to as the "facts," are overlooked while the nation takes in Ollie's hair, his uniform, his smile, his glint, his hound-dog eyes and his patriotic speeches. Millions swoon. The sophisticates despair.

The congressional committees in particular were stunned by the media monster they created. Fitting punishment for their hypocrisy: first, the committees create a courtroom drama, complete with sharp lawyers shredding hapless witnesses on live television; then the committees complain that America has been captivated by a witness's manner instead of concentrating on his words and deeds. Can't have it both ways. Turn an inquiry into a spectacle and you cannot protest that the audience is insufficiently attentive to the transcript. The Iran-contra committees could have modestly pursued their business off-camera, as did the Tower commission. No secrecy necessary -- the entire record could have been made public at the close of the investigation. Then there would have been no Ollie -- only Colonel North, the slightly disreputable, if not discredited, "switching point" (Poindexter's phrase) of the political scandal of the decade.

Instead we have Ollie. Having created him, how to account for him? Pick your theory: depressed country looking for hero, underdog hounded by gray- flanneled Congressmen, commando abandoned by his White House superiors, all- American boy put upon by hippie (Nields), then big-shot N.Y. lawyer (Liman), etc. But before the great American celebrity machine, which marries Tiny Tim on the Carson show and deploys Itzhak Perlman on The Hollywood Squares, a little humility is in order. Bands of sociologists are already in deep retreat trying to explain the ineffable Vanna White. Pity them and the mavens at work on Oliver North. When bait-and-tackle shops on the Maryland shore hang GO OLLIE signs, it is safer to concede that some things, like the Hula-Hoop and the Gabor sisters, are not explicable.

Which is why not just those dismayed but also those cheered by Olliemania are missing the point. True, most polls show for the first time contra supporters drawing even with contra opponents. But Olliemania has about as much usable political content as Jazzercise. The contra poll reveals not a surge but a blip. Ollie's popularity, like that of his President, was not built of "issues." Critic David Denby, in a grumpy review of "Ollie North, the Movie" for the New Republic, theorizes that Ollie's wild popularity is attributable to his perfect -- i.e., all-American but ambiguous -- Hollywood face. Fine, grant the premise. But if you do, you are confirming that what we are dealing with is not a political but a cultural, perhaps an anthropological phenomenon. Those who think Olliemania signifies a nation rising to Mussolini (or Nathan Hale) are apt to see their paranoia (or exaltation) disappointed.

What happens now to Olliemania? Senate Committee Chairman Daniel Inouye asked the question obliquely in his farewell address to North at the conclusion of day six. With perhaps a touch of irony -- it is hard to tell with the dour Senator -- he wished the newly minted hero and his lady well, as they set off into the sunset.

Nowadays what lurks beyond the sunset is the floodlit plain of American celebrityhood. Where do -- where can -- Ollie and wife go from here? The movies end with a fade because to show what follows is to demystify what precedes. Imagine Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly raising chickens and changing diapers in a High Noon sequel (Quarter to Four ?). You can't. "How dull it is to pause, to make an end, to rust unburnished," laments Tennyson's Ulysses after his return home from heroism to sit "by this still hearth, among these barren crags."

There used to be no cure for the ennui of the returned hero. Now there is and it is worse than the disease. It is celebrityhood. Last winter a Washington radio station began a news roundup with this: "Joe DiMaggio, baseball hall of famer, former husband of Marilyn Monroe, and also Mr. Coffee, had surgery today." Hero status, unless arrested by artistic device (the fade-out) or tragedy (an early death), decays. There is a trajectory to fame, and it points downward.

Into the hearings went Colonel North and out came Ollie. He had defeated the committees. But he did it at a price. His fans' telegrams will have to be answered. Valvoline will try to rent his face. His surgeries will forever be reported. He has become Ollie. Now he has to live it.