IN April 1 this year, a US federal judge played a cruel joke on the American media. She threw out Paula Jones's sexual harassment suit against President Clinton. The groan of dismay that echoed from the keyed-up, gee-ed up media mob could be heard across the country. Near 1,000 journos had signed up to cover the trial in Little Rock, Arkansas. Television networks had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars erecting temporary studios. The cyberati had worked themselves to catatonia on bulletin boards. It was as if a movie had been canned even before the first shoot and the director had asked the sets to be dismantled. The next day, a columnist for the New York Post—a tabloid aptly infamous for its headline "Headless Body in Topless Bar"—wailed, "What in the world are we gonna talk now?"