Damage Control

"Damage" is the story of a stuffy British aristocrat who jeopardizes his comfy marriage and distinguished career when he falls for his son's sexy girlfriend. They make passionate love, during which he grabs her hair and shouts, "Who are you!" Let me spell it for you, pal. T-R-O-U-B-L-E. "Damage" is a sort of European version of "Fatal Attraction" - tasteful, intelligent and far less squeamish about inflicting permanent misery and destruction on its characters. This is bad news for Stephen Fleming (Jeremy Irons)

In the dark hours after the Monica Lewinsky furor broke, top White House aides panicked. Archenemy Kenneth Starr seemed on the verge of building a criminal case against President Clinton. Lower-level staffers were privately talking resignation. "It would be fair to say it was a . . . disaster area," said an administration source said. That's when Hillary Rodham Clinton took over. It was the first lady, said a senior adviser, who grabbed the White House staff by its collective collar and organized a strategy to save her husband's presidency.

I was sitting in City Council's makeshift chambers yesterday, watching members take the preliminary vote to restore the small wage tax cuts that Mayor Street had wanted to take away. And I began thinking how Hizzoner should respond. His ill-advised proposal to freeze the tax as of next year had sparked an energetic and well-organized white-collar rebellion, causing some of his allies in Council to abandon him. He had tried to scare his opponents into submission, by raising the specter of shuttered recreation centers and fire stations, and now he was going to lose.

The 76ers want you to forget what you saw and heard on Thursday night. They want you focusing instead on the good things that happened this season, of which there are many. They want you to remember they were missing Elton Brand, their big-man extraordinaire. They want you to recognize that the finale was not necessarily indicative of the journey. But forgetting Thursday would be difficult: First, the embarrassing, pathetic, 25-point, season-ending loss, then Theo Ratliff's harsh words against coach Tony DiLeo, and then Andre Iguodala's call for a personnel change, his insinuation that the team had "inner turmoil" throughout the season.

Eric Dezenhall makes problems go away. Sounds like a job for a hit man, but Dezenhall is a law-abiding, clean-cut, well-spoken, New Jersey-born, Dartmouth-educated, Washington-based consultant who advises business moguls and Hollywood stars. If his name is unfamiliar, perhaps it is because he is behind the scenes, putting out fires before anyone sees the smoke. He is, he insists, never a spin doctor. Call him a crisis manager, a controller of damage. In this time of Kobe Bryant, Martha Stewart and hide-and-seek for weapons of mass destruction, Dezenhall sounds like a man worth talking to. He was in town last week - not to talk about scandals, but to hype Jackie Disaster, his new novel about a low-rent, law- and jaw-breaking damage-controller based in Atlantic City.

SAN DIEGO - The Marine Corps did damage control again Thursday after a photo surfaced of a sniper team in Afghanistan posing in front of a flag with a logo resembling that of the Nazi SS - a special unit that murdered millions of Jews, Gypsies, and others. The Corps said in a statement that using the symbol was not acceptable. However, it was a naive mistake by Marines who believed the SS symbol was meant to represent sniper scouts and never intended to associate themselves with a racist group, said Maj. Gabrielle Chapin, a spokeswoman at Camp Pendleton.

In the hour it took Interpol Secretary-General Raymond E. Kendall to talk tough about Internet smut and child predators to a gathering of online industry officials in Washington last week, more than 4,000 new Web sites were launched. That's how superheated the Internet's growth is. And it's a good bet that hundreds of those way stations in cyberspace bristle with content unfit for any child's eyes. Already, 60,000-plus adults-only sites exist. It's hard for Mr. Kendall and colleagues to keep up. Which was just his point - that it's imperative to step up law-enforcement efforts globally to safeguard children from cyber-filth and, more important, from sexual predators who lurk around the Internet.

The East Caln Township Board of Supervisors has approved a land-use application paving the way for 201 single-family homes and 150 apartments in the township - but only if the developer adheres to a list of 29 conditions. At its meeting Wednesday night, the board unanimously approved developer Timothy Fanning's conditional-use application, a permit that sets a policy of general use for the land. Fanning wants to build the houses and garden apartments on a 108-acre tract west of Bell Tavern Road between Routes 113 and 30. After the supervisors made their decision, they accepted a preliminary plan by the Fitzpatrick-Fanning Corp.

Right-wing extremist Roy E. Frankhouser of Reading helped potential witnesses flee and advised that documents be burned in an effort to help affiliates of political extremist Lyndon H. LaRouche thwart a federal investigation, according to an affidavit. Frankhouser, whose past affiliations have included the American Nazi Party and the Ku Klux Klan, provided consulting on security and intelligence matters for LaRouche from early 1982 until August 1985, the affidavit stated. It was during this period that a federal grand jury in Boston began probing an alleged nationwide credit-card-fraud scheme in which, according to indictments handed down yesterday, organizations affiliated with LaRouche bilked more than 1,000 individuals out of more than $1 million.

The White House faces too many potential trouble spots around the world over the next two years to continue the style of making foreign policy that produced the Iran arms deal. That is the bipartisan message reaching the White House from Democrats and Republicans, and from polls showing that most Americans don't believe the President on Iran. But it is a message that the Reagan team doesn't want to hear. The President continues to deny any mistakes were made, and says he wants to keep his beleaguered national security adviser, John M. Poindexter.

SAN DIEGO - The Marine Corps did damage control again Thursday after a photo surfaced of a sniper team in Afghanistan posing in front of a flag with a logo resembling that of the Nazi SS - a special unit that murdered millions of Jews, Gypsies, and others. The Corps said in a statement that using the symbol was not acceptable. However, it was a naive mistake by Marines who believed the SS symbol was meant to represent sniper scouts and never intended to associate themselves with a racist group, said Maj. Gabrielle Chapin, a spokeswoman at Camp Pendleton.

HARRISBURG - Pennsylvania State University's board of trustees and president focused on repairing the school's tarnished image and braced for financial backlash in the immediate aftermath of the child sex-abuse scandal that erupted two months ago, going so far as to recommend reminding any outraged donors that they would not get their money back, according to internal memos obtained by the Associated Press. Four memos sent from Nov. 14 to 18 and released to the AP this week describe the school's scrambling response less than two weeks after former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky was arrested on child-molestation charges.

Joe Paterno will not be in Beaver Stadium on Saturday. No one else should be there, either. The Penn State board of trustees, like so many others in the scandal of silence that has engulfed the university, did the bare minimum on Wednesday by firing coach Joe Paterno and school president Graham Spanier. Choosing which cuff links to wear to the meeting was a more difficult decision for them than that. They stopped short of presenting tangible evidence that they consider the horror that took place on campus to be more important than a football game.

ARIES (March 21-April 19). It may be a challenge to get your motor running. Helpful friends will make a difference. TAURUS (April 20-May 20). The Zen master says that happiness depends on the absence of expectation. And your mother says that without high expectations, there would be no achievements. You'll strike a balance. GEMINI (May 21-June 21). There's a battle of wills going on, but it's so subtle that it's difficult to detect at all. Be aware that the gentle, sweet people in your life will put up the toughest fight.

Philadelphia auditors investigating Sheriff John D. Green's sloppy bookkeeping have raised alarming new concerns - with the city controller contending that Green and his staff created "an opportunity for fraud" by failing to adequately track $53 million handled by the Sheriff's Office. The latest findings ratchet up the stakes in the two-month-old inquiry by Controller Alan Butkovitz, whose October demand for a complete probe of Green's financial house prompted the sheriff to delay indefinitely his planned retirement.

One of the most troubling aspects of the Family Court scandal has been Chief Justice Ronald D. Castille's inability to get his story straight. Castille said he learned through reading the newspaper that the attorney representing the court had become the codeveloper of the proposed $200 million Family Court. But after first learning this startling news, Castille did nothing about it. Instead he worked with the attorney, Jeffrey B. Rotwitt, to manage the story. Castille's spokesman, L. Stuart Ditzen, appears to have gone one step further.

Roman Polanski's "Ghost Writer" has prompted critics to scour the movie for clues as to the director's fugitive-rapist mind-set, so I'll demur... And focus instead on the underappreciated talent of Olivia Williams, who has a key turn in this moody political thriller as Ruth, the bitter wife of a disgraced, exiled (to the U.S.) British prime minister (Pierce Brosnan). The role is timely and resonant - in Ruth you see shades of Elizabeth Edwards or Hillary Clinton, the partner/adviser who vigorously walks the corridors of power with her husband, and wearily tolerates the exercising of his alpha- male privileges.

The 76ers want you to forget what you saw and heard on Thursday night. They want you focusing instead on the good things that happened this season, of which there are many. They want you to remember they were missing Elton Brand, their big-man extraordinaire. They want you to recognize that the finale was not necessarily indicative of the journey. But forgetting Thursday would be difficult: First, the embarrassing, pathetic, 25-point, season-ending loss, then Theo Ratliff's harsh words against coach Tony DiLeo, and then Andre Iguodala's call for a personnel change, his insinuation that the team had "inner turmoil" throughout the season.

The budget proposed by Gov. Rendell yesterday is a reasonable attempt to limit the damage of program cuts in a bad economy without raising taxes on most residents. The $29 billion budget for the fiscal year that begins July 1 would rely on Washington for more than $2 billion in aid from President Obama's proposed stimulus package. Federal aid would help officials in Harrisburg close a projected $2.3 billion deficit in the current budget. Next year's spending plan would not contain any increase in the state personal income or sales taxes, an especially important "line in the sand" during a recession.

Right after news broke that former State Sen. Vincent J. Fumo was under FBI investigation, the embattled politician went on a public-relations offensive. Fumo declared he had not received any benefit from the $17 million in charitable donations that he extracted from Peco Energy Co. In fact, Fumo told a radio host in 2004, he was such a stickler for appearances that he had been paying Citizens' Alliance for Better Neighborhoods, the charity that got the millions, $100 a month because it occasionally picked up trash at his house.