NEWTON'S LAW: DESPITE CLAIMS OF EXCLUSIVITY, IT'S NOT JUST A `WOMAN THING'

For a moment, forget Clarence Thomas. Forget Anita Hill. The business that has brought them together again has escaped the bounds of mere governmental process and political intrigue.

We are joined now in a great national debate over sexual harassment. Overshadowed for the moment is the fact a person will be one of nine persons seated on the nation's highest court for the next few decades. The biggest fish we have to fry, apparently, is one that's been there all along.

This is one of the least appealing aspects of my profession. The subject of sexual harassment has come up in a major national story and, thunderstruck, the media "discover" it, as though it were a new product or concept.

The morning and evening news shows are laced with quickly produced pieces on gender intimidation in the workplace. Newspapers have choked us with quotes from human resource experts and management consultants of every type.

(One of these sorts hoped this debate prompts the nation to reach for "new levels of personal sensitivity." I swear.)

We all know now there is a "9-to-5" organization established to deal with this problem and that it has a hotline.

The second wave is to come. The newsweeklies, caught between deadlines by the breakneck pace of this story, will acquaint us with fresh angles in the days ahead. The third wave is also out there: "L.A. Law" will devote a show to the subject. Bet on it.

I can compare this to only one other phenomenon in nature, that of a group of monkeys picking up and examining a bright, rubber ball.

And just like those monkeys will eventually toss aside the ball, once the novelty wears off, the media will find another topic-of-the-day and sexual harassment will again be hidden away.

One of the things I've found most offensive about this stream of news reports is what can only be referred to as "New Jack City" frame of mind. ("It's a black thing.")

Admittedly, I'm in the prime "at-risk" group for cultural insensitivity: white, male, heterosexual. I can't fully understand the problems of being a minority, of being a female, of being gay.

But, the comment I've heard more than once on news accounts about sexual harassment is that men aren't sensitive to this problem because they don't have to contend with it.

I'm sorry, but that is baloney.

My mother was a working woman. My wife and my sister are working women. Why would I not be involved and outraged if I learned that a male superior was propositioning them in the workplace? I have a daughter who will probably be in the work force one day. How can it not concern me that she might be in an environment of intimidation?

At this newspaper, I have a number of women under my direct supervision. Some of us have worked together for years and our interaction is of a familiar nature.

Still, there are lines not to be crossed, and common sense and human decency define those lines: you don't make sexual suggestions, you don't make lurid comments about anatomy, you don't put your hand where it shouldn't be.

Sexual harassment is serious business. It is not about a belated charge made in a Senate confirmation process, it is about women and some men in the workplace being taken advantage of by their superiors.

While it may indeed have manifested itself in a law professor who gets a national forum to espouse her claim, it is more often seen on an assembly line, or in a secretarial pool, where a working woman trying to feed her family endures daily a male supervisor grabbing her butt.

Though certain groups boast of exclusivity in understanding these matters, it's not just a woman thing.

Thanks anyway to all those consultants and commentators who found it necessary to point out that I am of the gender that isn't sensitive to the problem. I'll do my best without your advice.

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The impression most of us got about Desert Storm service was that a job needed doing, Americans went there to do it, then came home to their loved ones.

That didn't work in all cases. For some service personnel assigned to points abroad, the Persian Gulf War was a brief, intense interruption in what was already an international assignment. When the war was over, they were dispatched to points on the globe where they were previously serving.

They missed the parades. They missed the adulation, the appreciation.

I note this to mark the quiet homecoming this week of Brooks Depro, a Marine, Central High School class of 1989, who sandwiched his tour in the Middle East with assignments in Okinawa. He is returning to American soil and Cape Girardeau for the first time in a year and a half.

It is hard for me to imagine that the young man who once babysat my children and called balls and strikes on local youth league fields grew up so quickly to see Kuwait City in hostile circumstances and help liberate a nation from a tyrant.

Just as we worried for his well-being, we rejoice in his safe return.