Theodore Roosevelt gave the world the name teddy, that sweet cuddly bear every infant takes to bed. Bill Clinton might have gone one better, but in the virtual world of virtual politics linking global media to Washington DC, the best he can do is become the world's biggest sex toy. No joke.

Clinton is the very latest product in the bag of Virtual Voyeurism Inc.

Whether he did or didn't do the bold thing, or whatever way he may have done it so as not to do it technically, if you get the drift, the lasting message of the shoddy, will-it-ever-stop-running Clinton story is how the President of a great republic can become a third-rate fetish, and a clown to boot.

Clinton is now a spectator sport, a front for many dudes who'd like to live the private life they think he has, but either won't or can't. The daily media angst about his sexual partners and preferences is paparazzi practice at its worst, only much less honest being managed by reportedly reputable buffs.

Lurking behind so many questions about his alleged behaviour is the question "How does he do it?" And deep in the white-hot maze behind that is the real enquiry "How can I get some too?"

These are folk who don't realise libido is a concept, not an organ, that men are biologically guaranteed to gain sexual advantage the higher up they climb in the power stakes, and that women are programmed to find powerful men the most attractive - to the point where given the presence of familiar sperm alongside that of a new lover, a woman's eggs will always favour the seed she doesn't know.

No matter that the world keeps moving - Iraq, East Timor, the Russian mafia. ITV News, not to mention BBC, looked like Sky when they gave it top billing, on a par with the Queen Mother's hip replacement, and before the peace talks crisis or the Bloody Sunday investigation. Channel 4 keeps wheeling out silver-tongued rightwing activist Bay Buchanan, sister and former promoter of failed presidential candidiate Pat, who talks so dirty you'd never guess she'd been educated by nuns.

Tapes and allegations gain so much in the telling that they start to sound like facts, and because this gives good telly, such gossip remains more or less unchallenged. It gives good copy too, which is why grown women and men can make really original jokes about cunning linguistics (Time magazine) or names like Tripp and Willey (everyone else).

WHAT justifies such incredible personal harassment? Not alone is the man's private life invaded to a point beyond what you might imagine to be human endurance, but his family and friends are expected to act as players in what at best would make a two-bit drama on daytime telly (save that there, you wouldn't be allowed use the same kind of language).

Whatever about Clinton's personal integrity - which is a matter of public interest - his bodily integrity is invaded as few men's ever have been before.

O.J. Simpson faced the same forensic zeal, but that was a murder case, with a more than by-the-way sub-plot about race and power in 1990s America.

Michael Jackson was the subject of the same sort of prurient interest, or almost, because of alleged paedophilia.

Clinton's penis is news, his semen is news, and all in the cause of a free speech with about as much quality evidence as the latest health assurances by the tobacco industry. So extensive is the invasion of his body, it's at a level comparable to the worst excesses in the Kerry Babies or "X" case stories here. This is Hugh Hefner and Mickey Spillane, bar the airbrushing.

Now you can see the pubic hairs. It's like a rape case, save that Clinton is the one being violated.

Personal integrity matters, but who you're bonking ain't nobody's business, as Ella used to sing. Unless it's illegal. Adultery is not. If, however, Clinton perjured himself under oath, and/or indirectly or directly encouraged his buddy, top lawyer Vernon Jordan (himself the survivor of a racist assassination attempt), to arrange soft landings with firms like Revlon for insider casualties of his administration such as former deputy Attorney General Webster Hubbell or indeed Monica Lewinsky, then there certainly is a question of public interest.

Clinton's possible perjury might, of course, be virtual reality too. If it took an investigation of his private sexuality to sting him into perjury - and "sting" is becoming a much-used term - would that end justify such questionable means ?

Serious longer-term implications loom large. That age-old triangular relationship between Congress, the office of President and the Supreme Court is being squared by Kenneth Starr's interpositioning of the office of independent prosecutor - outside the democratic contract. If that new partner becomes standard practice, the institution of the presidency itself could sustain permanent damage.

With Clinton's own policies often so close to those of the Republicans as makes no difference - think bond trading, welfare, foreign debt - you can't ignore the prospect that the great democratic battles of the past may now have no option but to be reduced to the virtual gamesmanship of squash court and locker room. And anyway, one inevitable feature of public inquiries is that the guys with the chequebook always find someone, something, somewhere, to justify their existence. That $30 million-plus already spent on Whitewater and its ebbings - of which this is the latest - could look like funny money if nothing can be proven.

Starr might be man enough to declare that he can't get anything on Clinton - or can't beat Jordan in the superlawyer stakes - but until the day we see flying pigs, all the evidence indicates he'll just keep on digging. Until he finds at least a pizza Clinton didn't share, or a candy wrapper Bill threw out the Oval office window.

Starr, then, becomes chief executive of Virtual Voyeurism Inc, with top-notch media investigating territories into which he dare not venture.

They act as shareholders who think they are stakeholders, but serve only sad bastard voyeurs. All operate a virtual ethics, the kind of morality you'd never wish yourself to be judged by.

But that don't matter. Virtual voyeurs have virtual sex, and virtual experiences that they need not own, and never need admit to. Problem is, this time we have to consume what they're selling. Yes, Clinton should have resolved the Paula Jones allegations sooner, and yes, sexual harassment is an issue. So he can be dumb too; does that justify permanent injury to his gravitas ?

The way the world is salivating about Clinton's sex life is as close to pornographic as makes hardly no difference. Sex stripped of eroticism, imagination and mystery - now carried on the middle shelf of all family newsagents. Pornography is always symptomatic of a deeper cultural malaise. The issue here is whether this sick circus signals a disease in American democracy or a disorder in those media who blithely get their rocks off watching Bill.