Uttering words like "humiliating inquisition" and "witchhunt", the European press put up a front of disgust yesterday at the broadcast of President Clinton's Grand Jury testimony. British newspapers collectively cringed at the screening, described by Guardian commentator Polly Toynbee as "slow torture by excruciating embarrassment" and, quoting the Founding Fathers, this "cruel and unusual punishment".
"How did it come to this, the ultimate humiliation, the president of the United States starring on the Jerry Springer Oprah Winfrey show of all time?" she asked.
In the Times Matthew Parris described how he had expected a "soft core video" and found himself watching "a snuff movie".
"The pornography lay not in the sex but in the sadism," he wrote. "The questions were more offensive than the answers. It was humiliating even to the viewer. It was also crazy."
The Independent wrote: "The things they fixed on so triumphantly were so small - about ties, love notes, sex manners - you were amazed they bothered." Even the notoriously right-wing Boris Johnson in the Daily Telegraph lamented the "leering" tone of the questions and blamed the transformation of sex into a political issue in America for the whole scandal.