How Starr Sees It

He snaps out of it, perhaps realizing that he's just made the kind of comparison he had boasted about avoiding. He savors these small imaginative flights. In trying to explain himself in the past year, he has invoked such figures as Joe Friday, Atticus Finch, the Lone Ranger, George Washington and Christ in the garden at Gethsemane on the night before the Crucifixion ("Let this cup passeth from me"). The roster suggests that Starr needs to place himself in the company of heroes and saviors. "I can't be the judge in my own case," he says, and maybe it's true. But like Bill Clinton, he still dreams of being found not guilty.