NEW YORK -- "Monica's Parents: Caught in the Crossfire or Clueless in California?"
"Clinton Tell-Alls: Tell me More, or Enough Already?""Monica's Remorse: Truly Sorry, or Crocodile Tears?"
Tasty, zesty, spicy. These topics for discussion served up during the past few weeks on MSNBC's daily "News Chat" talk show are the television equivalent of comfort food.
While not a particularly nourishing form of public discourse, "News Chat" exists on a reassuring level for those who don't like to be challenged by shades of gray. There's no middle ground. It's always one way or the other. Yes or no. Right or wrong. Sane or crazy.
Questions don't take more than 15 seconds to address, since that's the limit for call-in participants on the "News Chat" equivalent of a basketball shot clock that counts down at the bottom of the screen.
Oh, and it helps to shout your answer.
"MSNBC's Future: Meaty News, or Tabloid Talk Sleaze?"
Sorry. That's not a real topic.
It might as well be. The clock is running on MSNBC, too. The Lewinsky saga's end has laid bare the cable network's identity crisis.
Its aggressive rival, Fox News Channel, has recently eclipsed MSNBC in the ratings during prime-time for the first time. One attempt to turn things around, a nightly political round table by John McLaughlin, ended embarrassingly in less than a month when McLaughlin decided he wasn't up to the grind.
MSNBC's philosophy has been to take the day's hot story, the water-cooler topic, and talk it into the ground. But now that the conversation has cooled and people are back at their desks, thinking of other things besides sex in the White House, MSNBC doesn't know what to say.
So the network gropes for direction, particularly during the daytime hours. Katie Couric and Matt Lauer should seek residuals since MSNBC, with apparently little else to do, relentlessly reruns their "Today" show interviews.
At 3 p.m. each weekday, those identity problems disappear. "News Chat" may be a lot of things -- loud, opinionated and occasionally moronic -- but it knows what it is. It's a path that points toward more talk and less news. MSNBC's dilemma is whether to continue down that path.
"My job is to harangue the last person who spoke, whatever they said," John Gibson, the show's ringmaster, explained over lunch one day recently. "I'm supposed to be the ultimate contrarian."
Gibson has ideal credentials for this quintessential late 1990s job: a veteran of local television in California, his big break came in covering O.J. Simpson's murder trial, where he caught Geraldo Rivera's eye and appeared almost nightly on Rivera's CNBC show.
Each night, Gibson plays his role to the hilt. He pokes, he prods and listens to opinionated viewers with a look of sheer bemusement. He'll throw up his hands in frustration or dismiss someone with a get-outta-here wave.
"News Chat" is centered around the question of the day, which doesn't necessarily have to be about Monica. Gibson begins his workday around 10:30 a.m. ET on the phone with producers, trying to pin down the topic.
It has to be prominent in the news, percolating enough so viewers know something about it and have developed clear opinions. There has to be a stark either-or way of looking at it.
"Believe it or not, these questions take a lot of time, as mindless as they seem," he said.
In addition to the call-in remarks, the shows feature Internet correspondents who collect and read online commentary sent in by viewers, not forgetting the "Microsoft" in MSNBC.
On "News Chat" and "Inter Night," which immediately follows it, Gibson said he's there to encourage the sort of behavior you wouldn't want to see around the dinner table. "Inter Night" differs primarily in that it usually features outside experts arguing instead of call-in viewers.
"The difference between the two shows is like the difference between amateur and professional wrestling," Gibson said, ignoring the icy stare of a publicist sitting across the table.
Gibson knows, ultimately, that it's so much hot air. He doesn't take himself too seriously, either. "I'm not Charlie Rose," he said.
If only everyone at MSNBC were that comfortable with what they're doing.
"This is television for people who like to engage themselves emotionally in the news, who like to feel sympathy, who like to get enraged, who like to scream at the TV," he said. "It's a lot different than a newscast."