In a media season of manic disposition to wallow in sex, scandal and wickedness, it's important for Americans to remember we weren't always this way. Why, in the early 20th century sex scandal was relatively unknown in the media because the lustful cavorting of politicians was simply unmentionable and because nobody in public life, not even movie stars, was allowed to have a sense of humour about sex. Then, as recently as the 1970s, the sexual revolution brought a brief era of healthy candour in which sex seemed to come out of its Victorian closet.

Just 22 years ago John V. Lindsay, then 54, a New York City mayor, congressman and presidential candidate, explained his wife's view of the ``other'' women in his life. ``Her position is, if there are a lot, it's OK,'' he said. ``But if there's just one, she'll kill her.''

Nobody fainted. Nobody swooned. Nobody subpoenaed him toask whether he was being facetious or literal. Quite obviously, Mary Lindsay, a great lady of charm, intelligence and stalwartness, also had a sense of humor. This is what's so distressingly lacking in people who drool incontinently over Bill Clinton's sex life and the condition of his marriage. The TV talking heads, people Calvin Trillin calls the Sabbath Gasbags, babble on.

Their repetitive din resembles a looped tape of that humorless Sunday seance in January when Cokie Roberts, Sam Donaldson and George Steph-anopoulos, like old biddies shocked to their garter belts, assured us Clinton would be toast in a week. Cokie surprised me. For being the daughter of a New Orleans politician, she sure shocks easily. Other gasbags wonder mindlessly about the state of the Clinton marriage.

Did it ever occur to these yakking heads that it is her sense of humour that gets Hillary Rodham Clinton through this public vivisection of her marriage? Do these TV mush minds ever stop to imagine how much better Richard Nixonwould have rested in history if only he'd been a fanny pincher, if his tapes had revealed even a shred of a sense of humour? When the Nixon-loving Chicago Tribune deserted him with its editorial, it concluded that ``he is humourless to the point of being inhumane.''

If humour is what's needed, I don't mean cloddish TV one-liners. David Letterman's jokes are to humour what library paste is to banana cream pudding. Rather, we should be splitting our sides over confessions by Henry Hyde, Helen Chenoweth and Dan Burton, three Republicans who had affairs more extensive than the president's. To me, it doesn't make Henry any less of a lovable and distinguished gentleman. And it certainly doesn't lower Dan and Helen in my eyes. What could? But it is hysterical. Not all is lost, though.Let me pass on a matchless line from my brilliant fellow columnist, Tony Kornheiser, who's been trying to make Americans rediscover their sense of humour. When Linda Tripp fatuously told the US public she was ``an average American.I'm you. I'm just like you,'' Tony protested: ``Excuse me? We do not always seem to be chewing on a rancid anchovy.'