BY TUNKU VARADARAJAN
Monday, January 29, 2001 12:01 a.m. EST
What is a "prank"? And when does a prank take on a darker hue and merit, instead, a less indulgent label--such as "delinquency," or "vandalism"?
These questions, whose answers are rooted in common sense, culture and civilization, were raised last week by revelations first detailed on the Internet by Matt Drudge, for whose insolent, frontiersman's approach to newsgathering we continue to be grateful. He's not always right, and he's not always elegant, but he bawls his tales from the rafters when others, more timorous and more conventional, would only mince their words, or whisper.
Although the mainstream press echoed the story only reluctantly, and sought to draw its sting by downgrading it to the status of rumor, the contents of the Drudge report seemed to be unquestionably consonant with the tone, the oh-so-jarring tone, struck, in their departure from the White House, by the Clinton cohorts--from the strutting self-congratulation of the ex-president at Andrews Air Force Base (like a weed, he'd taken root, and like a weed he called to be ripped from the soil beneath him), to the stripping bare of the former Air Force One by the ex-presidential locusts.
According to reports, outgoing Clinton-Gore staffers at the White House performed a range of "pranks," including the prizing out from many White House computer keyboards of the W (Dubya) key, the gluing shut of drawers on office desks, the infecting of computers with viruses, the recording of offensive reception messages on the answering machines, the slashing (yes, slashing) of telephone lines, the loading of pornographic images on printers and computers, offensive graffiti on corridors and bathroom walls, the turning upside down of desks, and, as a valedictory signature, the leaving of a trail of trash across the West Wing.
Mr. Drudge, the only one to quantify the damage publicly, has put the monetary estimate--in terms of its cost to the taxpayer--at $200,000. There is some speculation that this is a conservative estimate. Peggy Noonan writes: "You just know when you read about it that it's worse than anyone is saying--the Bush people being discreet because they don't want to start out with complaints and finger pointing, the Clinton-Gore people because it is in their obvious interests to play it down."
These actions have been characterized as "pranks" in the press, although the Washington Post did, in a giveaway line, suggest that there was more to the story than high jinks. Quoting Clinton(ian) sources, the paper said: "The Democratic officials said the actions were meant to be funny, or in some cases were an outlet for frustration by soon-to-be-unemployed staffers."
Were these actions "pranks"? Let's parse the situation, and start by returning to my original question: What is a prank? I think most people would agree that a prank is an impish action, intended by the prankster to make the "prankee" feel momentarily sheepish, but not shell-shocked or outraged. Classic pranks are intended to provoke a prankish payback, not heated antagonism, or contempt. In other words, the prankster's motivation lies in a sense of irreverent one-upmanship--in mischief, not malice. The mental state, or mens rea, of the perpetrator is as central to the definition of prank as it is to murder or assault.
To give you an example: In my days at Oxford, I was witness to a healthy rivalry between my college, Trinity, and our insufferable neighbors, Balliol. Pranks were the currency in which this rivalry was traded. On one occasion, some chaps from Balliol uprooted the rugby posts from the Trinity grounds (some four miles away), brought them in a hired lorry to college, and set them up on the lawns in front of the Trinity chapel. They chuckled, and, yes, we chuckled too. In reprisal, a handful of hearties from Trinity stole into Balliol in the pitch of night and unleashed a sheep in the college library there, the stench of whose droppings caused the Balliol librarian nearly to faint the next morning. Again, we chuckled, and they chuckled back. These were pranks, part of a sequential, good-natured rivalry. There was no malice aforethought, only a juvenile sense of caper.
The other distinction between a prank and an act that exceeds a prank's bounds is the causing of harm, or damage. In boarding school in India, as a boy, I once threw a rock at a hive of wild bees that had grown, high up, on the clock tower of the school's main building. My aim was unerring, and the hive broke, discharging scores of furious bees in the direction of my admiring friends. While I was able to scamper to safety, two boys were stung so badly that they were hospitalized. My act was not a prank, since it had caused damage. I was publicly caned, and rightly, by the principal.
In the context of the White House, any harm or damage must be construed to include the infliction of a burden on the taxpayer--not to mention the interference, however temporary, with the business of government. So the hanging up, here and there, of signs that said "Dept. of Strategery"--a play on the president's bumbling way with words--was a prank worthy of my confreres at Trinity or Balliol, or even of the frat house at which our "frat boy" president earned his spurs.
But the slashing of phone lines? The gluing shut of desk drawers? The gouging out from keyboards of the W key? The infection of computers with viruses? The redirection of official phone lines, on which the public and government rely? These, I fear, violate the prankster's rulebook. They caused damage; lines, desks, computers and keyboards needed repair and replacement. My money, and yours, was used for this repair.
Most shabby of all, however, was the perpetrators' intent. A true prank--a prank properly defined--is carried out in a jocular spirit. Pranks are escapades, monkeyshines. They're not acts of venom or spite, of resentment or ill-will. If the actor is malefic, he is not a prankster but a vandal. He is, in truth, a delinquent.
That's what I learned in grade school, and I commend that interpretation to you.
Mr. Varadarajan is deputy editorial features editor of The Wall Street Journal. His column appears Mondays.
