European politicians and commentators expressed revulsion yesterday that President Clinton had to endure further humiliation over the Lewinsky scandal.
In Germany, Chancellor Helmut Kohl, a longtime friend and ally, said the "hypocritical craving" for all the dirt on the President's affair with Ms Lewinsky "makes me want to throw up". The opposition Social Democrats (SPD) and Green Party spoke of an attempt by Mr Clinton's rivals to hound him out of office by drumming up public opinion against him.
Senior SPD politicians echoed Dr Kohl's nausea as yet more details of Mr Clinton's sex life emerged. "The whole thing makes me sick," party chief Mr Oskar Lafontaine said; while the SPD campaign manager, Mr Franz Muntefering, added: "It is highly questionable whether all this peeping through keyholes really serves democracy."
The vice-president of the Bundestag, Ms Antje Vollmer, who is a member of the Greens, said: "Human rights should also apply to the American President, his wife and daughter."
In Paris, France-Soir anticipated the reaction to the political "sex, lies and video" show with a cartoon showing an excited pig seated in front of a television set calling to his wife: "Hurry up, darling, the show is starting!"
Front-page news across the Continent, the unprecedented broadcast of Mr Clinton's innermost secrets reminded Europeans that more than just the Atlantic separated them from the United States.
Elsewhere, commentators compared his ordeal to medieval tortures. "TV pillory for Clinton today," Italian headlines screamed. Die Welt in Berlin said he was "at the Video Whipping Post". Munich's Sueddeutsche Zeitung called it "electronic lynching".
Not content with just one condemnation, the Dutch daily NRC Handelsblad compared Mr Kenneth Starr's methods to those of the Spanish Inquisition and the former East German Stasi security police.
"The fundamental difference is that the principle of protecting the intimacy of someone's private life exists in France, in Germany or in Italy," Prof Philippe Langlois of Paris University told France-Soir.
"This right does not exist in the US or in Britain, as we saw with the Princess Diana affair," he said.
Most of the British press was just as revolted as the rest of Europe by the spectacle unfolding in Washington. "It is painful, pathetic, pointless, serving only to create a flood of McCarthyite smear and counter-smear," said the Guardian.
The Financial Times said the decision to release the four-hour tape was "unwise and objectionable". The Times praised the Prime Minister, Mr Blair, for going ahead with a planned meeting with Mr Clinton yesterday.
The Sun was a rare exception to the widespread pity felt for Mr Clinton, calling him "a slippery, wriggling, cheating, blustering huckster who treats the truth with contempt".
"Poor Clinton," the popular German daily Bild wrote, "Today, television will pull his pants down".