It's been a while since I've put up a new critique. Surely my three loyal fans have long been pondering the meaning of this extended hiatus. Is it possible, they ask each other, that I could not find something to critique, with Clinton in the White House, Henry Hyde grandstanding in the well of the Senate, and Ken Starr trying to indict his own grandmother? To parahprase Shakespeare, could disdain possibly die when it has such meet food to feed on as the Clinton presidency?
No, of course not. I, like many Americans, have simply been waiting for the process to end. But you are not to suppose that I have been sitting idle. Oh no. I've been ranting, regularly and with gusto. I just never posted any of them because each rant was made obsolete by a new rant in re some new atrocity. But I realize now that there will be no rant to end all rants, for there will be no atrocity to end all atrocities. The process of discovering the depths to which our government can sink and the pungency of the filth into which it can plunge itself will never end, so I may as well just collect all of these used rants and put them up here as a kind of History In Rantings of this whole lousy process.
So...you've seen me take on Ken Starr, the House Judiciary Committee, and Ken Starr, one more time. It's Billy's turn. So prepare your brain for...
The Full Clinton.
Clinton apologizes to the nation for lying about his "inappropriate relationship" with Monica Lewinsky.
Well, Kenneth Starr has accomplished two impossible things. 1) He made Clinton fess up to something. 2) He's made me feel bad for the guy.
Understand, I've been fed up with Clinton for a long time now, but not (primarily) because of this. It started when instead of lifting the ban on gays in the military he let Sam Nunn walk all over him and us. Many years later, it is clear that the man is just a big lump of uncooked Pillsbury dough which can be molded into various interesting shapes depending on how hard you prod him. This angers me, since I was under the impression that I was electing something different. But all of this was before the whole Lewinsky thing broke.
It is true, also, that his "affair" with Lewinsky is just about the most sordid, low, depressing liaison in the history of statesmanship. I just cannot imagine anything more sleazy. He said many times he didn't have an affair with her; and really, he didn't. Dropping your pants and letting someone service you is not the same thing as having an affair. Monica probably thought it was, but then that's because she was young, none too bright, and clearly smitten (although God knows why). Of course, it's precisely because Monica was young, dim, and googly-eyed that this whole thing is so awful. The question of whether or not she went after him is moot, to me; whether or not she was asking for it, he certainly should have had more self-respect and respect for her than to give it to her. Or, if he *was* going to take advantage of a 21-year-old intern, he might at least have gone down on *her* a couple of times just to be neighborly. Clinton's aides talk about this whole thing as being about "what went on between two consenting adults;" I think maybe the tragedy, if this thing is worth being called a tragedy, is that neither of these people was either an adult or consenting. Sexual harrassment is what it is because when you work for someone, your ability to consent to, or refuse, his sexual advances is infringed on by the fact that he has power over you. Monica's ability to "consent" to this arrangement was certainly impaired by her youth and her status in the White House pecking order, not to mention whatever psychological history created the giant lack of self-esteem that from what we can tell is one of her defining characteristics. It's also clear, from the way she described things to Tripp, that she wasn't getting much out of the relationship aside from the knowledge that she was blowing the Commander in Chief.
But on the other hand, you have to ask yourself how much Clinton was getting out of this. I don't know, maybe it's because I'm not a man, but it's just hard for me to understand how you could really get much enjoyment out of an "affair" that consists entirely of dropping your pants now and then and getting a quickie between cabinet meetings. The thing is so patently sordid, and so very very stupid, that it just kind of makes me feel like this wasn't about pleasure at all. It's as if he's just driven to do this kind of thing by some compulsion that, smart and ambitious as he is, he can't seem to get under control. My theory about why every woman he's picked on has always had to undergo a makeover before talking to the press is that these are the girls he was never able to get in high school. He was a nerd from a screwed-up family with an abusive stepfather growing up in Hot Springs, Arkansas; there must be many a big-haired, way-made-up cheerleader that he lusted after from afar. He married the opposite of that, after going to college and law school and learning that there is a world where nerds are happy; but something in him is still trying to prove he can date the prom queen. Being as he is a liberal, he has brought himself around to taking no for an answer (which is why Paula Jones couldn't prove retaliation after she turned him down); but he still can't turn down a yes.
Be that as it may, watching him give his little speech on TV brought home how truly humiliating this whole episode must be for him. Nobody should have to go in front of national TV and admit that he is, basically, a loser. Because that's about what this comes down to. I don't buy into the whole obstruction-of-justice concern that Starr is trying to foist on everyone; nor do I cotton well to the Watergate comparisons. To me, there is a big difference between lying about your private sexual behavior and lying about the way you run the country. It was sleazy of him to try to get Monica to lie for him under oath--and to deliberately do it in a way that would legally protect himself from the charge of suborning perjury--but to me it really does make a difference that what he was concealing was this. If you're going to have an affair, especially one as sordid as this, you're naturally going to lie about it. Anyone would do that. And if you're going to be lying about stuff, it's better to have it be a blow job or two than, say, selling arms to Iran.
Anyway, I think we have now reached the low watermark of American political history, and I fear for the future. A while back when this broke I trotted out my theory about how every 2-term president will be impeached from now on; and now they're putting it into practice. You can turn anything into a crime if you can make someone perjure themselves over it. That's what Starr set out to do: find something embarrassing enough that Clinton would risk breaking the law to keep it from coming into the open. He's been working at him for years, and now he finally got him. Next guy who takes that office will have *something* in his past he doesn't want splattered all over the front pages; an independent counsel will find out what it is, go after him, and bring him down. And so on and so on, until the revolution comes. Yee freakin' ha.
I get real sick of the Watergate Comparisons.
For all those journalists who seem to be somehow confusing the events surrounding Richard Nixon's resignation with the sick farce that is consuming the public imagination at the moment, here's a handy field guide pointing out the differences in an easy-to-read format that even USA Today could understand:
WATERGATE: "What did the President know and when did he know it?"
CLINTON: "What did Monica blow and when did she blow it?"
WATERGATE: The Friday Night massacre
CLINTON: the Friday night massage
WATERGATE: phone tapping
CLINTON: phone sex
WATERGATE: Archibald Cox, "just a little ole country lawyer"
CLINTON: Ken
Starr, possibly the most sick and twisted man in America right now
WATERGATE: the smoking gun
CLINTON: the stained dress
WATERGATE: executive privilege
CLINTON: Presidential fluid
WATERGATE: Liddy plots to lure congressmen into compromising positions by
equipping a "Chinese-motif" houseboat with hookers and video cameras
CLINTON: Monica plots to lure Clinton into a compromising position by
bringing him pizza
WATERGATE: Americans are shocked to learn that their president cannot discuss
current events without using profanity
CLINTON: Americans are shocked to
learn that they cannot discuss current events without using profanity
WATERGATE: investigation eventually exposes that Nixon conspired with his
associates to use dirty tactics to bring down the Democratic party
CLINTON:
investigation eventually exposes that Clinton used dirty tactics to bring down
the Democratic party
WATERGATE: President unsuccessfully attempts to subvert constitutional
government in order to remain in power
CLINTON: Independent counsel
successfully subverts constitutional government in order to remain in power
WATERGATE: revolves around a president named Dick
CLINTON: revolves
around a president's dick
Any questions?
We bomb Afghanistan and Sudan. Innocent of what the future holds, I rant about this as if it is the worst thing Clinton will ever do in order to save his political ass.
So, today we get to marvel at yet another example of the Ronald Reagan Memorial When The Going Gets Tough, The Tough Bomb An Islamic Dictatorship theory of governance. Of course, given the timing, people will be wondering whether this was just Clinton's way of showing us he still has the ability to govern and make decisions; but ill-disposed as I feel toward the man at this very moment, I don't blame him entirely. After all, he is merely following in the footsteps of his illustrious predecessors. Reagan bombed Libya when things got slow. Bush actually started a real live war when it was his turn, and managed to mostly flatten an entire country. And now, Clinton orders strikes against Sudan and Afghanistan. The old standby.
It's enough to make you feel like you're losing your mind. Is it me, or is it just bordering the edge of lunacy to go out on TV and say "in order to advance the cause of peace, we just engaged in unilateral strikes against two foreign powers"? This whole kill-some-folks-for-peace thing just doesn't work for me, I don't care what logic they use to prop it up. Has it never occurred to anyone that it's exactly *because* we're always pulling stuff like this that terrorist organizations target America in the first place? If we didn't treat the world like our sandbox, these people wouldn't be parking their car bombs outside our embassies. Our military goes into wherever it wants whenever it feels like it and wreaks whatever havoc it deems necessary. You can't do that forever without facing some consequences. But of course any retaliation become the justification for more drastic intervention, and the circle of fire just keeps getting hotter.
And if I hear the phrase "American lives" one more time I am going to have to hit someone. What *is* it about us that we believe *our* lives are so goddamn precious? All of the talk from Clinton to the commentators on down was about "protecting American interests" and "saving American lives" and whenever they mentioned the death toll from the bombings it was always "including twelve Americans." Somehow twelve Americans are worth more than the Kenyans and Tanzanians who died in much greater numbers; somehow twelve Americans are worth taking out three cities. Sure. Of course. One drop of American blood has always been worth a couple gallons of someone else's. What is the *matter* with us? Damn it, if you *must* try to justify taking out a chemical factory in Sudan, wouldn't it make more sense to appeal in the names of the thousands of Africans who were killed and wounded and lost friends and lovers and children just because they happened to be near our embassies? But Clinton knows and the military knows that's not what's going to get them those statements of support from everyone on Capitol Hill. It's got to be about American lives. I guess we just cost more.
I have no particular brief for Ben Ladin, or if it comes to that the Taliban regime or the Sudanese government. I am not a big fan of people who blow up other people. But let us remember that by doing this we have now joined the club, that elite group of people who will use big explosions to get what they want. Actually, we've been in the club for a while. We're charter members, really.
It blows my mind, watching them stand there and go on and on about how unconscionable these terrorist activities are when if any other foreign power just dropped a bomb on one of our cities because they wanted to nail someone residing in the U.S., we would immediately denounce that as terrorism in its worst form. But when we do it it's all right. I'm sorry, but to me once you become what you're ostensibly trying to do battle with, you've pretty much lost the fight.
I retract my earlier assessment of Clinton's speech. *This* is the low watermark of American politics. So far, at least.
Two days before the vote on impeachment, Clinton authorizes the bombing of Iraq.
See Chapter 3.
Forget Ken Starr, forget Henry Hyde. I got your articles of impeachment right here, Bill.
WHEREAS, President William Jefferson Clinton was elected to office on the strength of a coalition of progressive voters to whom he promised some form of actual social change and then proceeded to cave, waffle and wussify on every single occasion upon which he was presented with a chance to further the progress of equality and democracy;
WHEREAS, President William Jefferson Clinton has conclusively demonstrated that he has only one goal and that is to remain in office by any means necessary;
WHEREAS, President William Jefferson Clinton has shown that he is willing to kill civilians in foreign countries with whom we are not officially at war in order to distract America and American politicians from his own political troubles, a propensity which indicates at best a deplorable lack of will and at worst a propensity for cold-blooded and opportunistic murder;
WHEREAS, President William Jefferson Clinton is now indistinguishable from former president George Herbert Walker Bush except for the accent and the hairdo;
I judge him to have undermined the US Constitution and the dignity of his office, and I call for his speedy removal.
Disguisted,
The Plaid Adder
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