|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| And If He'd Done It With Two Women, He'd Be Emperor |
|---|
| no matter how benthic, there is still an unpleasant underside |
|
This is Dark Cloud on Wednesday, September 23, 1998. The most gratifying event of the Clinton miasma has been the reaction of the American public to the tapes. Almost, unbelievably, after the tapes were shown, Clinton’s popularity has gone up an incredible nine points. I am pleased, both because I think Clinton is a good President – a recommendation he can do without, granted – and because I think it would be a shame if we lose a President – a popular President – because he lied under oath about an affair. He’s done it before. He lied about pot smoking; he lied about his draft status. Just about everyone does, by the way. You could open fire with a Sterling Street Sweeper in any law firm and run small risk of killing an attorney who didn’t lie to the state bar about his drug life. You do the same in any restaurant and fear not hitting a non-adulterer. We are a nation of hypocrites and liars and canting frauds. Clinton is innocent of anything that ought to be an impeachable offence. What the main conflict here is has been generally unremarked. This is the battle - not over whether Clinton lies, or equivicates or plays fast and loose with the truth, under oath or not - but between the Puritans and the Libertines. Clinton is probably far more honest, in toto, than Congressmen who vote for an enabling bill to appease one constituency but against a finance bill that follows to pay for it to appease another. He is not the one who gave a stupid definition of sex. The Paula Jones lawyers and Starr’s team gave him a badly worded definition and he’s made hay with it. But something else. Every friend of mine in youth kept track of all their sexual conquests, so called. You only counted the home run, not the one, two, or three bagger. When Clinton says his definition of sex is held pretty much by all of us, I believe him correct. Agreed, it is stupid and illogical, but no self-respecting college man would notch wood over a removed bra. If you look back, at least if you’re my age, I think you’d have to admit Clinton has a point. That plus the fact that most Americans rightly believe there are some things, under all circumstances and proceedings - save child abuse, rape or murder - are nobody’s damned business. Three thousand pages of testimony could have been reduced to saying Ms. Lewinsky believes her encounters with Clinton met the Special Prosecutor’s definition of sex, the President does not. It is the Puritan risen high at work in Kenneth Starr. You cannot help but conclude that writing this report was the most exciting sexual experience of his life. Mencken’s definition that Puritanism is the haunting fear that someone, somewhere might be happy has never found a more graphic illustrative example. Kenneth Starr - who has been in the employ of the perjurious and murderous and god-awful tobacco trusts all his life - has pursued this trivial and stupid sixty million fiasco for one unadmitted reason: it turns him on. The Penthouse Letters column come to life. And his legions of hypocritical backers and confounded by the polls. They who have presented themselves for years as knights of the silent majority are exposed as simply the clueless, out of touch with the nation they profess to represent. I have come to believe that this seeming fiasco will prove to be a cultural turning point in America viewed years hence. We will bury the Puritan hypocrisy and allow Presidents and others to tell the truth in the future by admitting the truth about ourselves. It’s not pretty, perhaps, but it is the truth. |
| Post your views and reviews on The Boulder Lout Forum. |