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Deep in the cloisters of the Institute of Conventional Wisdom lies the Center for the Evaluation of Youthful Indiscretions. That's where they decide whether
the follies of one's jejune days can be overcome.
The Center's director, Dr. Rhadamanthus A. Minos, explained how they operate.
Our most recent ruling was on David Duke,
Minos
said. He was once a grand wizard in the Ku Klux Klan.
The issue was whether he could be absolved of juvenile
racism, so that he could join the mainstream Republican
party.
And he couldn't,
I said. But I don't know why.
He sounded like George Bush or any other GOP candidate
these days. Most of them have belonged to all-white country
clubs and the like. As a congressman, Bush voted against
the civil rights bill in 1965, and now he often threatens
to veto new civil rights legislation. Why were these other
Republicans exonerated of racism, while Duke
wasn't?
Minos sighed. Class and money. When an educated man
of means like George Bush says he is against welfare,
crime, quotas, abortion and gun control, he's a responsible
conservative. When a redneck former Klansman says the same
thing, he's a bigot. We have determined that a Klan stain,
unlike an all-white club membership or a vote against a
civil-rights bill, is indelible.
I moved on. Why was Clarence Thomas forgiven for
smoking pot, when Douglas Ginsburg wasn't?
Our rules are very straightforward here. If you
smoked marijuana as an undergraduate, and if you claim you
only experimented with it a few times, then the Center will
forgive you, just as we did with Thomas and Sen. Albert
Gore. However, if you touched it after you left college,
then it is no longer a youthful indiscretion, and it's out
of our jurisdiction.
That made a certain amount of sense. What other
issues are before the Center?
I asked.
We're working on sexual harassment, so that we'll
have a line between the braggadocio of boys and the menace
of men. We think the point where a male should know better
than to tell raunchy stories to female co-workers is about
age 25 or the year 1983, whichever came first, but we
haven't reached to a conclusion.
As for politics, former SDS will be pardoned, as long
as you weren't a Weatherman. Youthful draft-dodging is
allowed only if you're a hard-core hawk now, like Dick
Cheney or Dan Quayle.
What about careers?
I inquired.
We've received quite a few inquiries from 38-year-old
former whiz-kid S&L officers and junk-bond brokers who
want to know if they can be pardoned for their sordid
previous careers, launched when they were impressionable
youths and didn't know any better. However, we'll probably
wait to take that up until one of them wants to run as a
Democrat.
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