< PREVIOUS ] [ 1998 Index ] [ Ed Quillen HOME ] [ SEARCH ] [ NEXT >
According to the major-league pundits, Bill Clinton has really put his rump in a sling this time around. We wholesome normal Americans who put in a hard day's work every day out in the vast heartland of this great republic may have been willing to ignore previous presidential peccadilloes, but now we're just hopping mad about the alleged affair with Monica Lewinsky, a 21-year-old White House intern at the time. In fact, we're all so angry that it's all we can talk about.
Now, I spend a fair amount of time swilling coffee and swapping gossip out here in the hinterlands of the heartland. Thus I believe I can approach this topic with some expertise, and all anybody wanted to talk about recently was the Broncos.
They talked about the Broncos so much that, even though I faced several writing jobs with pressing deadlines Sunday, I decided to watch the first quarter of the Super Bowl.
I didn't want to feel left out, and a quarter would be more than enough to see the start of another blow-out against the Broncos. When Green Bay scored on its first possession, I was congratulating myself for my game plan, but it happened so fast that I decided to watch for as long as the Broncos were in the game -- maybe another 10 minutes, max.
So the work didn't get done. But Martha, who suffers
from migraine headaches occasionally, had a question,
perhaps the only game-related question in America that was
not asked and answered during the interminable post-game
programming: What medicine did they give Terrell Davis?
I want some. Anything that can cure a migraine that fast
and that well is something I want in my medicine
cabinet.
Perhaps that answer will emerge, but remember, our
betters have ordered us to think about the Crisis in the
White House.
If I understand matters correctly, the issue that
troubles special prosecutor Kenneth Starr is whether
Lewinsky lied during a deposition, since her denial of a
sexual relationship with Clinton there is contradicted by
her taped accounts of conversations with a
friend.
Now, I know little of the mores of Washington, but out here in God's country, it is generally assumed that:
A) Your sex life is not a matter of public business, and
B) All people, from the romeo boasting of his conquests to the ingenue proclaiming her virtue, tend to lie about their sexual activities. Since you can't believe anything you hear in this regard, it's not worth thinking about.
Whatever Clinton did, it couldn't be half as seedy and sordid as Starr's perverse use of tapes from Linda Tripp's answering machine, or, indeed, Tripp's taping of the calls. Don't these people have anything better to do?
The tapes are supposed to be of value in the Paula Jones suit against Clinton for sexual harassment -- to prove a continuing pattern of behavior, or something like that.
Jones has said she has pressed this lawsuit in order to
get back her good name. She lost her reputation, she
charged, on account of an article in the American
Spectator
about Clinton's alleged use of Arkansas state
troopers as procurers.
The American Spectator
is somewhere to the right
of Ivan the Terrible in its politics, so we have a rabidly
conservative journal publishing an article which a woman,
financed by right-wing foundation, uses as her cause for
suing the President that they all hate.
Little wonder that the White House sees a conspiracy, especially when you realize that Jones says she just wants her reputation restored. Had you ever heard of her before she filed the suit? Did she have any reputation, good or bad, before her lawsuit?
And we're supposed to care about this stuff?
We've got a Congress that invites lobbyists in to write the laws, where campaign contributions have been dispersed on the floor, and we're supposed to care about who might have been sleeping with whom in Washington?
We've got a governor who never met a millionaire he
wouldn't do a favor for. He helped out his good friend,
Phil Anschutz
with support for a railroad merger that
has led to job losses and layoffs in Colorado, a merger
that has cost the national economy nearly $2 billion.
Then Sunday night he's on the tube, basking in reflected glory, talking about how vital it was to force $18,000-a-year working people to pay for an arena for $1.5-million-a-year athletes -- a form of income redistribution that would shame even an ardent Reaganite, and coming from a Democrat, at that.
And we're supposed to be focused on what a young woman might have said in a telephone conversation concerning a topic that everyone lies about?
Clinton should resign, I suppose. They keep telling us
that character matters,
and everybody involved --
Clinton, Starr, Jones, Lewinsky, Tripp -- has displayed a
disgusting and repugnant character, and if they all
vanished from the news, I'd feel better.
But the Broncos won the Super Bowl, so I guess we Coloradans are not supposed to worry about anything -- for a few days, anyway.
< PREVIOUS ] [ 1998 Index ] [ Ed Quillen HOME ] [ SEARCH ] [ NEXT >