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By the time this appears in print, the special prosecutor's report to Congress, delivered Wednesday and sequestered in a high-security locked room in the Capitol, will doubtless be available to the public -- especially if it's so lurid that selective leaking will advance Republican election prospects.
Thus other pundits will have to analyze its contents and explain how the material will affect the 1998 elections. I have, however, noticed certain trends in the commentary.
For instance, you can always tell when a Republican is
discussing the special prosecutor, because he will be
called Judge Starr
rather than Kenneth
Starr.
Starr was indeed a judge once upon a time, and if you
still grant him the title of Judge,
then sounds as
though his report represents some sort of dispassionate
finding by an impartial magistrate, rather than several
years of zealous probing.
Perhaps that isn't fair. Maybe they call him
Judge
because, in the GOP dialect of the Official
Language, each person is assigned a title at a certain
time, and once the assignment is made, it can never be
changed.
For instance, Craig Livingstone was a White House political operative who worked in security and managed to see some raw FBI files a few years ago. Some of these files concerned GOP officeholders and functionaries.
Republicans were rightly critical, although for the
wrong reason -- these are the people always claiming that
we need a smaller, less-intrusive government, and here was
a perfect chance to raise the issue of a federal police
agency keeping secret dossiers on citizens. That such files
exist at all is an outrage in a free
country.
But instead, the GOP stalwarts attacked Livingstone, and
since then, he is always former bar bouncer Craig
Livingstone.
Most people who work have held a variety of jobs over
the years. But I have never seen former Kansas Sen. Bob
Dole listed as someone who used to be the guy that ran a
scoop shovel at a grain-elevator,
or former President
George Bush called a one-time associate of known
oil-field roughnecks,
or Mississippi Sen. Trent Lott
described as a former college cheerleader.
A little semantic analysis, then, should quickly inform you of the bias of whoever's doing the spinning as this great and wonderful spectacle continues to unfold.
The main spin effort, though, will doubtless come from President Bill Clinton. Just in case his advisors have been busy on other matters, I offer these suggestions for excuses and explanations he might provide:
· Clinton's first surgeon general, Dr. Joycelyn Elders, was attacked by Republicans for advocating masturbation as a harmless way to keep lust under control. If the Republicans won't allow that activity when the urge strikes, then what choice did the President have in those circumstances?-- After Vice President Al Gore received so much Republican criticism for his associations with certain nuns, the President was again left with no real choice in his ceaseless efforts to avoid attacks from the GOP.
· Clinton was supposed to produce a
public-service announcement in the interest of improved
public health, and misunderstood the assignment so that he
thought it was make sure the public knows that you can
get sex from aides.
· Stock-market prices were running much higher
than corporate earnings would support, and a major collapse
loomed unless the market cooled down. The President
sincerely believed a soft landing
would be in the
nation's best interest, and so, he collaborated with a
patriotic young intern to produce a scandal that would
depress the Dow-Jones average without producing widespread
financial panic.
· He suffers from incurable satyromania (the male counterpart of the better known female condition of nymphomania). Under the Americans with Disabilities Act, reasonable accommodations for his condition must be made in his workplace, and Monica Lewinsky was the officer in charge of bringing the White House into compliance, thereby demonstrating that no person or place is above the law.
· As is the case with so many busy men, his family felt left out of his life. So after betraying the people who voted for him in the hope of national health insurance and judicial appointees who have read the Bill of Rights, he decided it was only fair to betray his family, too, lest they again feel excluded.
Doubtless the White House spinmeisters will come up with even more and better explanations, and we can look forward to the finest election season of this millenium.
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