Mark Steyn: The Wrong Way to Mount Rushmore

The Wall Street Journal Opinion Journal ^ | June 27, 2004 | Mark Steyn

[quidnunc]

If you must read Bill Clinton's book, skip pages 1 through 869.

Is there anything interesting in "My Life" by Bill Clinton? Oh, yes. Page 870.

The Clintons are in New Zealand and finally get to meet "Sir Edmund Hillary, who had explored the South Pole in the 1950s, was the first man to reach the top of Mount Everest and, most important, was the man Chelsea's mother had been named for."

Hmm. Edmund Hillary reached the top of Everest in 1953. Hillary Rodham was born in 1947, when Sir Edmund was an obscure New Zealand beekeeper and an unlikely inspiration for two young parents in the Chicago suburbs. I mentioned this in Britain's Sunday Telegraph eight years ago this very week, after this little story was trotted out the first time, but like so many curious anomalies in the Clinton record, it somehow cruises on indestructibly. By the time Sir Edmund shuffles off this mortal coil, the New York Times headline will read: "Man for Whom President Rodham Named Dies; Climbed Everest in 1947."

"My Life" (Knopf, 957 pages, $35) is a harder slog. The foothills of the vast tome are deceptively easy, when Mr. Clinton is merely telling a heartwarming personal anecdote about every single person listed in the Arkansas telephone directory between 1946 and 1992. But in the higher elevations after page 700, it's heavier going: Up in the clouds, way above the out-of-his-tree line, the president advances the theory that he was obliged to submit to random sexual advances in order to uphold the important constitutional principle that Republicans are uptight about oral sex. I think I've got that right, but by then I was finding it hard to breathe and beginning to see double.

-snip-

[Cobra64]

Paul - You nailed that one to the wall. You and Charles Krauthheimer should get major air-time in lieu of The Beltway Boys on FOX News.

[kezekiel]

Money quote:

"So Mr. Clinton has to demonstrate that he wasn't beached by the tides of history on Sept. 11, 2001. This isn't impossible. If he wants us to believe he was "focusing like a laser" on Osama for eight years and that Monica was just a front, he should have constructed a narrative to fit: the Scarlet Clinternel, foppish pants-dropper by day, doughty warrior against the forces of darkness by night."

[lainde]

You beat me to it. Steyn must be savored in full!

[McGavin999]

No matter what he does, now matter what he writes, his legacy is already set in stone. The man will go down in history as the biggest laughingstock in the entire world.

In 20 years, nobody will admit to having voted for him.

[Oztrich Boy]

Well, he once did claim to 'almost be a libertarian,' knowing that it meant licentiousness and moral-liberalism.

Like you, he was wrong, or lying.

Bill Clinton on Why We Don't Really Want Freedom

Yep that sounds libertarian on the Bizarro world.

It's not even conservative.

"And so a lot of people say there's too much personal freedom. When personal freedom's being abused, you have to move to limit it" - Bill Clinton

"Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end." - Lord Acton

But that was in the last good century, when it was hard to tell libertarians and conservatives apart.

And today it's often difficult to tell the "progressives" and the "traditionalists" apart.

[Cultural Jihad]

Q. Mr. President, a week ago a group of gay and lesbian representatives came out of a meeting with you and expressed in the most ringing terms, their confidence in your understanding of them and their political aspirations, and their belief that you would fulfill those aspirations. Do you feel now that you will be able to meet their now enhanced expectations?

THE PRESIDENT: ... I believe that this country's policies should be heavily biased in favor of nondiscrimination. I believe when you tell people they can't do certain things in this country that other people can do, there ought to be an overwhelming and compelling reason for it. ...

... When I was Governor, I was attacked from the other direction for sticking up for the rights of religious fundamentalists to run their child care centers and to practice home schooling under appropriate safeguards. I just have always had an almost libertarian view that we should try to protect the rights of American individual citizens to live up to the fullest of their capacities, and I'm going to stick right with that.

[Elkiejg]

Granted that a remarkable number of those FOBs wound up dead, in jail or drowning in legal bills, there are still thousands out there, and Bill feels he has to mention them all.

Ourch -- way to go Steyn.

[Bonaparte]

I think it's a quote from the article itself.

[goldstategop]

Bill Clinton has a gift of making people's heads spin.

[Brian Allen]

<< You beat me to it. Steyn must be savored in full! >>

Absolutely.

And thanks for being [Another] grown-up about that!

[Brian Allen]

<< In 20 years, nobody will admit to having voted for him. >>

Long before he left office for, thank God, the last time, there were already two hundred and twenty two million Americans, of whom I am proudly one, who in their lives had never voted and would never vote for the envy-motivated and hatred-engined, rottenly-recidivistic, prevaricating, predatory, psychopathologically-hesperophobic, self-loathing-hatred-driven, deviously-delinquent, lying, looting, thieving, treasonous, mass-murdering, serial-rapist gangster bastard son of a Hot-Springs-whorehouse john! [And/or Tom, Dick and/or Harry]

And now, as you so astutely note, there are 222-million of US -- and counting.

BUMPping

[tkathy]

Is Clinton's new girlfriend named Rushmore?

[alwaysconservative]

LOLOLOLOLOL! Add me to THAT list!

[MeekOneGOP]

Mark Steyn doing his usual GREAT stuff!

Mark Steyn: The Wrong Way to Mount Rushmore

Excerpt:

The Clintons are in New Zealand and finally get to meet "Sir Edmund Hillary, who had explored the South Pole in the 1950s, was the first man to reach the top of Mount Everest and, most important, was the man Chelsea's mother had been named for."

Hmm. Edmund Hillary reached the top of Everest in 1953. Hillary Rodham was born in 1947, when Sir Edmund was an obscure New Zealand beekeeper and an unlikely inspiration for two young parents in the Chicago suburbs. I mentioned this in Britain's Sunday Telegraph eight years ago this very week, after this little story was trotted out the first time, but like so many curious anomalies in the Clinton record, it somehow cruises on indestructibly. By the time Sir Edmund shuffles off this mortal coil, the New York Times headline will read: "Man for Whom President Rodham Named Dies; Climbed Everest in 1947."

"My Life" (Knopf, 957 pages, $35) is a harder slog. The foothills of the vast tome are deceptively easy, when Mr. Clinton is merely telling a heartwarming personal anecdote about every single person listed in the Arkansas telephone directory between 1946 and 1992. But in the higher elevations after page 700, it's heavier going: Up in the clouds, way above the out-of-his-tree line, the president advances the theory that he was obliged to submit to random sexual advances in order to uphold the important constitutional principle that Republicans are uptight about oral sex. I think I've got that right, but by then I was finding it hard to breathe and beginning to see double.

Please let me know if you want ON or OFF my General Interest ping list!. . .don't be shy.

[MeekOneGOP]

I was trying to find the Parody pic of Clinton's book cover to post with my ping there. It's the one that that quotes Ronald Reagan's remark about (something to the effect of) "if you're a really lousy President, then you can write a book" at the very top.

Does anybody have that pic ????

[metesky]

Thank you, Brian.

Many here think quidnunc should

(snip)

[knighthawk]

Ping

[daviddennis]

Here's the letter I wrote to Mark Steyn in response to his review.

Call me gullible, but I had to take a look at the primary source.

I went to Borders, confronted the gigantic pile of Clinton autobiographies on display, picked one up and started to read.

He doesn't help his case by mentioning his dream of writing "a great book" in the preface. From Chapter One, I was gripped with a sudden somnolence, and by page two I would have been snoring if I hadn't been sitting on the rather uncomfortable bookstore floor. I left the store grabbing a remaindered Dave Barry novel in hopes that it would wake me up.

Mark, I think you deserve some kind of medal for finishing his book. It's the most unreadable sleeping pill of a book I've ever seen - even worse than Living History, and that's saying a lot.

Care to share with us how you did it?

David Dennis
Woodland Hills, CA

[Dog Gone]

If geopolitics is the Super Bowl, Mr. Clinton is Janet Jackson, complete with wardrobe malfunctions.

Bless you, again.

[Dog Gone]

You didn't buy it, did you?