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THE IMPEACHMENT TRIAL of William Jefferson Clinton may be a spine-tingling drama of law and bad feeling, but it is also a story of another sort: the implosion of our very first feminist government--the first of its kind in our national history--as it cracks under the strain of its own constantly regendered deviance. In this bizarre spectacle, the feminist male is revealed as a serial abuser, defamer, and groper of women; the feminists denounce their own laws and precedents; and the First Lady--hailed at the start of the administration as the apotheosis of an empowered Strong Woman--is adored now as an old kind of feminine victim, and seeks a new path to redemption and power as the most mistreated woman in the world.... The complaints uttered by feminists against the "sexual terrorism" used by conservatives in the Jones case were a little bit specious, as they had invented these tactics, and approved of them heartily when they were used against their enemies. Their real complaint was that these measures were used on all the wrong people. They were set up in large part to catch pro-life judges, not their own weepy Bill. They are like terrorists whose bombs have blown up in their own faces. "Their rules were designed to trap a Wilbur Mills or a Clarence Thomas," wrote Barbara Amiel. "What feminists never anticipated was catching one of their own." But they did. One of the arguments made by Clinton's defenders, Arthur M. Schlesinger among them, was that Clinton had the 'right' to lie to the lawyers, as those were questions no one had the 'right' to ask of him. But they did have the right. He gave it to them. He, and his feminist friends. Never has justice been so sweet, or poetic. Bill Clinton, at the urgings of his wife and their allies, managed to impeach himself. First Feminist President Impeached, Noemie Emery |
The Real Danger of a Fake President: They say that the clear focus of American policy was to discourage the state sponsorship of terrorism. So persuading Khartoum to expel Bin Laden was in itself counted as a clear victory. The administration was "delighted". Bin Laden took off from Khartoum on May 18 in a chartered C-130 plane with 150 of his followers, including his wives. He was bound for Jalalabad in eastern Afghanistan. On the way the plane refuelled in the Gulf state of Qatar, which has friendly relations with Washington, but he was allowed to proceed unhindered. Barely a month later, on June 25, a 5,000lb truck bomb ripped apart the front of Khobar Towers, a US military housing complex in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. The explosion killed 19 American servicemen. Bin Laden was immediately suspected... bill clinton, State of Union Speech, January 27, 2000 Among the comments clinton made in presence of Secret Service agents: After the Monica Lewinsky story broke, however, clinton toned down his rhetoric and behavior in front of his Secret Service agents, but those who guarded the president say enough of them saw and heard things which could be damaging to clinton. Turnover In clinton's Secret Service Detail 'Highest That Anyone Can Remember' Why does the press continue to ignore the Juanita Broaddrick story?
Richard Gere stunned fellow liberals Monday by suggesting that President Bush is doing a better job of fighting AIDS than President Bill Clinton did. Introduced by Sharon Stone at a fund-raiser at Cipriani 42nd Street for the American Foundation for AIDS Research, the "Chicago" star hailed Bush for his State of the Union proposal to contribute $15 billion toward the AIDS battle in Africa and the Caribbean. Gere then addressed the track record of Bush's predecessor in the White House. "I'm sorry, Sen. [Hillary] Clinton, but your husband did nothing about AIDS for eight years," Gere said. GERE TAKES ON BILL, NY Daily News | 2/5/03 The placebo effect immediately came to mind as I listened to Shelby Steele, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution,debunk the following pernicious spin intended to save clinton. To wit: A proven felon and utter reprobate can remain president; clinton can be a failed human being but a good president. The error in these statements arises, says Steele, from the belief that virtuousness is separate from personal responsibility so that one's virtuousness as an individual is determined by one's political positions on issues rather than on whether or not in one's personal life there is a consistency and a responsibility. Steele's contention is that this compartmentalization, rather than being the amazing advantage the clintons would have us believe, in fact, spills toxicity into, corrupts, the culture. If mere identification with good policies is what makes one virtuous then those policies become, what Steele calls, iconographic, that is to say they just represent virtuousness. They don't necessarily do virtuous things. If clinton's semantic parsing strips meaning from our words, clinton's iconographic policies strip meaning from our society, systematically deconstructing our society as a democracy. . . I would take Shelby Steele's thesis one step further. I maintain that iconographic policy functions like a placebo, producing a real, physiological and social effects. The placebo effect is, after all, the brain's triumph over reality. Expectation alone can produce powerful physiological results. The placebo effect was, at one time, an evolutionary advantage: act now, think later bill clinton is the paradigmatic Placebo President. Placebo is Latin for "I shall please." And please he does doling out sham treatments, iconographs, with abandon. To please, to placate, to numb, to deflect. Ultimately to showcase his imagined virtue. Or to confute his genuine vice. clinton will dispense sugar pills (or bombs) at the drop of a high-heeled shoe... or at the hint of high treason... clinton's charlatanry mimics that of primitive medicine. Through the 1940s, doctors had little effective medicine to offer so they deliberately attempted to induce the placebo response. The efficaciousness of today's medicines does not diminish the power of the placebo. A recent review of placebo-controlled studies found that placebos and genuine treatments are often equally effective. If you expect to get better, you will. Which brings me back to the original question: Can clinton be a failed human being but a good president? Clearly he cannot. These two propositions are mutually exclusive. clinton's fundamental failure is a complete lack of integrity. He has violated his covenant with the American people. Because clinton has destroyed his moral authority as a leader, he can no longer function even as a quack; the placebo effect is gone. And so the Placebo President must now go, too. September 11 changed a lot of things for me, Bill [O'Reilly]. I will say this, before September 11, I was definitely mildly myopic in terms of my political agenda. If you were Democrat you were probably right, and if you were a Republican you were probably wrong. Everything changed for me that day... My entire worldview changed. If you would have told me September 9 that I would have been at the world series game filming George Bush throwing out the first pitch with my 6-year-old son crying, I never would have believed you, but I was. Because my whole worldview changed.
The boot in the face, the brute
Brute heart of a brute like you.
