February 1999
Hey, reader! Come here for a minute. You look like a reasonable, liberal-minded person. Let me ask you this: Don’t you agree that the state government should have “broad discretion in passing laws to protect the public”? We all want to be safe, right?
So you probably also agree it should be within “the power of the Legislature to prohibit the sale and manufacture of products it deems harmful.” Sure it should.
And despite what the libertarian wackos might think, there is no “fundamental right to own an item” that threatens your neighbors. The government needs to protect us from people who might own something that could harm our community, don’t you agree?
Then, congratulations! You’ve just been elected . . . sex toy czar of the state of Alabama!
All of the quotes above came not from anti-gun activists or the Drug Enforcement Agency, but from state officials battling to ban all battery-operated pleasures from the belles of Alabama. The legislature of the Cotton State recently proposed a law banning the sale of “any device designed or marketed as useful primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs.”
Apparently, in Alabama it is a crime to own Monica Lewinsky’s head.
Personal entertainment appliances, marital aids, provocatively shaped vegetables—it may soon be a crime to sell any of these items in Alabama. The state, which argues such products are obscene, contends there is no fundamental right “to purchase a product to use in pursuit of having an orgasm.” The sale or distribution of such items within the borders of the Bubba State would be a misdemeanor punishable by a $10,000 fine and up to one year in jail, where such devices are unnecessary thanks to the earnest attentions of your cellmates.
Not surprisingly, the law is being challenged by the American Civil Liberties Union, whose ranks have been swelling since the story broke. Unofficial estimates are that more than five thousand women have joined just during deer season alone.
Actually, the ACLU is representing several businesswomen, including B. J. Bailey, who sells sexual aids and novelties at parties, and Sherri Williams, who owns Loving Enterprises, Inc., a chain of “romance boutiques.”
“[The legislature] set out to eliminate strip clubs, but along the way they snuck in sex toys,” Williams said. “Not only did they take away your entertainment, but when they were done they also took away your right to entertain yourself.”
Yep, and if People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals succeeds in banning cow-tipping, Friday nights in Alabama are gonna get pretty slow.
Now, we as southerners are hardly surprised when our fellow Confederates do something really, really stupid like this. But we usually have the good sense to be humiliated.
Not in Alabama. The government is enthusiastically defending its law prohibiting unauthorized vibrations. The attorney general’s office points out that Georgia and Texas have similar laws on the books, but apparently the men of those two states are attending to their husbandly duties with sufficient zeal that there has not been a need for widespread legal action.
“This is really a case about the power of the Legislature to prohibit the sale and manufacture of products it deems harmful,” says state assistant attorney general Courtney Tarver. Harmful? To whom? Who is harmed by the proper use of a vibrator? Are intimidated husbands, threatened by their wives’ self-fulfillment, risking Viagra overdoses attempting to rise to this unfair bedroom challenge?
I ask you, which society is more at risk: one where women pass their days with a happy smile on their faces and a faint buzzing in their bloomers, or a community of tense, frustrated hausfraus snapping at their husbands and leering at the paperboy?
But on the core issue—the state’s power to control the sale and ownership of legal products—Tarver is absolutely correct. If the state has the right to prevent the sale of guns or cigarettes or pork chops or malt liquor—all of which are unpopular with somebody—why can’t the state try to prevent mechanical naughtiness by forlorn housewives?
Once you give the state the right to stop your neighbors from buying things that you don’t like, the state can use that right any way it chooses. Remember that the next time you growl at some poor smoker or grimace at an unapologetic gun owner.
Meanwhile, I have a plan for our lovers of libido liberty in Alabama. I think I know how you can escape the reach of the puritan police.
First, remember that the statute does not prohibit the use of sexual devices or prohibit the acquisition of them as gifts from other states. Perhaps those of us in neighboring states should break the embargo and airlift a few thousand “magic fingers” to Alabama. Imagine the joy on women’s faces as the devices float down on parachutes from the sky.
But the solution isn’t a legal challenge or civil disobedience. It’s marketing.
Ladies, can’t ever find a D-cell battery when you need one? And when you find them, are the batteries already dead? Not any more! Now you’ve got Michael Graham’s Guaranteed Home Battery Tester and Carrying Case. The cylindrical, rubberized carrying case (in sizes from five inches to “oh my God”) keeps all your D cells together and easy to find. And when you flick the switch of this handy device, the quiet vibrations of your Battery Tester tell you they’re all fired up and ready to go!
Coming to Alabama’s finest hardware stores! Batteries not included.
January 1999
From the Academy of Political Arts and Sciences come this year’s nominations for the Rascals, the Academy’s highest honor for individual performances in America’s national comedy of errors:
Best Actress: Hillary Rodham Clinton, Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy. Once typecast as a tough-minded Thelma and Louise feminist icon, the Artist Formerly Known as Ms. Rodham re-created herself as the Tammy Wynette of the White House in this televised tour de farce. Though the script for Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy, by Sydney Blumenthal (Liar, Liar), is about as thin as an intern’s thong, Mrs. Clinton performed brilliantly, helped by Matt Lauer’s (NBC’s Today) solid work as a gullible media dupe.
Best Special Effects: Jim Carville, Ken Starr: Mad-Dog Republican. Jim Carville made his reputation as a legendary storyteller in 1992 with his production of It’s the Economy, Stupid, using his spin to morph the once-invincible George Bush into a hapless political has-been. Carville returned this year with another astonishing feat of bayou magic, using his wizardry to mutate the rabbitlike Ken Starr into a grand-jury Godzilla who filled audiences with terror. It’s the greatest special effects feat since Michael Jackson had himself turned into a white guy!
Best Sound Recording: Linda Tripp, Sister Act. The technique was primitive and a Maryland grand jury is reviewing its legality, but no doubt about it: Linda Tripp is the Edison of scandalous sound recordings. No edits, no expletives deleted—just the painful sounds of puppy love and doggy style.
Best Editing: White House Defense Counsel, Enumerated Body Parts. During their command performance in the toughest hundred-seat hall in the business (the U.S. Senate), President Clinton’s attorneys displayed an oversized copy of the definition of sexual relations used in the long-running show Just Kiss It, starring Paula Jones. Jones’ fans will recall that this definition listed in detail the specific body parts in “sexual relations” and all appropriate stage directions. In a brilliant editing move, however, the president’s lawyers deleted that discomfiting sentence and replaced it with the innocuous phrase “enumerated body parts.” Now you know why they made more money this year than Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Best Costume: The Gap, One Blue Dress. Accents by Bill Clinton. One stain. Well placed. It’s a winner!
Best Original Script: William Ginsberg, Dumb and Dumber. Intellectually speaking, William Ginsberg and Monica Lewinsky may be the Shaggy and Scooby-Doo of the Clinton scandals, but for memorable, original dialogue, no one can touch the bumbling attorney from Beverly Hills. Even if he hadn’t screamed obscenities at TV cameras or fumbled the biggest case of his life, he would still have staked his claim to greatness with one brilliant line: “Forget the law, forget the facts. The will of the people.” Look for those words on the marquee of a presidential library near you!
Best Script Based on Previously Published Material: William Jefferson Clinton, Perjury II: The Wrath of Ken. “It depends on what the meaning of the word is is.” “It depends on what you mean by alone.” It may be weak logic, but it’s boffo box office, Bill! Clinton has always had a fine hand for fiction, but his astonishingly elastic vocabulary and imaginative view of the facts were at their hair-splitting best during this appearance before a federal grand jury. Despite numerous direct statements of untruth, the president crafted a script that friendly reviewers have even labeled perjury-free!
Best Actor: Alan Dershowitz, I Saved Hitler’s Brain. A seemingly tireless performer, Dershowitz used his ubiquitous appearances on the cable news circuit to defend President Clinton from the “evil, evil, genuine evil” of monsters such as Representative Bob Barr and Senator Trent Lott. More recently, Dershowitz told a crowd at Yale that if given the chance, not only would he represent Adolf Hitler, “I would win!” So much for the battle against genuine evil. Clearly, Dershowitz’s attacks on the president’s enemies are an act. And what acting it is!
Best Stunts: William Jefferson Clinton, How Bad Do You Need a Job, Mrs. Willey? Though best known for his thoughtful, emotive performances, Bill Clinton showcased his physical abilities in his role opposite Kathleen Willey. His strong, physical presence—as well as his aggressive handwork—also added to his performance with Monica Lewinsky in the year’s biggest box office smash, Titanic II: Monica Goes Down. Another of Clinton’s strongly physical performances, the previously unreleased Jane Doe #5, is still in the can at NBC News and not yet available for screening.
Best Supporting Actors/Actresses: You! Once dismissed as puritanical, judgmental and unsophisticated, you, the people of America, have stunned pundits and pollsters in your role as President Clinton’s most valuable supporters. Without your complex (some would say contradictory) supporting work, the president would have been trapped in a two-dimensional role made up of the facts and the law—neither of which are complimentary to Clinton. The ensemble supporting cast created a fanciful environment in which the characters who lied under oath were sympathetic (Clinton, Jordan, Blumenthal), while those who upheld the rule of law were villains (Starr, Tripp, Christopher Hitchens).
No doubt about it: Without your leaps of twisted logic, ladies and gentlemen, this comedy would have closed as a tragedy last summer. Instead, your support has ensured that America’s most popular farce will continue with only minor rewrites until January 2001.
See you next year!
April 1999
Charlotte, N.C. (AP)—A radio talk show host was fired for making an on-air joke about the Littleton, Colo., school shootings. Just hours after the shootings, host Michael Graham related witness descriptions of the incident. He said:
“They [the assailants] were targeting minorities and athletes—which, the athletes part, [is] one minor benefit to this otherwise horrible story.” He immediately followed with “No, I’m kidding.”
WBT general manager Rick Jackson apologized April 21 for Graham’s joke, which he said was the most reprehensible on-air comment he had heard in his seven years at the station.
In a statement, Graham said: “. . . Without thinking, I made a stupid, insensitive and indefensible remark. On every show, I preach that people should suffer the consequences of their own stupidity. That principle certainly applies to me.”
* * *
In case you missed it in the local papers, or on the national wires, or on the Drudge Report, or on CNN (good grief), yes, I’m the moron who shot off his smart mouth and got fired for making a crack about the shooting at Columbine High School.
Like our beloved president, when I do something stupid, I like it to be really, really big.
You can read the quote above and decide for yourself whether or not I deserved to be fired—again—for something I said. But as for me, I’m not complaining.
While I disagree with my former boss’ view that my fateful words were “the most reprehensible on-air comment” made on his radio station in the last seven years (I can think of a dozen things I’ve said myself that were worse), I completely support his right to determine who does and does not belong on his radio station. I am a true believer in free-market capitalism, and I will be until the day my unemployment benefits run out.
Seriously, I’ve received quite a few supportive e-mails (mail@michaelgraham.com) and calls, and while I appreciate the personal kindness, the comments have a disturbing tone. They imply that I am the victim of an injustice. I couldn’t disagree more.
What happened to me was the natural, foreseeable consequence of my own actions.
When the spineless weasels at the South Carolina Educational Radio Network banned me from their airwaves in 1991, they were reacting quite rationally to my on-air comments. I’m the one who went on their air and said that a tough new ethics law banning criminals from state government meant “there wouldn’t be enough legislators left to convene a quorum.” Sure, the folks at SCERN approved the script and edited the tape. But when the complaints came pouring in, the choice for these cowering toadies was either standing up for the principles of free speech and an independent press or doing the bidding of the semiliterate mouth-breathers in the General Assembly who control their budget and wanted to see me dumped.
Folks, this is a no-brainer! If the people at SCERN (Spineless Cowards Early Retirement Network) were truly principled, independent journalists, they wouldn’t be working for the government in the first place. I knew that at the time, but I insisted on sitting in front of the mike and telling the truth about South Carolina’s state legislature.
Hey, I’m lucky I wasn’t lynched!
Then in 1995, when the General Assembly passed a budget amendment firing me, specifically, from my media lackey job in the South Carolina secretary of state’s office, this, too, made sense. The firing was, in part, a payback for comments made in these columns, articles that contained the kind of literary material always unpopular among state legislators: irony, sarcasm, multisyllabic words . . .
In a sense, these politicians were honoring my work. How would I have felt if the people I wrote about ignored my writings each week? Would it be better for my column to just roll off their polyester-clad backs like spiked punch at a lobbyist’s reception?
Instead, I got exactly what I wanted. I wrote stuff down. They read it. They hated it. I won. Okay, I got fired, but technically that’s a win—unless you’re one of the many credit card companies waiting for next month’s payment.
So when I was invited to become a radio talk show host at WBT in 1998, I went there with the same ambitions with which I wrote these columns. I wanted people to be engaged by what I had to say. I wanted them to react. I wanted what I said on the radio to matter.
Why, then, would I start whining now that it does?
What I said about killing jocks—on that day, at that time and on that station—was stupid. I shouldn’t have said it, but I did, and what I said mattered. I’m glad. Poor, but glad.
This is in direct contrast to the self-serving hypocrisy of the Howard Sterns and Marilyn Mansons of the world. Like the pathetic teenage losers who worship them, the shock jock/shock rock crowd cries out to be heard, to be seen, to be noticed. Stern, Manson, Rob Zombie et alia scream, “Pay attention to me!” all day long.
But when they say or do something so stupid, vulgar or ridiculous that it gets the attention of a grown-up, Howard and company just blush, look down at their shoes and say, “Who, me? Why, no one really listens to me. My words are of no consequence at all. Nobody’s paying attention, are they?”
That was the ruse Howard Stern tried to pull after wondering aloud (and on the air) why Columbine’s Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris didn’t rape their female victims before killing them. When the stunned people of Colorado lashed back at his lame attempt at humor, Stern, as usual, played possum—albeit a particularly ugly, juvenile, self-aggrandizing, hypocritical one.
The premise of Howard Stern’s show is that stupid people have more fun. As a fledging talk show host, I absolutely disagree. Stupid people don’t have more fun; they just laugh at the same joke over and over again.
But whether they are morons or Mensa members, Stern’s audience deserves better than a talk host who pretends his talking is mere idle chatter. Howard, if you honestly believe your words have no weight, then why do you keep talking?
Those of us who want to participate in the great national conversation—as either a writer, a talker or a rocker—are in it because we want our words and ideas to matter, to have impact. When they do and the consequences are acclaim, life is good. But when our words strike hard and the results are unpleasant, the desire to run away from those words is mere cowardice, nothing else.
Well, unlike Stern, I am no coward. Okay, so I’m not a genius, either, as I demonstrated on April 20. But when I say that there are worse things to lose than a job, trust me. I speak from experience.
May 1999
In loco parentis: the legal theory that schools may act in the place of parents.
What does it take for a schoolkid to be a rebel these days?
Failing grades? No way!
Complete illiteracy? Nah, that just gets you on the varsity football team.
Caught with a pocketful of condoms? Are you kidding? Who do you think gave ’em the condoms in the first place?
For the rebellious teenager of today who really wants to get in trouble with the American public school system, I’ve got just the thing: free speech.
Forget sex, drugs and rock and roll. A handful of sentences tossed upon the Internet, a line drawing or two, and you’ll be the first hellion in your class to get suspended, expelled—even arrested!
Don’t believe me?
Ask the thirteen-year-old Arizona boy given in-school detention for carrying an electronics magazine to school that contained advertisements for guns. When he added a penciled cartoon showing the school blowing up, the kid was actually arrested by local law enforcement.
Another teenager was recently escorted off his high school campus and to the nearest police station. His crime? Wearing black clothing.
Since the Columbine High School tragedy, the American Civil Liberties Union reports a tidal wave of panic at public schools, leaving in its wake the wrecked academic lives of ambushed students. Public school administrators, whose incompetence and pettiness are legendary, have been using the Colorado shooting to give themselves permission to behave stupidly, not to mention destructively, toward the students in their charge.
Take the case of fifteen-year-old Andrew Eisen, an honors student in Antioch, Illinois. After a suspicious poem (yes, that’s right, a poem) was found in his locker, Eisen was taken to the police station, where he said he was fingerprinted and charged with disorderly conduct. He then spent a week in juvenile hall and faces expulsion for the remainder of this school year and all of the next.
Now, we can all agree that fifteen-year-olds writing unauthorized poetry should be discouraged—it can lead to other harmful lifestyle choices, such as majoring in English—but should a student be arrested for a poem? And if so, how can any student walk the halls with a Walkman tuned in to Marilyn Manson or Coolio?
More disturbing is the case of eleven students from Brimfield, Ohio, a small town about thirty miles southeast of Cleveland. The students had a Web site filled with images of dragons and castles and dark poetry, which had been created months before the Littleton shootings but was updated with comments on the massacre. The students called gunmen Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold fellow “freaks” and sarcastically praised them.
One statement read: “I wonder how long it’ll be before we’re not allowed to wear our trench coats anymore. You know those screwed-up kids in Colorado were wearing them, so that means I will also kill someone, and so will all my friends.”
What’s this? Teens using sarcasm? They must be stopped!
And, of course, they were. The school district’s superintendent immediately suspended the students for the unauthorized use of humor and alleged independent thought.
However, the ACLU successfully fought their expulsion by arguing that schools have no right to punish kids for what they say off campus. If schools have the right to monitor students’ personal, off-campus Web sites, why shouldn’t principals be allowed to read their diaries, too? Tap their phones? Eavesdrop on their conversations down at the Sonic?
The argument made by the anti-freedom thugs who run our schools is the typical Hillary-style hyperbole: “We’ve got to do something! The kid who writes provocative poetry today could be the clock tower shooter of tomorrow!”
But this is a false argument. The alternative to jackboot justice is not helplessness and inaction, but rational action. What the hell is a school doing regulating any kid’s off-campus speech? If schools want to ban trench coats and Rob Zombie CDs on school grounds, fine. If they want ban “threatening statements” on campus, no problem. (Pop quiz: What’s the most threatening statement you can make to a public school administrator? “I support vouchers.”)
But when some thuggish school administrator tries to destroy the academic future of a seventeen-year-old North Augusta, South Carolina, student for writing on his personal Web page that his ROTC teachers should “eat feces and die” (as was recently reported), the line of reason has been crossed.
Actions should have consequences, but not every mistake should be punishable with death. After all, we’re talking about children. Is a police station really the best place to send smart-mouthed kids who need to learn a lesson in self-restraint?
Then again, if the alternative is leaving these children in the government-run school system, maybe we’re doing them a favor.
March 1999
How stupid can you be and still attend college? It depends on how well you do on the boards.
No, not the college boards. Backboards.
Dennis Rodman I’m not, and the last year I played for the Pelion High Panthers, we won a whopping total of three games. So when I applied for college, I had to demonstrate that I could actually read and write, which meant doing well on the SAT. I got the test scores I needed and eventually went on to an illustrious collegiate career at a third-rate college: Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Oklahoma. (Don’t ask.)
Also attending ORU was a basketball star known around campus as “Lester the Molester,” a tribute to his high scoring record in a rumored one-on-one matchup with a reluctant cheerleader. Lester’s SAT scores were comparable to my average points per game—statistically speaking, nonexistent—but this did not prevent him from becoming a scholar-athlete in full standing. Or a starting forward for the ORU Titans.
Lester, an illiterate, anti-intellectual clod, had absolutely no interest in attending any university, no matter how low its academic standards. The Reverend Oral Roberts, no devotee of academic rigor himself (he did not allow his biology majors to study the theory of evolution), did his best to dumb down the university experience, but he could never drop standards low enough to accommodate Lester’s limited intellect.
Why was Lester at ORU? To play ball, which is exactly what everyone—teachers, administrators and the National Collegiate Athletic Association—had to do to keep him there.
The bizarre dance between Lester the Molester and the ORU holy rollers demonstrates the core fallacy in the current debate over SAT requirements for student athletes, namely, that these athletes are in any sense of the word students.
The serious players at most NCAA Division I schools, the players that matter, are not scholar-athletes, as the NCAA insists. They are minor-league professionals, working their way toward their personal goals of reaching the majors. The schools are the equivalent of a farm system, exploiting these athletes to generate entertainment revenues while offering low wages and limited benefits.
There is a major PR effort to disguise the obvious, but the competent students know why individuals who think Isaac Newton invented the fruit-filled cookie are taking up space in our classrooms.
Sure, there are some true scholar-athletes, most of them in sports such as intramural rugby or Greco-Roman snowboarding. But they aren’t the reason for the lawsuit that inspired a federal judge recently to order the NCAA to stop using SAT scores as part of the criteria for admitting football and basketball players into collegiate sports programs.
And let’s be clear on one thing: The athletes are complete academic incompetents. We aren’t talking about people who confuse effect with affect or misstate the value of pi by a digit. We’re talking about clods who are repeatedly unable to achieve the NCAA-mandated score of 820 on the SAT, an exam that gives them 400 points just for showing up.
It gets even worse. Because the SAT is scored on a scale from 400 to 1,600, there are 1,200 possible points on the test. Scoring 820 means you only have to answer enough questions right to earn 420 of those points. In other words, to qualify as a NCAA linebacker, you have to know a whopping 35 percent of the material covered in a multiple-choice test!
It is hard to know who is served by the federal government’s order to eliminate SAT requirements and allow still more idiots into college sports programs, other than the idiots themselves and the coaches who consume them for our entertainment. Some see it as a civil rights issue, because nearly every highly recruited student-athlete who can’t get past the SAT requirement is black.
No one has explained to me how a binomial equation can be racist. But let’s assume that the SAT is somehow biased against black students. Okay, how much is the bias worth? Ten points? Fifty? A hundred points, in the worst possible scenario?
These failing athletes aren’t even in the ballpark. The argument that these jocks are potential Einsteins who are being held back by biased testing practices might hold water if they were missing the cutoff score by a few points. But the decision by Duke University (average SAT score = 1,300) to reject the application of Joe Jock (SAT score = shoe size) isn’t an act of discrimination. It’s an act of mercy.
Why subject these athletes to certain academic failure? Why force their fellow students who actually want an education—and the teachers who serve them—to waste precious time and resources on the utterly incompetent?
Forget federal lawsuits by activist lawyers on behalf of academic failures. Let me suggest to every student reading this a new course of legal action: Sue the schools that put these idiots into your classroom.
The next time you find yourself sitting in class, bored to tears while your professor explains to Arnold Athlete yet again that the French Revolution did not sing “1999,” pull out your cell phone and call your lawyer. The university’s athletic policies are denying you the right to the quality education that you and the federal student loan corporation are paying good money for.
Sue the university, sue the coach, sue the athletic director and definitely sue the stupid student. (Hey, he could have a lucrative shoe contract one day!) Ask a judge to explain why the students who want to learn should be punished to accommodate students who don’t.
Of course, any student who filed such a lawsuit would soon be beaten to a pulp, if not by the athletes themselves, then almost certainly by fellow students who dream of seeing their team in the Final Four. Chances are that anyone who takes on the current college athletics/entertainment axis is going to get slapped around.
Right, Lester?
March 1999
Before we consider the Clinton administration’s policies in Bosnia, a brief quiz:
A charismatic, rabidly partisan political leader sends his troops to round up citizens, members of an unpopular ethnic minority, and herd them by the thousands into camps. Their property is seized, and many are forced to flee to their homeland. Is it a war crime?
If so, the criminal is Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The people in the camps were all American citizens who happened to be of Japanese descent. The year was 1942.
“But Michael, that was war,” you say. To which I reply: Precisely. And during a war, one person’s ethnic cleansing is another person’s fight for democracy.
The issue is war. And the reason so many of us here in America are having trouble getting a handle on the Kosovo story is that we completely missed Chapter 1: “There Was This War . . .”
The things people do in wars are nasty, brutal and hideous to watch. For example, what would you say if I told you that in Vietnam, American soldiers shot hungry, nearly naked children, some as young as ten? Your reaction: “Those soldiers were animals! Lynch ’em!”
But what if I then told you that these same children were carrying grenades and were about to dump them into our soldiers’ laps? These soldiers are still child-killers. But are they still animals?
Let’s have another pop quiz: A nation elects a president who is wildly popular in the north but so unpopular in the south that, despite the fact that his election was completely legal, southern partisans decide that the only way to preserve their culture is to secede. The supporters of the president, mostly in the north, find the south’s way of life repugnant, and they also believe they have the right to uphold their democratic elections through force. When southerners begin shooting and announce their intentions to leave the republic, the north responds with violent, overwhelming force and preserves the union.
Who is right? If you sided with the north and its battle to save the republic, congratulations! You’ve just joined the Serbian army.
The north in this story is the Serbian majority in the northern portion of Yugoslavia. The south is the province of Kosovo, where the Kosovo Liberation Army (think the Confederate States of America converted to Islam) has been shooting police officers and duly appointed federal agents for years.
I’m not arguing that the Kosovo conflict is the American Civil War, or that we should never get involved in intranational conflicts, or any of the dozens of other legitimate arguments that could be made by legitimately concerned citizens regarding our policy of blowing up busloads of Slavic civilians.
I am making the much more modest and obvious observation that the constant propaganda coming out of the Clinton spin machine is just that—political pooge. It cannot be trusted.
Slobodan Milosevic is a pig, sure. But he is in a war, a war to capture territory. Unlike Saddam in Iraq, Slobo is fighting for territory within his nation’s own borders. He was elected, in fact, because of his pledge to forever keep Kosovo part of his republic, to defend this mythic, ancestral home of the Serbs.
Milosevic is fighting this war not against caravans of children, but against a real army—an army so real, in fact, that just last year our own U.S. State Department declared the KLA a terrorist organization. The KLA is well known for running drugs and using the profits from that and from prostitution to buy guns for their war for a “Greater Albania.”
So why are we so outraged when people get shot and territory gets taken during a war? Because it’s “ethnic cleansing”? May I remind you that American forces “cleansed” many an island in the Pacific of its Japanese populations not too long ago. By definition, taking territory in a war means getting rid of all the other people already there who want to keep it.
None of this is a defense of the Serbs. They are fighting a dirty, ugly war based on the notion that people should be grouped by their skin color and ethnicity. Unfortunately, they are being aided by the philosophies of our own Democratic National Committee—who also advocate group rights and overvalue the importance of race.
But the Serbs are fighting an enemy who feel the same way. It’s Greater Serbia versus Greater Albania in a final battle to the death . . . the same battle they fought in 1389.
And into this mess we wander, led by the most inept foreign-policy president since Jimmy Carter. We have chosen a side in this war, the terrorist KLA, and we are going to spend American lives and treasure to “liberate” Kosovo (or a big chunk of it, at least) from the popularly elected government of Yugoslavia and kill a few thousand Serb civilians along the way.
But keep in mind that the Albanians also claim parts of Greece, Montenegro and Macedonia, as well as Kosovo and southern Serbia. Now that President Clinton has made us their allies, what do we do when the KLA starts shooting cops in Athens? If the Greeks are smart enough not to shoot back, to just give in, to allow the ethnic Albanians in their country to secede, then I suppose we do nothing.
But if the Greeks defy the will of the American government, if they turn into “genocidal butchers” by actually defending their own territory, then we will be forced to bomb them into the Stone Age, too.
Alas, that is the price of American leadership, Clinton-style: lots of dead foreigners.
March 1999
Defenders of the president note that Broaddrick attended a political fund-raiser for Mr. Clinton just three months after the alleged rape.
—Associated Press, 1999
Too often, targets of harassment are forced to defend their behavior. Instead of talking about what she did, what she wore, what she said, did she complain . . . we need to talk about why he abused the power that he had in this situation.
—Anita Hill, 1992
Maybe Toni Morrison is right. Maybe Bill Clinton is America’s first black president.
Since February 1998, our commander in chief has been known in these pages as “President O.J.” because we all knew what he did; we just wanted to see if he would get away with it.
And as Johnnie Cochran might say, “When the Senate acquitted, the name fitted.”
Now that the president has been accused of raping a former friend and political supporter, the Clintonistas want to transform him from the O.J. of American politics into an updated version of America’s second most resonant black political icon of the 1990s: Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas.
It’s not quite a perfect fit, but it’s close.
While both Clinton and Thomas grew up in poor, troubled families in the South, the similarities that leap out at me are largely political. Clarence Thomas was a weak candidate for the Supreme Court who was selected solely because George Bush needed a black nominee to replace Thurgood Marshall and Thomas was his best shot at winning a Senate confirmation.
Bill Clinton—an unimpressive governor of a small state, a draft dodger with no foreign-policy experience—was a weak candidate for president, but his party needed a nonliberal nominee who wouldn’t scare away every white male voter in the United States. The left reluctantly accepted Bill Clinton as their best chance to win the White House.
Interestingly, they both survived scandals thanks to the weaknesses of their opponents and the unashamed partisanship of their supporters. Republicans such as Arlen Specter and Orrin Hatch took on Anita Hill, and while it wasn’t pretty, they did convince 50 percent of American women that her story wasn’t credible. Likewise, President Clinton’s partisans happily trashed the reputations of Jones, Willey, Flowers, Lewinsky et alia, to great effect.
In the end, one-third of the American people—mostly white women—loathed Clarence Thomas, but the Senate ducked its head and gave Judge Thomas the votes he needed. Less than a decade later, with one-third of America—mostly white men—screaming for his head, President Clinton was acquitted by many of those same senators.
And there is one other similarity between Clinton and Thomas that cannot be ignored: They were both lying.
Clarence Thomas almost certainly did some of the things Anita Hill charged him with. Then again, in the Clinton era, the charges now seem almost quaint: He hit on her at work, talked dirty, made a few off-color wisecracks. It’s hard to believe that, way back in 1990, such behavior would put a man’s job at risk.
In Clinton’s America, Clarence Thomas’ once-reprehensible behavior now represents the height of sexual propriety.
But Thomas (“I was a sexual harasser when harassin’ wasn’t cool”) denied every single charge: no pubic hair, no Long Dong Silver, no penile conversations. It was all part of the high-tech lynchin’.
And it is at this point that the similarities abruptly end. For polling at the time showed that most Americans believed Clarence Thomas, while virtually no one today believes Bill Clinton.
President Clinton is the only public person in America whose denial of a crime is viewed as a confession. “Any allegation that the president assaulted Ms. Broaddrick more than twenty years ago is absolutely false,” David Kendall, Clinton’s attorney, said in a statement. And America hears, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman.”
During his Senate confirmation hearings, seventeen women who worked with Thomas appeared at a Capitol Hill news conference in a show of support for their former colleague. Nine took the microphone to say they had never seen any improper behavior on Judge Thomas’ part nor heard rumors of it. Not only have President Clinton’s feminist allies been hiding under their beds as the Broaddrick story unfolds, but there probably aren’t nine women in the entire country who would claim they did not know of any improper behavior by our pants-free president.
Thus the key difference between President Clinton and Clarence Thomas is not the nature of their accusers but the nature of the accused. There was a perception, due in part to the presence of her liberal handlers, that Anita Hill might be lying to promote a partisan, political cause.
In the case of Bill Clinton, we have the reverse. Americans fear that his accusers, in pursuit of a partisan, political cause, might actually be telling the truth.
In honor of her largely uncorroborated, unproven accusations against a conservative Supreme Court nominee, Anita Hill was named “our Supreme Court justice” by Gloria Steinem. In honor of her corroborated, credible accusation of rape against the president of the United States, Juanita Broaddrick has been ignored by Gloria Steinem, Patricia Ireland and every other feminist/liberal leader in America.
What does this prove? That liberal supporters of the president are just as interested in justice today as they were when they called for Judge Thomas’ rejection in 1990.
The similarities really are amazing.
April 1999
Well, whaddaya know: Someone else finds President Clinton contemptible.
I cannot think of a better phrase to be forever linked to the Clinton presidency than the words “found in contempt,” although “semen-stained” runs a close second.
Only this is not just a matter of opinion. This is now a matter of law.
In February, the Clinton administration earned the distinction of being the first to have two of its cabinet officials cited for contempt of court at the same time. Interior secretary Bruce Babbitt and Treasury secretary Robert Rubin were slapped with contempt citations for repeatedly failing to hand over documents related to trust funds.
At one point, a Clinton administration attorney said the reason these likely embarrassing documents couldn’t be delivered was because they were stored in warehouses “infested with dangerous rodent droppings.”
Dateline Washington: “Rats Bring American Justice System to Standstill!” Yep, that’s the Clintons, all right.
Speaking of rats, Susan McDougal also got out of her cage this week after spending two years in prison, in part for her dealings in the droppings-infested Arkansas banking system. Previously convicted of bank fraud, McDougal was acquitted of charges that she obstructed justice by refusing to testify whether or not the Clintons knew about her scams.
On the issue of contempt, the jury deadlocked, so McDougal is now free to appear five nights a week on Larry King Live and spew her semiliterate brand of paranoia and self-pity . . . and without an armed escort.
But there is one last tale to tell: In her trial, prosecutors showed McDougal a check for $5,081.82 with a note in her handwriting that read “Payoff Clinton.” This is a problem, since a payoff from Whitewater to Bill Clinton would be direct evidence of his involvement in the fraud. After foaming at the mouth and calling Ken Starr a minion of Satan, Susan McDougal explained that this check was not a payoff, no, no, no. It was part of a completely unrelated land transaction in the town of Clinton, Arkansas.
Oh, okay: Then what about the list of loans noting a person named “B. Clinton” and a sheet of interest calculations totaling up to the amount of—you guessed it—$5,081.82?
This testimony, disregarded by a Little Rock jury that is itself under investigation, resonates with contempt: contempt for the truth, contempt for the facts, contempt for the law.
Contempt has become one truly distinguishing characteristic, as Paula Jones might say, of the Clinton era.
How appropriate, then, for the most self-righteous of politicians, the former law school professor himself, to be found in contempt by a federal judge. Judge Susan Webber Wright is from Arkansas; she knows the Clintons personally and is hardly a right-wing ideologue. How does she describe the president’s behavior?
“Given the president’s admission that he was misleading . . . and the clarity with which his falsehoods are revealed by record, there is no need to engage in extended analysis. Simply put, the president’s testimony was intentionally false.”
From a contempt standpoint, this is key. Remember that the president, his defenders and every lamebrain on CNN argued tirelessly that the president wasn’t lying when he denied having sex with Monica and said he was never alone with her. He might have been misleading, but he did not intend to testify falsely.
To which Judge Wright responded, in the arcane, technical language of the law, “Yank, yank.”
She notes in her order, “It appears that the president is asserting that Ms. Lewinsky could have been having sex with him while, at the same time, he was not having sex with her.” Her head-shaking astonishment is the rational reaction to such an assertion. And yet the president gave us this nonsense for a year, aided and abetted by Lanny Davis et alia, and a majority of right-thinking reporters happily accepted it.
This is the core of the contempt. The insult is not found in the act of serving us citizens this drivel day after day, but in the expectation that we will eat it.
Day after day, the White House sends out trays of indigestible nonsense: “We knew when we declared war the Serbs would kill all the Albanians. . . . Why, we planned it that way!” or “Why would anyone tell me I was having coffee with a Communist Chinese agent? I’m just the president!”
The Clintonistas contemptuously offer it to us as though we will accept it, as though we are so blind, so stupid, so forgetful that we will believe anything.
And that’s when their poll numbers go up.
The only president in history to be cited for contempt, the only president who has been the subject of a credible charge of rape, the only president who we know has sexually harassed and shamelessly groped subordinate employees in the White House, the only president to have subpoenaed documents appear in his bedroom, to have built campaign databases out of his enemies’ FBI files, to have changed public policy in a manner that allowed our enemies to arm themselves with nuclear weapons, to have taken millions of dollars from that same enemy to fund his campaign—this is the president who today has the highest poll numbers in the history of a second-term president.
Contempt? You bet.
And if Bill Clinton feels contempt for the American people today, looking down upon us from atop his record-high poll numbers and record-low personal integrity, I’m certain it’s for the same reason I do: We’ve earned it.
June 1999
The text of a handwritten note dated May 5 of this year:
Dear Susie,
I like you. Do you like me?
Please check one:
___ Yes ___ No ___ Mabee
Love (?), Johnny.
PS—I think you are the prettyist girl in the whole 4th grade!
The text of a letter dated June 15, 1999, from the offices of Cochran, Dershowitz and Hyatt, attorneys at law, to John B. “Johnny” Smith Jr.
Dear Mr. Smith
Pursuant to Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972, as interpreted by the Supreme Court of the United States, John B. “Johnny” Smith Jr. (henceforth referred to as “Defendant”) is hereby ordered and remanded to cease and desist all communications, conversations and interactions with Susan B. Anthony “Susie” Johnson (henceforth referred as “Plaintiff”) until a thorough and complete investigation of the incident of alleged sexual harassment has been concluded.
Further note that Defendant is hereby under order not to destroy or tamper with any evidence which might be a relevant part of the investigation into your alleged actionable behavior. This covers all written correspondence, including (but not limited to):
Love notes, book covers, tree-trunk carvings, bathroom graffiti (specifically those containing crude references rhyming with France); all notations in any form you have made using the heart symbol as a verb.
Defendant is also prohibited from discussing this matter further with classmates who may be called upon as witnesses. Any actions which may be viewed as attempts to modify or amend a classmate’s truthful testimony—such as offers of Pokémon toys or Star Wars: Episode One collectibles—will be viewed as obstructing justice and could be punishable under the law.
Further, it is our duty to advise Defendant of the gravity of the charges which have been brought. Defendant’s alleged behavior, if true, is in clear violation of Plaintiff’s rights to a quality education, unencumbered by the oppressive atmosphere of sexual intimidation which Defendant created at Derwin L. Davis Elementary School.
While we are not seeking damages against the Defendant’s family (we have completed our review of your father’s tax returns through 1994), the $500,000,000 lawsuit we have filed against Defendant’s school district is a direct result of Defendant’s alleged behavior. We believe that the court will find that it is the duty of our public schools to protect young women such as Ms. Johnson from sexual predators such as the Defendant.
We have read the testimony of your teacher, Ms. Brown, who claims that she was unaware of Defendant’s behavior on the date alleged because, in her words, “I was too busy trying to teach these brats how to read to keep track of who was passing love notes.” We find her comments, as well as Defendant’s apparent lack of remorse, disturbing. We believe they indicate that Derwin L. Davis Elementary School is permeated with an atmosphere conducive to discrimination and harassment.
We would furthermore like to note for the record a preponderance of evidence that Defendant, joined by other students, engaged in discriminatory activity both on a regular basis and without interference from the school administration, including:
- Games of kickball and tag that excluded female classmates
- False claims against female classmates that they were contaminated with a deadly contagious virus (“cooties”) allegedly spread by casual contact
- Declaring the area within and immediately surrounding the monkey bars as a boys-only clubhouse, and prohibiting female classmates from entering, a clear violation of the U.S. Constitution (see U.S. v. Rotary)
In short, we find repeated incidents of harassment and discrimination by the Defendant that are actionable under the recent rulings by the Supreme Court. On behalf of our plaintiff, it is our duty to find those responsible for these actions so that they may suffer the consequences.
We pursue this duty in defense not just of the Constitution but also of the principles of individual freedom and our right to a one-third contingency fee. We are absolutely confident that the negligible fiscal damage done to the school system by this lawsuit will be far outweighed by the benefit to students such as Ms. Johnson, who are struggling each day in a environment that denies them the ability to learn.
It is our hope that you will comply with the spirit and letter of this order.
Sincerely,
Cochran, Dershowitz and Hyatt
P.S. We have also received reports that Defendant might know the identity of the student(s) who publicly accused you and Ms. Johnson of “sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G.” You are therefore notified that you may be called as a witness in this case as well. Because you are white and Ms. Johnson is African American, we are urging the federal judge to classify this case as a hate crime under appropriate state statutes.
Thank you for your prompt attention.
July 1999
The sudden, tragic death of John F. Kennedy Jr. is a true mathematical anomaly: Of all the Kennedys out there whose deaths would be a net plus for our republic, how did the grim reaper manage to snag the one decent apple in the barrel?
When I heard about JFK Jr.’s death, my first thought was “And that bastard uncle of his has a liver the size of a portable ice chest, but he’s gonna live to be a hundred!” John-John’s death added yet another piece to the growing evidence that Billy Joel was right: Only the good die young.
I am genuinely sorry that JFK Jr. is dead. I was never a Kennedy groupie, but I was a George subscriber, and I had a casual admiration for a man who, though he could have turned his name and legacy of family tragedy into an easy ride for himself, instead chose to work as a prosecutor and publisher.
JFK Jr. hardly seemed aware that he was a Kennedy, and for that reason I was willing to forgive him for being one.
And it is an act of forgiveness. For despite all the talk about haunted families and frequent tragedy, it is not merely a curse to be a Kennedy. It is a genuine shame.
If there ever was a Kennedy curse, it was on the previous generation—JFK, RFK and Joe junior. When these three brothers, each endowed with great potential and ambition, died in service to their country (one at war, two by assassination), the generation of Americans who grew up with them was right to wonder why their best and brightest fell.
But not my generation.
JFK was killed before my first birthday. I have no recollection of his brother Bobby. In fact, the first time I can recall hearing the word Kennedy was as a young boy watching the first moon landing on my grandmother’s black-and-white TV in Conway, South Carolina. There was another news story that day about some guy named Teddy who had drowned his girlfriend while driving back from a party. The grown-ups watching the news with me were quick to point out that this Teddy guy was both drunk and married at the time.
For the rest of my lifetime, it seemed, when they weren’t killing themselves by shooting up heroin or slamming into trees playing ski-slope football, the Kennedys spent their spare time hitting on waitresses and playing Spin the Bottle with underage baby-sitters.
The current generation of Kennedys aren’t our nation’s princes. They are our punch lines.
This is hard for geezers such as Dan Rather to understand. For people over fifty, those who experienced Camelot, the Kennedy name still has some allure, some magic. The initials JFK conjure images of glamour, of grace, of America’s greatness.
But the Kennedys I grew up with aren’t the Kennedys of Camelot. They’re the Kennedys of Chappaquiddick. For my generation, the primary television image of a Kennedy isn’t John-John saluting his father’s coffin but the hilarious Saturday Night Live sketches mocking “America’s royalty” in all their drunken, skirt-chasing, airheaded glory.
These are the Kennedys of today. Their politics are so out of date they seem lifted from one of the Back to the Future sequels. Their behavior is so self-destructive, every Kennedy male ought to be born with a warning label. Unlike the tragedies of the previous generation, these Kennedys are comic victims of their own weakness, irresponsibility and stupidity.
The sad victims in these Kennedy tragedies aren’t great men brought low, but forgotten women undone: wives whose entire lives have been nullified by the Catholic Church, baby-sitters whose families are reluctant to bring charges, a young woman at the bottom of a lake whose death was not reported to authorities until after the politics were worked out.
And yet out of this generation rose John junior. Handsome, bright, ambitious—we’d seen that before. But also relaxed, modest, untouched by the notion that America owed him its worship, dismissive of the idea that his family greatness overrode personal responsibility.
The talking heads (led, I am sorry to say, by my fellow conservatives) are pounding away at the “recklessness” of this inexperienced pilot flying into a dark and stormy night. They may be right, though I’ve talked to several pilots who agree that it was a close judgment call, one they had made before.
Regardless, I don’t see any arrogance or outrageous behavior in Kennedy’s decision to fly. No, the arrogance and outrageousness are coming from the media, as Rather, Brokaw et alia struggle to revive the Kennedy family’s hard-lost mystique using the loss of the son who had worked so hard to rise above his own name.
And talk about piling on: The media coverage of JFK Jr.’s death is filled with stories comparing him to Princess Di—the People’s Princess meets the American Prince. What an absolute insult to everything young JFK Jr. accomplished in his adult life.
To the tabloid American, John-John and Lady Di were two peas in a pod: attractive, wealthy and famous. How each of them got there is meaningless to the great unwashed who tuck them under their arm at the Food Lion counter each week and carry them back to their respective trailer parks.
But to lump JFK Jr. with Diana is as unfair as lumping him in with his own family.
Princess Di was a nobody who did nothing, a woman who found fame between the sheets of the men she slept with and who used her fame to slip into the next awaiting bed. She was all fame and no glory.
Meanwhile, John junior spent years working to achieve something of his own, something greater than the easy accomplishments that came from his unearned fame. He didn’t hide from his father’s name, but it wasn’t his entire resume, either. He largely avoided the frivolous trappings of his fame, laughed at the undeserved acclaim and tried to build a real, resonant, grown-up life of his own.
But he could not escape his legacy, not even in death. Thanks to our celebrity culture and People magazine mores, JFK Jr.’s accomplished life will soon be forgotten. Instead, John F. Kennedy Jr. will forever be linked to a horse-faced floozy from Buckingham Palace.
Now that’s what I call a curse.
May 1999
We’re not racists. We’re snobs.
—Theresa Shackelford, lineal descendant of Thomas Jefferson and member of the Monticello Association
When Theresa Shackelford publicly opposed allowing the unconfirmed descendants of Thomas Jefferson to join the elite Monticello Association, she reminded us all of the joy of discrimination.
As a tireless advocate of discrimination, I find myself constantly defending both the right and the need to discriminate, to discern differences, to sort people by their abilities and traits.
Note I said “sort people” and not “sort peoples.” This group sorting, advocated by both David Duke and the Democratic Party, is what people generally confuse with discrimination. The two are not related in the least.
Racism is snobbery for stupid people. Trailer-park residents need someone to look down on, too, and racism allows those at the bottom of the social ladder to tell themselves, “I may be fat, stupid and poor, but at least I ain’t no darkie!”
Unlike racism, which is anti-intellectual and involves self-delusion (i.e., the delusion that by demeaning others, you are somehow less of a loser), discrimination is dependent upon reason and self-knowledge. Discrimination is the ability to discern the differences between two people who look the same but whose behavior or abilities make them very different.
This is the style of discrimination practiced by Mother Nature herself.
After all, what is natural selection other than discrimination at the biological level? Was it fair that nature discriminated in favor of longer-necked giraffes or against pea-brained simians? And while leopards don’t chase gazelles out of any anti-gazelle bigotry, the food chain does discriminate mightily against the slow of hoof. We can have all the plant-eater encounter groups we want, we can try our best to build gazelle self-esteem, but the truth of the matter will never change: The slow ones get eaten and the fast ones don’t.
This immutable truth of nature is currently creating a headache for Habitat for Humanity up in Charlotte, North Carolina. Habitat for Humanity is in the business of giving people homes, virtually for free. But in Charlotte, Habitat clients are in the process of losing their homes and returning to the streets. How, you may ask, do you get your home taken from you when it cost next to nothing and you are paying 0 percent interest?
By going down to the local bank and taking out two, three or four mortgages on your new digs and then blowing the cash on liquor and high living. One charity case, Julia Ann Addison, nearly lost her home after refinancing her $32,400 mortgage three times in eight months, sending her payments from $180 to $660 a month.
“This is not what I envisioned,” said Addison, a single mother of three who openly admits her irresponsibility. Don’t worry, Julia Ann. Neither did the liberals who bought you your house.
It’s not easy staying poor amid the current economic boom rocking America. You have to work at it. The job market is so hot right now that there are anecdotal reports of American high school graduates getting jobs that don’t involve a drive-through window.
The dedicated poor, therefore, must repeatedly make stupid decisions in order to avoid prosperity. Otherwise, the trillions of dollars we’ve spent on social programs, combined with the red-hot economy lifting all boats, will drag these unfortunates into the mainstream against their will.
In 1995, there were 50,035 South Carolina families receiving cash assistance. As of April 1999, that number was 17,152. By definition, this remaining group is largely made up of incompetent clods actively clinging to poverty in the midst of plenty.
Well, what do you think happens when you indiscriminately give one of these morons a house? Do you think their lifetime of stupidity and irresponsibility is suddenly overcome by Ozzie and Harriet sensibilities?
Of course not! Instead, these geniuses start asking, “How many lottery tickets will you trade me for this three-bedroom ranch?”
Ah, but this is America, and so the rash of high-interest-rate refinancing among the Habitat dwellers is being blamed not on the hapless homeowners, but on the evil mortgage companies. Local liberals are complaining that these businesses “take advantage of desperate or naive homeowners.” These lenders are essentially making immoral loans, they argue, and they should stop.
Only one problem: Anti-discrimination (note that word) laws prevent banks from denying loans to anyone who qualifies for them. If a poor person living in a Habitat-built home were ever denied a mortgage for which he or she qualified, the bank would be prosecuted for violating equal-lending laws—prosecuted by the same lefty activists complaining about these loans.
Because we refuse to discriminate between the able and the incompetent, we’ve now made it possible for said incompetents to screw up their lives at a whole new level. I have no doubt that a few months from now, when these Habitat clients are both homeless and bankrupt, they’ll thank us.
It is the inherent promise of Clintonism that more egalitarianism is on the way. One wonders if America’s victims of nondiscrimination will be able to survive it.
September 1999
They want to make sure that there are no more Jews!
—Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League
I cannot recall the exact chapter and verse, but I would urge my Southern Baptist friends to heed this bit of gospel truth: No good deed goes unpunished.
The Southern Baptist International Mission Board has published and distributed a prayer guide for the month of September directing the faithful to pray for Jews. The guide goes on to explain the Jewish high holy days and give flattering portrayals of Jewish life around the world.
It sounds like the kind of innocuous Weekly Reader religiosity typical of our multicultural climate and which normally would pass unnoticed. The problem: The Christians are praying for the Jews to convert.
And that ain’t kosher.
At least not according to Mark Briskman, Southwest regional director for the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith: “We find this offensive. It shows an element of arrogance because they are specifically targeting Jews during this holy season.”
Setting aside the propriety of Christians praying for Jewish salvation on the eve of Yom Kippur, I am still trying to figure out why Jews would be insulted by having someone pray that they go to heaven . . . which is, after all, the purpose of the Baptists’ exercise.
I don’t want to shock any non-Gentile readers, but Christian theology condemns you (along with every Hindu, Muslim and liberal Democrat) to burn forever in a lake of fire. From this viewpoint, Jesus’ admonition that “no one comes to the Father but by me” left little room for negotiation. President Clinton himself would be hard pressed to wiggle his way out of this one.
So I was taken aback when Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, appeared on CBS This Morning shaking with righteous anger about the anti-Semitism he saw hidden in the Southern Baptists’ agenda.
“They want to wipe us out through conversion,” he railed. “They want to make sure there are no more Jews!”
Well, duh. Setting aside the oddball Jews for Jesus organization (next: Hindus for Hamburgers), the central tenet of Christianity is that everyone ought to become a Christian, just as Islam preaches the conversion of all infidels to the true religion of Mohammed.
Does this mean that Muslims want to destroy the Jewish race? Wait, let me rephrase the question.
Does evangelism equal anti-Semitism? I think not, and Foxman’s own words revealed it. Part of his anti-Baptist ravings included reference to the fact that in the past, “Christians viewed Jews as not worthy of salvation.”
Exactly, Mr. Foxman. If a Baptist missionary was knocking on doors in your neighborhood but decided to skip your house when he heard the strains of “Hava Nagila” wafting from the music room, that would be anti-Semitic. But attempting to share with you the gift of salvation—which Baptists and other evangelicals consider a duty—is the most embracing action a Christian can take.
Some Jews have complained that Christian theology itself is intolerant, that a religion teaching that everyone else is eternally damned is inherently hateful. Indeed, George W. Bush got clobbered with this not long ago, when a reporter asked him about his belief that “heaven is open only to those who accept Jesus Christ.”
George W., being a politician of at least middling talents, backed away. “It is not the governor’s role to decide who goes to heaven. I believe that God decides who goes to heaven, not George W. Bush.”
But as Michael Kinsley of Slate magazine has pointed out, this is nonsense. If salvation is not mandatory, then George W.’s theology is meaningless. If Christ truly is the answer, then everyone who misses that question on the Big Final will spend eternity in a very warm detention hall, and George W. knows it.
So is it intolerant for a Christian to believe in Christianity? That is the question angry Jews are really pressing. Many Jews believe in God but do not believe in heaven. A few believe in a heaven and a hell, and some hard-line Jews believe that Gentiles have no soul at all.
According to at least a billion people of faith on this planet, every Christian is doomed. And there are about a billion Christians who feel the same way about their fellow earthlings. Would this world be a better place if these two groups stopped praying for each other’s immortal souls?
Perhaps it offends you to have people of other faiths keeping you in their prayers. But as my Jewish mother (deep down, aren’t all mothers Jewish?) might say, “What can it hurt?”
November 1999
It’s his home state, he’ll have to come.
—Charleston, South Carolina’s Elder James Johnson, on the Reverend Jesse Jackson
For the Reverend Jesse Jackson, it’s a role straight from central casting:
A violent mob attacks two defenseless men as they bicycle down a dark road on the wrong side of town. The two are brutally beaten, one of them—thirty-five-year-old Troy Knapp—with a lead pipe, leaving him in a coma. When the suspects are arrested, they claim their motive was robbery. The mob took two bicycles and insists that the color of their victims played no role in their decision to attack. But the racial makeup of the mob indicates the victims were guilty of that classic southern offense, “wrong place, wrong color.”
A local church leader, Elder Johnson, has contacted the ACLU and other civil rights organizations with complaints of police improprieties in the case. He has also called on the Reverend Jackson to come back home to South Carolina and intervene.
But so far, no Jesse Jackson. Sixteen assailants charged with lynching, two men clubbed for the color of their skin, all back in Jackson’s home state. Reverend Jesse Jackson, where are you?
Oh—did I mention the victims were white? And their attackers were black?
And in one sentence, the mystery is solved. The media mob camped out in Jasper, Texas, and who followed the Reverend Jackson to Decatur, Illinois, won’t be headed to South Carolina.
The central problem with the Troy Knapp story is that the casting is all wrong. Ask The New York Times or CBS or any of the media outlets covering the Reverend Jackson’s struggle for the Decatur Six, and they’ll tell you the same thing: Sorry, Troy—wrong color.
Imagine for a moment that the mob attacking Troy had been lily white—say, a roving band of Southern Baptists or Citadel cadets or delegates to the GOP national convention. And imagine that Troy had been anything other than a white heterosexual male. Care to guess how many hotel rooms it would take to accommodate the TV crews swarming into Charleston for that story?
Now, Decatur—that’s real news. White school board (well, 5–2, anyway) expels black students. Here’s a story CNN can really work. Okay, so three of the black “students” are third-year freshmen who had missed 350 days of school between them, and yes, they did beat the bejesus out of a bunch of bystanders at a football game, but still . . . they’re black. Get it? Fight the power, take on the Man, and roll tape, baby! I smell Pulitzer!
So does the Reverend Jackson, who got himself arrested to demonstrate his belief that these violent teenagers should once again roam the halls of the same school they were flunking out of a few weeks earlier. As a cause célèbre, these thugs may not seem like much, but the Reverend Jackson’s keen sense of news judgment told him that if he milked it, they (the networks) would come.
Not so for poor Troy Knapp. Black mob, white victim, blue collar—somehow it’s too, oh, I don’t know, Rush Limbaugh for the American media.
The fact that this particular assault has not been declared a hate crime also blows the script. How is the Reverend Jackson supposed to explain that the three white cretins in Jasper, Texas, were racially motivated, but the violent mob of black bicycle thieves wasn’t?
No, there is no leading-man role in this story for the talented Jackson. However, Elder Johnson continues to hope that the good reverend might make a cameo appearance on the side of justice.
Oh, no, not on behalf of Troy Knapp. For the mob that bludgeoned him. The local minister is protesting the treatment of the assailants!
And, unsurprisingly, Elder Johnson assumes that Jesse Jackson will be on their side. After all, if the Reverend Jackson will take to the streets for the Decatur Six, whose criminal behavior was broadcast on national television, why wouldn’t he champion the North Charleston Sixteen, who had the foresight not to jump Troy Knapp in full view of a minicam? Aren’t our local criminal losers just as good as that gang up in Illinois?
Sorry, Elder Johnson, but Jesse Jackson won’t answer this casting call. This is a case of been there, done that—and not very well.
The reviews of the Reverend Jackson’s performance in Decatur have not been strong (“Has Jackson simply lost his mind?”—Boston Herald), and the box office was hardly boffo. Jackson had to bus in protesters from St. Louis and Chicago to get a crowd.
Worse, the still-untold tale of Troy Knapp and the North Charleston Sixteen highlights the blatant racism that motivates the Reverend Jackson’s character. In Decatur, he tried (unconvincingly) to play a complex figure who was looking beyond race and at the larger issue of zero-tolerance policies as a whole.
But what larger issue could the Reverend Jackson address by coming to South Carolina in defense of a racially motivated mob, even a black one? What story could he sell here—that as long as the Confederate flag flies on the state house, blacks are entitled to lynch a few crackers?
No, no, no. I suspect that when the Reverend Jackson is presented with this story of racial injustice, he will take his own advice and “run, Jesse, run!”
Unfortunately for Troy Knapp—and the cause of justice—the media will be right behind him.
August 1999
Is George W.’s handling of the cocaine question Clintonesque?
While no Democrats are (quite) dumb enough to use this adjective, it is clearly what the White House lackeys have in mind as they push the cocaine controversy in the media. The Democrats are reading the same polls that I am, which show the Republicans with a whopping 40 percent lead over the Democrats on the question “Which party can best protect the dignity of the presidency?”
President Clinton, whose white-trash mores and low-rent lasciviousness could undermine the dignity of an illegal cockfight, has demolished any hope that his party’s nominee can be the standard-bearer for individual responsibility. As a result, the Democrats can only hope to even the score, to scorch the Republicans’ earth along with their own, to turn the 2000 presidential election into a choice between two evils.
Watching the same TV talking heads who defended President Clinton down to his last cigar suddenly say, “Hey, wait a minute! Character does count!” is hilarious but not particularly helpful. Their arguments indirectly comparing Bush to Clinton, which no journalist ever challenges, are pure nonsense.
And what has happened to the work ethic of the American media? Remember the good old days, when reporters actually used to report? The deal was that the reporters would track down the hotel receipts and the envelope full of incriminating photos, print them on the front page of the tabloid, and then the candidate would break down at the press conference and announce that he was, in fact, in love with the llama and hoped his family would forgive him.
That’s how it used to work: Reporters found out what really happened, and politicians tried to prove that it really didn’t.
This has all disappeared in the press coverage of the Bush/cocaine question. Using the new Bush standard, there’s no reason to do investigating. You simply ask a series of hypothetical questions, completely unsubstantiated by any facts or reportage, until you find one the candidate won’t answer. Then you yell and scream until he does.
Edward R. Murrow would be proud.
So is George W. the ethical equivalent of Bill C.? Let’s start with the most obvious difference between the two men, their accusers. In GWB’s case, there are none.
Making unfounded allegations against your opponent to tie him up while you pick his electoral pocket is a well-worn and time-tested strategy in politics. The Clinton White House has played this game exceptionally well, but even for them the attack on George W. is a stretch, because there is no actual accusation.
No one (as of this writing) has ever said, “I did drugs with George,” or “George used to toke up in his dorm room,” or “My God, he used to come to class with enough powder under his nose to start a ski lodge!” Not a single, solitary allegation of cocaine use by GWB has been made. Forget guilty until proven innocent; W. hasn’t even been charged.
Instead, the media are determined that he is going to convict himself by answering the question “Have you now, or have you ever been, a regular listener to the Grateful Dead?”
Now compare W.’s list of accusers (nonexistent) to President Clinton’s: Juanita Broaddrick, Kathleen Willey, Paula Jones, Gennifer Flowers, Monica Lewinsky, Judge Susan Webber Wright, James McDougal, a dozen Arkansas state troopers, the entire Razorbacks cheerleading squad of 1990, et cetera, et cetera.
Get the point?
Thus far the Democrats have attempted to skip the there-is-substantial-evidence-of-wrongdoing part (with the media’s help, of course) and jump straight into the well-why-not-just-answer-the-question stage. They are aided in this cause by W.’s opponents in the GOP primary, who are desperate to slow down the Bush bandwagon.
Gary Bauer, an awful little rat-faced git who has delusions of becoming the Republican nominee for president (or reliving the Spanish Inquisition—no one’s really quite sure) has insisted that every candidate should answer any question regarding a felony.
Once again, journalism and due process are thrown out the window. Just sit down your candidate, get out your book of federal statutes and start on page one: “Have you ever . . . ?”
“We ought to be able to say, with no hesitation, that no, we have not broken the drug laws of the United States,” says Bauer. Then again, Bill Clinton used exactly that same phrase in 1992, and we later found out he was sucking a British bong in college—thus the word Clintonesque.
If in 1992 Bill Clinton had said, “None of your damn business,” or “I made mistakes in my youth that I don’t care to repeat,” that would have been (for lack of a better term) Bushesque. George W.’s answer to the drug question, which is designed to deflect, is very different from the president’s, which, until he was caught, was designed to deceive.
In fact, George W.’s entire campaign thus far has been wildly different from the presidency of William Jefferson “O.J.” Clinton, and the “cocaine problem” is likely to highlight the gulf between the character of the two.
Will George W. be able to avoid the label Clintonesque?
By a nose.
February 2000
Bush is betting his ranch on a strategy of jihad [holy war]. Some of the telephone attacks are savage, portraying McCain as a hypocritical, temperamental insider who is soft on abortion, partial to Las Vegas gambling interests, in thrall to Big Labor and who has a budget plan that would cut donations to the nation’s churches. “It’s not pretty, but it’s going to work,” vowed one of Bush’s top advisers.
—Newsweek, February 2000
If you’re a Republican who would like to be president of the United States, I have this piece of advice about the South Carolina Republican primary: Lose it.
Mock me if you will, but the elder George Bush ignored me in 1992, as did Bob Dole four years ago, and you see where it got them: doing charity work and hawking Viagra. And this week, George W. Bush will make the same politically fatal mistake. He will win the battle for South Carolina and lose the war for the White House.
Yes, I am predicting a win for Governor Bush this Saturday in South Carolina, and since I’m already taking a ridiculously foolish risk (as I write, the election is five days away and the polls are too close to call), I’ll go ahead and pick the spread, too: Bush by six. Or more. George W. is going to win because of his relentless, well-funded and effective attacks against the character and candidacy of John McCain. The Bushies have bought up every available minute of TV time in the state, they are bombarding local radio listeners with anti-McCain messages, and their paid phone banks are jamming the lines of wavering Republicans with comments about the Arizona senator that sound as though they came from dialing 976-DIRT.
By driving down voter turnout and raising suspicions about a candidate who is already a bad fit for South Carolina Republicans, George W.’s go-negative strategy will give the governor an ugly win. What remains to be seen is whether or not this win will be so ugly that it keeps Bush from ever getting another date.
This has always been the problem with allowing South Carolina to play such a prominent role in the presidential nominating process. The things you have to do to win in this state doom you to defeat in the other forty-nine.
Right now, for example, Governor Bush is running a barrage of ads and phone calls branding John McCain “soft on abortion.” McCain’s pro-life voting record is the same as that of the infamous liberal Strom Thurmond. He wants to overturn Roe v. Wade, he wants abortion to be illegal in every state, but he wants to add an exception for cases of rape, incest and when the mother’s life is at stake. And George W. thinks that’s soft?
In the small, bizarre world of South Carolina politics, John McCain’s a liberal. In the rest of America, he’s a pro-life extremist.
George W. is also attacking John McCain for being anti-tobacco, for backing campaign finance reform, even for encouraging independents and conservative Democrats to vote. In other words, the Bush argument is: “John McCain is an anti-tobacco political reformer whose position on abortion is the same as 80 percent of all Americans and who is popular with swing voters. We can’t nominate him!”
Meanwhile, here is George W.’s list entitled “Things to Do to Win S.C. Primary”:
Now, if you’re running for president of the Independent Republic of South Carolina, that is, no doubt, a winning strategy. But outside the Confederate State of America . . .
In two short weeks, George W. Bush has managed to transform himself from a moderate-conservative GOP leader who would expand the reach of his party into the candidate of Bob Jones, Arthur Ravenel and Pat Robertson.
The thinking at Bush HQ is that beating John McCain this Saturday will knock the senator out of the race and allow Governor Bush to move back to the center. But this is shortsighted, because everything Bush has done has been captured on tape. It is a short-term strategy filled with long-term headaches.
Ask yourself: How many Catholics are there in swing states such as Michigan and Illinois? How many moderate women in states such as California and New York? How many rational human beings are there across the country, all of whom see Pat Robertson as the fringe loon played so well by Al Franken on Saturday Night Live?
Sure, in South Carolina, Bob Jones University is so mainstream that even the state’s leading political reporter (Lee Bandy of The State) is a graduate. But in a one-hour interview, Tim Russert asked George W. at least five different questions about BJU and the bizarre theology it represents to people in mainstream America.
Which brings us to November and Al Gore. Al Gore may not have invented the Internet, he may not be the star of Love Story, he may even have a bladder control problem that keeps him out of important White House meetings.
But he ain’t stupid.
All the videotape taken from South Carolina, all the strident right-wing mail, the negative phone scripts, the resumes of the campaign supporters from our state—everything George Bush has used to win this race—will be used against him in the fall. It’s all sitting at Gore headquarters right now, waiting for Jim Carville to pick through it.
So to the Bushies, on the eve of a South Carolina victory, I say: I hope you’ve got a lot of fond memories from here in Bush country, because you’ll be reliving them again this November—in Michigan, in California, in Ohio and in living rooms all across the U.S. of A.
February 2000
Y’all go ahead and have your heart attack or stroke now. Have a good day.
—Louisiana sheriff’s deputy Bryan McClendon
If there is one element of modern American conservatism that completely befuddles me, it is my fellow right-wingers’ affection for the police. As a true small-government conservative, I consider it my philosophical duty to dislike cops.
Not individually, mind you. Both of my mom’s brothers are former law enforcement officers, and not only that, but (to paraphrase the Confederate flag crowd) some of my best friends are police officers.
Every day, there are many fine law enforcement professionals executing their duties with good judgment and common sense. Then there’s the South Carolina Highway Patrol.
I’m kidding, of course. Picking on the South Carolina Highway Patrol is unfair, because doing so implies that other states’ patrolmen—and they are almost all men—are not flattopped Neanderthals with red-hot radar guns and unofficial quotas to meet.
Two recent stories sum up my personal experience with the highway patrol. The first is from South Carolina, where state trooper Michael O’Donnell pulled over Senator John McCain’s campaign bus as it raced to some important GOP event. Did Trooper O’Donnell pull over the Straight Talk Express to (as the Bush campaign whispered) prevent Senator McCain from personally performing an abortion on his own illegitimate daughter, whom he fathered with one of his Viet Cong collaborators?
No, Trooper O’Donnell just wanted an autograph, and he didn’t want to stand in line to get it. It was simply a starstruck state patrolman’s version of a Blue Light Special.
Unfortunately for Trooper O’Donnell, Senator McCain wasn’t on the bus he stopped, and no real harm was done. However, the incident typifies the thinking that overtakes some members of law enforcement. It simply never occurs to them that there might be something they can do that they shouldn’t. There’s no inward analysis or questioning of the legitimacy or reasoning behind their actions, just that attitude that “if the good Lord didn’t want me stopping you, he wouldn’t have given me lights and a siren.”
An even more egregious incident happened a few days later in Louisiana. A family rushing a heart attack victim to the hospital was stopped by a deputy who made them wait while he wrote a ticket.
“Y’all go ahead and have your heart attack or stroke now. Have a good day,” the officer allegedly told the driver.
The victim, Benjamin Basile, whose arrival at the hospital was delayed by half an hour, spent a week in intensive care. Not surprisingly, he was hopping mad . . . but not nearly as mad as he became when he heard that the local sheriff’s office “has yet to determine if the officer actually did anything wrong.”
Okay, so what would it take for these badge-toting buffoons to figure out that having a heart-attack victim scrounging around for his license and registration is bad public policy? Would it take a death? Basile feverishly sucking oxygen from the officer’s Breathalyzer in a desperate bid to stay alive?
My concern is not that police officers, like talk show hosts and writers, occasionally make mistakes. I’m worried about their unwillingness to acknowledge their mistakes and, worse, the attitude of the general public that the police are always right.
Quite frankly, this confidence in our law enforcement professionals has not been earned. We have more than enough reasons to view them not with the benefit of the doubt, but with a dubious glance over our collective shoulders.
Right now in Los Angeles, thirty-two convictions have been overturned and many more cases are being reviewed because power-hungry officers planted evidence and framed people.
In Illinois, state executions have been postponed in the wake of the discovery that there were at least twelve men on death row who had not committed the crimes that sent them there.
And in Charleston, South Carolina, the North Charleston police recently unleashed more than thirty bullets at an unarmed man sitting in his car, surrounded by police.
But there is no outcry. None of the officers involved in the outrageous shooting in Charleston, for example, have so much as been reprimanded, not even the officer who falsely accused the driver of having a gun. The police chief feels no need to dump a clearly dangerous officer because the community is thus far rallying to the department’s defense. As long as citizens say, “They were shooting at a crook. He gets what he deserves,” the cops will keep firing away.
Police work is a tough, grueling and often lonely job. I respect those officers who work hard to do it right. But I have nothing but fear and loathing for the authoritarian anal retentives who abuse their power.
And fear is the right word. After all, who polices the police? Out in L.A., it looks like the same officers who couldn’t get the goods to convict O.J. are now planting enough evidence to convict everyone else. It seems that getting a special autograph or making their speeding-ticket quota is more important than protecting and serving the public.
The word I wish we could instill in these Barney Fife wanna-bes is serve. There is no service in jerking around single girls going five miles over, or shaking down tourists who miss the 35 mph sign. Helping people get where they’re going, treating them fairly and exercising some modicum of common sense—these are the most valuable assets our patrolmen have.
Or at least, I wish they had.
March 2000
We love the practicing Catholic and earnestly desire to see him accept the Christ of the Cross, [and] leave the false system that has enslaved his soul.
—From the new, less anti-Catholic Bob Jones University Web site
Let me start with an easy question about the South Carolina intellectual internment camp known as Bob Jones University: Yes, it is racist.
That this is even in question here in South Carolina shows how far adrift our state is from the continental United States, where BJU is viewed as a cross between Hee Haw and a bad episode of In the Heat of the Night. Indeed, since the Bob Jones brouhaha erupted into the presidential primaries, I have repeatedly been told by my fellow South Carolinians that Bob Jones’ ban on interracial dating is not racist.
I’ve heard the argument put many ways, but it is neatly summarized in FAQ format at www.bju.edu this way:
Q: Is Bob Jones University guilty of racism because it has a rule restricting interracial dating?
A: Students of all races attend here and live in racial harmony and respect for one another as Christians. Each person dates within his own race. For there to be discrimination, one race would have to be treated differently than the other.
This argument is, of course, a crock, the kind of poor pseudo-rationalization that passes for logic among the typical enrollee in a southern Bible college or school of straight chiropractic.
Bob Jones’ ban on interracial dating is racist because it is a control of behavior based on race. The argument that no race is favored at BJU, or that black people don’t want to date white people either—these do not make the policy any less race-based and, therefore, racist. What other word would you use to describe the segregation of people based on their skin color? Sexist? Ageist?
The premise of the interracial ban is that race matters, that race is somehow determinant, that people should be treated differently because of their skin color. This is racism, and the policies resulting from this worldview are racist.
Now, you can argue that, using my definition of racism, affirmative action, hiring quotas and the like are racist. And you would be right. And yes, it is true that many of the politicos currently attacking Bob Jones are die-hard supporters of race-based government policies that deny people jobs, quality education and even the right to vote based on their race. A few examples:
In Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, last year, there were one thousand empty desks in magnet schools and several thousand parents seeking admission to those same schools for their children. However, these children—white and black—were denied the education they sought because they were the wrong color. Their admission would have made the schools too white or too black for school-administered racial quotas. A law removing similar restrictions from South Carolina charter schools has been opposed by some of BJU’s most outspoken critics.
In Florida, Governor Jeb Bush has passed the “One Florida” measure, under which the state will stop taking into consideration race or sex when administering programs or accepting bids for state projects. One black legislator, who seized control of a state office in protest, insisted that ending racial quotas and treating all citizens the same would “divide the people of Florida based on race.”
The state of Hawaii turned Jim Crow on its head by denying white citizens the right to vote on certain offices dealing with programs for indigenous Hawaiians. The U.S. Supreme Court overturned the law last week, but the two judges voting to maintain racial voting restrictions were both liberals who support denying Bob Jones its tax-exempt status because of its treatment of people based on their ethnicity.
It’s easy to see why George W. got confused about going to Bob Jones. When America views one form of racism as good and another as bad, it can be hard to keep score. Which is why those of us who want to get rid of the scorecards are so frustrated with Governor Bush right now.
The fight by inner-city black parents for school vouchers, the success of Ward Connerly’s assault on racial quotas in California and Florida, the collapse of support for race-based government favoritism in the polls—all these things were shaping up to help turn the 2000 election into a body blow to the Al “Sharpton” Gore view of America. There was an opportunity to use the upcoming election to fundamentally change America from a nation seeking to balance unfair treatment between groups to a nation where group membership simply does not matter. And it appeared that George W. Bush, with his “compassionate conservatism” and relative popularity in the Hispanic and black communities of Texas, might be ideally suited to deliver the knockout punch against state-sponsored racism.
Then he got to South Carolina and succumbed to a seizure of redneck politics. It wasn’t just kicking off his South Carolina campaign at Bob Jones, or engineering the mailing of 250,000 pieces of pro-Confederate-flag mail, or the attack phone calls from Pat Robertson, or the whispering campaign in upstate churches about Warren RUDE-man (sic) and the Jews in Columbia working with the liberal Jewish media to elect John McCain, or the “John McCain: The Fag Candidate” fliers handed out by over-the-top evangelicals in support of Bush.
No, it was the Bush campaign in toto that shaped the perception that George W. is willing to play ball with the worst elements in American politics if that’s what it takes to get elected.
After two weeks of brutal press, George W. reversed himself and apologized to Cardinal O’Connor for going to BJU, calling it a “missed opportunity.” Forget that. The real missed opportunity for the Republican nominee for president—and George W. Bush will be the nominee—is the opportunity to overcome Al Gore and the politics of racial resentment with the principle of equal treatment under the law.
So much opportunity lost, just to win a primary in a rinky-dink state such as South Carolina.
March 2000
At Sunday’s special mass, the pope asked God’s forgiveness for the sins of Catholics through the ages, including wrongs inflicted on Jews, women, and minorities.
—Associated Press
He may not be the most popular guy at Bob Jones University, but Pope John Paul II has a lesson to teach South Carolina: You can’t have the heritage without the hate.
That, in brief, is why the pontiff celebrated a special mass repenting for sins committed by people long dead and asking forgiveness from victims long forgotten.
It is particularly ironic that we southerners would receive this message from the Catholic Church, aka the Whore of Babylon. As a young evangelical growing up in a rural South Carolina church, I was taught that not only were Catholics lost souls, but that they were mostly Yankees, which meant that they were condemned to spend their afterlife in New York.
Talk about eternal damnation.
Anyway, it’s a good thing the Pope isn’t southern. If he were, say, a member of the South Carolina General Assembly who supports flying the Confederate battle flag atop the state house, His Holiness would never have made such an apology. He would instead insist that he is the victim of rabid Protestant bias in the news media, that the Inquisition wasn’t about torture but about Church rights, that the Muslims who “converted” during the Crusades liked choosing between the cross and the blade.
And as a member of the one true and perfect Church of the Confederacy, the Pope would have avoided at all costs anything resembling remorse or responsibility for the lynchings, murders, assaults and riots that took place beneath—and in defense of—the Confederate flag.
Now, to be fair, for years the Roman Catholic Church did cling desperately to the altar of denial. Jesuit scholars printed millions of words in defense of anti-Semitism, the Inquisition and other historic misdeeds. And until recently, Catholic leaders would acknowledge no wrongdoing during the Holocaust, when the Church said little, and did even less, to prevent the horrors of Nazi Germany.
But apparently someone finally figured out, perhaps with divine intervention, that defending bad behavior was a poor use of time. Every scholarly dodge deflecting the Church’s errors was a missed opportunity to celebrate its achievements.
And, compared to the Confederacy, the Roman Catholic Church has quite a record to celebrate: preserving all of Western civilization during the Dark Ages, inventing the university system, feeding the poor, caring for the sick, inventing bingo—there’s a lot to brag about!
And, rightly so, modern Catholics celebrate their heritage of Michelangelo and Bach’s Mass in B Minor as representative of their culture and a point of communal pride. But the Pope has made the Church’s legacy even greater by acknowledging what seems self-evident to people beyond the Mason-Dixon line, namely, that with the history of previous accomplishment comes the heritage of past shame.
Instead of picking and choosing their way through history, Catholic leaders are embracing something close to the truth. Detractors will always find one more sin to be acknowledged, one more wrong to be addressed, but the Church has achieved something great: It has strengthened its legacy of pride by acknowledging and embracing its failures.
Instead of the self-deluding circular arguments from flag-waving rednecks that keep history spinning into the present, the Catholic Church will, over time, put its failings behind it without losing its great history.
So why can’t the cult of the Confederistas follow this path? I talked to one die-hard Dixonian who said, “We can’t have an institutional apology like the one the Catholic Church made because the Confederate States aren’t around. The Church has a leader and an organization. We don’t. Who would apologize?”
That’s a good point. But I have a suggestion for where to start. How about if every adult white southerner over the age of fifty who wants to glory in the memory of the Lost Cause stood up today and apologized for Jim Crow?
How about if every person who says the Confederate flag is only a symbol of heritage but who waved it in hate outside segregated schools and lunch counters in the 1960s and ’70s issued his or her regrets? How about if every dewy-eyed defender of Dixie fighting to stop Martin Luther King Jr. from having a state holiday declared a holiday on vindictive personal attacks against their side’s political opponents?
I believe there is an opportunity here, a path toward a positive resolution that could reclaim the legacy of courage and sacrifice of the Confederacy through accepting and acknowledging its sins. Unfortunately, that lesson we southerners need so desperately to learn is being taught by the Pope in Rome, and I can already hear my fellow South Carolinians’ response:
“We don’t care how y’all do it up North.”
April 2000
To all households:
This is your official form for the United States Census 2000. It is used to count every person living in this house or apartment. Title 13 of the U.S. Code requires that you answer these questions. Please be as accurate and complete as you can in filling out your census form, and return it in the enclosed postage-paid envelope. Thank you.
Kenneth Prewitt
Director, Bureau of the Census
START HERE:
1. How many people were living or staying in this house, apartment or mobile home on April 1, 2000? Please print their names.
Person 1, Question 1: What is this person’s name? ___
2. What is this person’s sex?
Male ___ Female ___
3. What is this person’s age? ___
4. What is this person’s date of birth? (NOTE: If the answers to questions 3 and 4 don’t match, please request special simplified census form for residents of Alabama.) ___
5. Is this person Spanish/Hispanic/Latino?
Yes, Mexican/Chicano ___
Yes, Puerto Rican ___
Yes, Cuban ____
No, just a plain old white person ____
6. What is this person’s race?
White ___
Black, African American, or Negro ___
American Indian or Alaskan native ___ (What tribe?) ___
Asian Indian ___
Chinese ___
Korean ___
Guamanian or Chammoro ____
Some other race ____ (Please list)
7. What is this person’s ancestry or ethnic origin? ___
8. Is this person really sure he/she doesn’t want to answer these questions? It is the law, you know. ___
9. Look, you can refuse to answer these questions if you want, but we know that you’re an angry white guy who hates the government and has a stockpile of canned meat in your basement, so why not just go ahead and admit it? ___
10. Okay, if that’s the way you want it, fine, but just so you know, we’re going to put you down as an African American lesbian—and a single mom, too. Happy now? ___
11. That’s better. Thank you for answering this important question, one that is vital to the efficient operation of your federal government. Now that we know you’re a white male, just a few more nonintrusive questions: How many guns do you have, and where are they? ___
12. All right, pal. Let’s include the ones under the bed this time, shall we? ___
13. Is this person a veteran of the military? ___
14. If so, how many times did you use the word homo while on active duty? ___
15. None? Yeah, right. ___
16. How much money did this person make last year from wages, salary, commissions and tips? ___
17. Sure, we already know. But the IRS asked us to double-check. ___
18. For whom did this person work? ___
19. Yes, we know that, too. Now we’re checking on your boss. Hey, he’s giving you the shaft, too, right? So feel free to jot down any incriminating information you’ve got on him while you’re at it. ___
20. How many indoor toilets do you have? (If your answer is “Why, I’d never do that in my house!” please see previous note about obtaining special Alabama census form.) ___
21. State prisoners in Minnesota are currently being paid to fill out their census forms. How much would we have to pay you to get your full cooperation? ___
22. You are aware that if you refuse to answer voluntarily, you could be one of those prisoners? ___
23. And finally, an essay question: Why do you have such a low opinion of your government? Why do you continue to distrust our motives and competence? What could we have possibly done to make you feel that way? ___
24. Wait. On second thought, don’t answer that.
March 2000
What does it take to get an NEA member to support school choice? Why, just give the choice to the NEA!
That’s the message coming from Hoke High School in Raeford, North Carolina, where the Associated Press is reporting that three English teachers are “choosing” not to educate one of the school’s students. And the state of North Carolina says it’s A-OK.
The ninth-grade student, Russell Almanza, was suspended for ten days after writing an essay about a shooting at the high school. In the essay, Almanza portrayed himself as an FBI agent investigating the shooting. Like many novice writers, he used the names of people he knew, including his English teacher, Erica Johnson.
According to wire reports, Almanza said he didn’t want to scare anyone. He claims that he wrote the story with himself as the main character who stops the violence and becomes the hero. “If they really read the story, they could see I’m the good guy,” he said. “I never threatened anyone.”
That may be why, upon appeal, the length of Almanza’s suspension was cut in half. But it doesn’t explain why, when Almanza showed back up at school, none of the ninth-grade English teachers would allow him in their classrooms.
As a result, this fifteen-year-old kid spends his English-class period sitting alone in the school library. In fact, his teachers won’t even send over his class assignments. His work is assigned and monitored by a teacher from another grade.
His mom says that Almanza comes home each day crying, complaining of being ostracized by the entire school over a single essay. And it does seem odd that a taxpayer-funded teacher in a taxpayer-funded school has the ability to simply refuse to teach the child of a taxpaying family. Even those violent thugs up in Illinois that Jesse Jackson tried to help out were allowed to return to class eventually.
Nevertheless, young Almanza’s banishment to the lonely library has the support of the Hoke High principal, the district superintendent and even the attorney general of North Carolina, who has ruled that teachers have no legal obligation to educate children, thereby decriminalizing the behavior of hundreds of thousands of incompetent public school employees across America!
The attorney general’s ruling is particularly fascinating for those of us who support school choice. Currently, it is a crime not to send your child to school. It is also a crime in most jurisdictions to sneak your child into a better public school by pretending he lives somewhere he really doesn’t. Therefore, if little Almanza had tried to choose a different teacher by going to a different public school, he and his family would have been criminals.
But when he goes to the crummy school he’s sentenced to by the school district and the teachers who are being paid to teach him refuse to do their job, they aren’t guilty of anything. Anything criminal, anyway.
What they are guilty of is hypocrisy. From the classroom to the attorney general’s office, everyone involved in the case believes that this boy should not be in the school or the classroom he’s been assigned to. But they also oppose giving the kid’s parents the right to pick out a different school or classroom, one where they believe he might get a better education. And so young Almanza sits rotting away in the library every day, just the most blatant victim of the NEA’s fear of freedom in education.
Why not let him leave? Where is the cry “Free at last, free at last!” rising from the library?
Because, as this and every other school district knows so well, there are millions of other students who, if they could choose, would take the $7,000 or so we blow on each public school student and go buy a decent education from outside the bureaucratic bog. Teachers know this better than most people; that’s why so many public school teachers have their own kids in private school.
The point of the story of Russell Almanza is that while opponents of school choice are quick to discuss the “cost” of school choice in dollars, they are loath to admit the cost of the current corrupt system in lives. One life is being frittered away one untaught hour at a time in a school library.
There is another life, another story, that comes to mind: A six-year-old girl killed by gunfire in a Michigan classroom—a classroom the girl sat in because she and her family were given no choice. She was shot by a classmate, a lost little boy living in tragic squalor.
My question to the administrators of Hoke High School, and every other opponent of choice, is this: If the teacher of the six-year-old shooter had wanted to keep that violent boy out of her classroom, should she have been given that choice?
If your good liberal answer is no, then why is Almanza sitting alone in a library right now? If your other good liberal answer is yes, then why do you deny that poor little girl’s parents the same choice not to send her to that classroom to begin with?
Perhaps that would be a good term paper topic for Russell Almanza. He’s certainly got plenty of time to work on it.
March 2000
It was an excellent concept, a great first step—I know that it will save the lives of many children in this nation.
—New Orleans Mayor Marc Morial on the agreement by Smith and Wesson to make all new handguns “child-safe”
Two quick facts from the FBI about kids and guns:
Number of children under nineteen killed by gun accidents in 1999: 420.
Number of children under nineteen killed by guns on purpose in 1999: 2,216.
Consider this paradox: The more time we spend watching people shoot each other on TV and in movies for our entertainment, the less able we are to bear the violence that is an inevitable part of defending our freedom. Could it be that America is losing its bloodlust just when we need it most?
I began asking myself this question while watching two news stories break across each other on the great sea of CNN: Taiwan standing up to Communist China by electing a pro-independence party’s candidate for president, and Smith and Wesson backing down from the soccer moms and their litigious allies in the Clinton administration.
Before you lapse into a coma at the mention of American foreign policy in Asia, please allow me just two quick sentences that may be relevant to you:
As a loudmouthed advocate of individual liberty, I am chest-thumpingly proud of our policy defending the democratic island-state of Taiwan from the Clinton/Gore Finance Committee (aka the Red Army). During the Taiwanese elections, the more Chinese premier Zhu Rongji rattled his saber about how the “Chinese people will use all their blood and even sacrifice their lives to defend the unity of the motherland” (sheesh, who writes this guy’s stuff, Pat Buchanan?), the more I hoped Taiwan’s voters would stick it in his eye.
But when Taiwan did just that, I gulped. “Hey, wait a minute,” I thought. “This isn’t some Tom Clancy novel. China really could decide to start World War III! And the last war with that many W’s in its name involved drafting people my age!”
It’s one thing to lie on my sofa and cheer the forces of freedom. It would be quite another to find myself climbing ropes at Fort Jackson and learning to say “I surrender!” in Mandarin Chinese.
More significantly, it would be a tough question for my nation. We’ve made a pledge to defend twenty-two million free people on an island twelve thousand miles away. But if it came time for serious shooting, for Americans to kill and be killed in large numbers fulfilling that pledge, would we actually be willing as a nation to pay that price?
I doubt it. The last major test on that count was Vietnam, and even then we walked away from millions of citizens seeking democratic self-determination when the price got too high. What about Iraq? you ask. What about Grenada, Bosnia, Kosovo?
Exactly. As long as those wars were short, bloodless, G-rated affairs suitable for viewing on TV, we hung in. But the America that absorbed hundreds of thousands of casualties to defeat fascism in 1945 was not willing to bear even a dozen to stop ethnic cleansing in the Balkans just fifty years later.
Part of the problem is President William Jefferson Weasel, who lacks the moral authority to send a group of ROTC students into the girls’ locker room, much less convince us as a nation that the blood of our sons must be spilled for an abstract principle. A guy who can’t even keep his pants zipped for a good cause is inherently unable to talk me into getting shot for one.
But there is a more fundamental source of America’s squeamishness over blood shed in the name of principle, and it’s found in the other story I mentioned—the Smith and Wesson gun deal.
The Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution has nothing to do with hunting Bambi or stuffing a Ladysmith in your handbag before heading to the parking garage. It has everything to do with the abstract principle that in a free society, no one entity—particularly the government—should have all the guns. The need to balance power between the federal government on one side and the states and their citizens on the other is the sole reason why the second most important right expressed in our national creed is the right to keep and bear arms.
Like defending Taiwan, defending that right has a price, one that is all too often paid in real blood. One group paying that price are children killed in accidents involving guns. Their stories are always tragic, even more so for me since the day seven years ago when I became a father.
But let’s put the tragedy into perspective. There are 280 million Americans, and a statistically insignificant 420 children died due to gun accidents last year. Reasonable gun safety measures make sense, as do reasonable controls on the production and distribution of guns.
But the reaction among soccer moms to this handful of deaths is to seize all guns, to put a slug right between the eyes of the Second Amendment. They don’t want to hear about theoretical threats to our national security in an unforeseen future. They want to know that little Johnny is absolutely safe today, whatever the price.
Are these same women going to watch their husbands and sons die for the principle of democracy in a faraway land? Or are they going to, as some moms did during Bosnia, hold press conferences announcing, “My son only joined the army to get a scholarship! I want Bill Clinton to tell him to put that gun down and come home!”
We live in a world in which democracy and freedom are always under threat and always will be. Defending these principles almost always involves real sacrifice today in hopes of a theoretical good tomorrow.
Rosie O’Donnell and Hillary Rodham are testing that resolve today. China and Taiwan may test it tomorrow.
April 2000
When did my fellow conservatives forget the core premise of conservatism, namely, that life sucks?
When it comes to the case of Elián González, this obvious truth seems to have slipped away from once-solid conservatives such as Brit Hume, of Fox News, and Rush Limbaugh, who of late sounds as though Hillary slipped something into his Snapple.
In the old days, Rush was the first to seize liberal Pollyannas by the scruff of the neck and fling them onto the cold streets of reality. Now this formerly coldhearted conservative is suddenly enamored of the idea that one little boy’s happiness is both achievable and important to the future of our nation.
As l’affaire Elián unfolds, right-thinking conservatives are succumbing to the wrongheaded notion that principles should be abandoned when they become painful. This is absolutely contrary to the “no pain, no gain” philosophy that brought me to the conservative movement.
At the risk of committing a gargantuan simplification, the difference between liberals and conservatives is that liberals want to be nice, while conservatives want to be right. A bum wanders up to a liberal, and he gets a dollar because giving a bum a dollar seems like a nice thing to do, even if it buys said bum that one can of Sterno too many and he ends up in the county morgue.
Conservatives, on the other hand, reject the temptation (however weak) to hand over their hard-earned cash because doing what is nice encourages behavior that is self-destructive and wrong.
We know the bum might end up going hungry if we don’t help. We further acknowledge that this might be the one guy in the world who would take that dollar, get himself a meal, get cleaned up and turn his life around. To which we reply, “So?”
The principles of individual responsibility and social justice (i.e., getting what one deserves) are more important than the misery of any one person. Indeed, we conservatives ask, what principle worth having isn’t?
Defending the Second Amendment means some innocent people are going to be shot, you say? Fine, we answer.
Protecting free speech means some people will say hurtful, racist and stupid things? No problem, we reply.
And allowing parents to raise their children as they see fit means some will grow up in horrible homes exposed to bizarre, even dangerous attitudes such as Christian Science, Pentecostalism and even Rotarianism?
Hey, that’s life in the land of conservative principles. Or it used to be.
Conservatives used to believe in doing what is right and accepting the consequences. Now we believe in Elián.
I’m getting ideological whiplash watching President William Jefferson “Perjury” Clinton announce that “we must defend the rule of law,” while his conservative opponents plead for us to look beyond the law and consider “the best interests” of the child.
What? Since when have we conservatives cared about the best interests of a specific child? Parading hard-case kids on TV to persuade America to throw the Constitution overboard is a tactic I expect from Hillary Rodham, not Henry Hyde.
And let me be clear: Unlike deluded lefties and well-paid Commie stooges (such as Greg Craig), I am perfectly willing to admit that if Elián goes home with his dad, his life is going to suck. Period.
And I have no doubt that life in Communist Cuba is a series of daily tragedies for the millions who live there. Bad food, ugly clothes, long speeches and good cigars: That’s life under a Cuban dictator.
But I don’t care if Fidel Castro locks little Elián in a hotel meeting room with Tony Robbins and forces him into a lifetime of multilevel marketing. I’m not going to abandon the principle that parents should be able to raise their own children as they see fit, with or without the permission of the federal government.
Whether or not Elián lives in free-market prosperity or totalitarian squalor is not nearly as important as ensuring that all children from every country and every political system who are here in America are under the rule of law.
When Rush Limbaugh types accuse me of not caring about Elián, I quickly concur. In the final analysis, I don’t. Instead, I care about keeping an America where people raise their children with beliefs, behaviors and values their neighbors find objectionable, and nobody can do a damn thing about it.
I care about the ability of an American parent in Iran and an Iranian parent in America to know that their children belong with them and that the American government will protect, not diminish, those rights.
Since the Elián case came up, I have been repeatedly asked, “Would you have handed a child back over the Berlin Wall to a parent in Eastern Europe if the escaping parent had died?” My answer: Yes. And I know the child’s life would suck because of it. But by doing so, we would be protecting the values that make our nation a place people are willing to risk their lives to reach.
Protecting our principles, even when it hurts, is the right—and the right-wing—thing to do.
May 2000
License and register all firearms. Ban handguns totally. They are made for one reason . . . to kill people!
—Rosie O’Donnell
Watching chunky suburban moms hoofing their way along Pennsylvania Avenue in their comfortable shoes at last weekend’s Gunstock festival, I realized why it took the Swiss so long to give women the vote. Motherhood does not make for good democracy.
That’s because mothers are always right. This was literally the primary argument made by the attendees of the media-friendly, Democrat-friendly, Gore-for-president-friendly Million Mom March in Washington. While many special-interest groups seem to think they know it all, this was the first group to openly declare so, waving placards reading A MILLION MOMS CAN’T BE WRONG. Others said GUNS. BAD. NOW GO TO YOUR ROOM, and (I kid you not) BECAUSE I SAID SO.
How’s that for a debating point, Senator?
There was plenty of attitude at the marching Momfest, as evidenced by the number of women using the phrase “pissed off.” (Uh-oh, Mom’s really mad now!) The mother of a Columbine shooting victim reminded us that “the hands that rock the cradle rule the world. . . . You never, never tick off a mother.” Then Rosie O’Donnell, the Sally Struthers of a new generation, glared through her insistently hip sunglasses. “The NRA buys votes with blood money,” she said. “They are scary.”
There was plenty of comedy, too, including the banner reading WHEN IT COMES TO GUN SAFETY, MY HUSBAND’S AN IDIOT (what? He can’t work a trigger lock?) and a speech by one of the Kennedy clan in praise of Mothers Against Drunk Driving.
As they say at Chappaquiddick: Oops!
What was missing, alas, was math. Maybe the original talking Barbie was on to something with her observation “Math class is hard!” Maybe years of women practicing “whole math” on their ages and weights has taken its numerical toll. Whatever the case, the marching moms had real problems getting the numbers right.
First, not only were there not a million moms, but the organizer’s reported figure of 750,000 marchers was greeted with audible snickers from every media outlet this side of Mother Jones. These exaggerations (what? Are you calling your mother a liar?) undermine the cause by raising questions about honesty and confirming the suspicion that the entire event was a Clinton-sponsored Hillary for Senate rally.
Second, the gun violence statistics spoon-fed us by the earnest, if uninformed, moms ranged from poorly interpreted to wildly incorrect.
For example, there’s the oft-repeated statement that “four thousand children are shot to death every year in America.” This is true, so long as you include nineteen-year-old gun-toting, gang-banging criminals as “children.” In fact, in 1997, the number of kids under fifteen who died from guns was less than six hundred, about half of which were accidents and suicides.
Now, every death is a tragedy, and every death of a child is a newsworthy tragedy. But it is simply not the case that six hundred deaths among 270 million people is reason enough to gut the Bill of Rights, no matter how much Mom cries.
Finally, there is one question that no one has yet been able to answer for me: How does refusing to defend your children from harm make you a better mom? These strident Rosie wanna-bes refuse to arm themselves and want to deny their neighbors that right, too. They are abdicating any responsibility for protecting their children from violence or threat of violence, and they are leaving their family’s fate, should the worst happen, solely in the hands of the police.
Now, I understand that guns are nasty, as one marching mom’s banner announced, and many women are uncomfortable around firearms. But is the bravest, most dedicated mom the one who orders her husband to get rid of Grandpa’s old shotgun while she sends catty e-mails to Charlton Heston? Or is the best, bravest mom the one who overcomes her distaste for firearms and learns how to protect her family by unloading a fifteen-round clip in under ten seconds?
Women seeking powerlessness, those co-dependent Clintonistas of the weekend rally, insist that owning guns merely makes things worse. “Guns in your home don’t protect you. More often than not, they hurt or kill a loved one,” Rosie insisted on a pre–Million Mom March Internet posting.
Only one problem: It’s not true. According to Florida State University research, people who use a firearm to resist crime are half as likely to be injured as those who offer no resistance. Criminologist Gary Kleck estimates that guns are used more than two million times a year to deter or prevent crime.
To me, the moms who learn to use guns, whether they are ever forced to use them or not, are heroes. They are defending both the Constitution and the more basic principle that parents must be responsible for the safety and well-being of their children.
As for that other bunch of mothers at Gunstock, take a little advice from my mom: Just because everyone is doing it, that doesn’t make it right.
May 2000
But Giuliani deserves credit for the kind of affairs he’s evidently had. Unlike the predatory Bill Clinton, who riffled through vulnerable women like playing cards and demanded mechanical servicing from them like nameless plumbers, Giuliani has conducted authentic, long-term relationships with mature, intelligent, feisty career women.
—Camille Paglia, Salon
But as a woman and a wife, I can say that long-standing affairs with women who become constant companions are clearly more threatening to a marital partnership than cheap and transitory sex.
—Anna Quindlen, Newsweek, the same day
Ladies, ladies, please: Make up your minds.
Here I am, your typical married man with small children. In other words, a eunuch.
Sure, I’d like to have sex. I’d love to have sex. I would pay to have sex, which is why the Warden (my wife) never lets me out of the house with more than $5 and a Captain D’s coupon.
However, I have also taken a vow of chastity in the presence of a clergyman. It began, as I recall, with the question “Do you take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife?”
It is as a typical American married dad that I have been watching closely as typical American women debate the private naughtiness of their favorite public men. And I will confess: I am very, very confused.
When Monica Mania swept American womanhood in 1998, I could almost feel the ideological plates shifting beneath our continent. Women such as Patricia Ireland, who demanded Clarence Thomas’ head for allegedly talking dirty to an employee, launched a foaming-at-the-mouth defense of President Clinton’s career as a sexual predator. It took less than a year for these hypocritical harpies to transform the National Organization for Women from a civil rights organization into the National Organization for Whores, working the talk show street corners for the Democratic Party.
But it wasn’t just the NOW gang. More-sensible women joined in the defense of President Corona and his policy regarding “face time” with nubile White House staffers. They might not agree with Clinton, who recently said that his years at the White House have been “good for my marriage,” but many real-life women I know and usually respect found ways to let the president off the hook.
During Monicagate, seemingly normal, typical married women began insisting that infidelity was “no big deal,” that “all men do it,” that such behavior was to be expected. However, when I volunteered to join the teeming ranks of my fellow men and start chasing slow-moving receptionists around my office, my wife let me know that she had extremely different expectations for her husband than for the rest of my species.
Observing this contradictory debate, I learned a lesson about women and politics: Ideology trumps morality, at least when it comes to men.
We are relearning this lesson with New York mayor Rudy Giuliani. The writer Anna Quindlen, a total Bill Clinton suck-up (pardon the pun), is not content to kick in Rudy’s head regarding his infidelity. She also has to offer a defense of President Clinton’s brand of adultery (high volume, low esteem) as preferred. To Quindlen, Bill Clinton’s habit of using the office help as sex toys is less troubling than Rudy Giuliani’s seemingly long-term emotional involvement with career women.
It’s Anna Quindlen’s Motel 6 method to a long and happy marriage.
By the way, Quindlen’s attack on Rudy Giuliani is entitled “When Private Behavior Isn’t” (answer: when it’s under oath before a federal judge and grand jury), which is itself a contradiction to her writings during the impeachment imbroglio.
On the other end, politically speaking, is Camille Paglia, a tireless opponent of all things Clinton. In her column at the chick-friendly Web site Salonmagazine.com, Paglia weighs in on the Rudy story and finds a way to take yet another kick at the First Philanderer. She argues that Giuliani’s form of deceit is superior because it involves superior women. A roll in the hay at the No-Tell Motel is somehow shabbier than slipping into the coat closet with your executive vice president after a particularly steamy round of annual reports.
Watching these two fight, we married men are left scratching our heads, if not our seven-year itches.
It never occurred to us that the relationship between the married man and the sideline squeeze mattered. We—maybe it’s just a naive “I”—assumed that it was the relationship between the husband and wife that was the issue. Violating that trust, whether it was with Monica Lewinsky or with Margaret Thatcher, would seem to be an inherently bad thing.
When women articulate these more nuanced debates about which is the less offensive form of adultery, what their men hear is “Go get ’em, boys!” Give us an inch, and we’ll take the entire data entry department.
There are always excuses for cheating. I just didn’t think there were any that women would actually accept. This is a whole new world. After all, ladies, if you’re looking for mitigating factors for philandering, Bill Clinton has the ultimate excuse for sleeping around—his wife. Being married to that tree-legged, tantrum-throwing, emasculating shrew puts a husband in the Jim Bakker class of cheaters as far as we men are concerned: None of the rest of us would sleep with Mrs. Clinton, either.
So far, however, it appears that politics is the key. If your guy is naughty, it’s an understandable mistake. If the other team’s guy slips from the straight and narrow, hanging’s too good for him.
And if the women of America are going to permit extramarital sex based on partisanship, all I’ve got to say is this: How can I get Anna Nicole Smith to join the Republican Party?
Ouch! Just kidding, honey.
June 2000
[Cue music. The camera pans as Regis enters stage left.]
REEGE : Good evening, everyone, and welcome to ABC’s latest addition to America’s game show craze, Who Wants to Be a Limousine Liberal?
[Applause. Cue lights. Dramatic techno-pop version of “Happy Days Are Here Again” plays as Regis takes his place at the console.]
REEGE : Our first contestant tonight is a soccer mom from Irmo, South Carolina, Tara Barkwell! Welcome, Tara. Are you nervous?
TARA : A little, I guess.
REEGE : Well, don’t be. As many of you know, Tara is our first contestant under the terms of a settlement ABC reached with the National Organization for Women. They filed a formal complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission about the number of women making it to the final rounds of our little game here, and ABC has asked me to announce that we are pleased with the progress of the negotiations. Oh, and for those of you watching at home, next week’s contestant, a deaf mulatto lesbian dwarf, is already here in the audience. Let’s give her a round of applause.
[Cue audience applause as a small brown hand reaches up from behind a seat to sign “Thanks, Regis.”]
REEGE : You’re welcome! Now, Tara, here’s your first question on Who Wants to Be a Limousine Liberal?
[Brief applause.]
A church member is excommunicated for publicly criticizing his faith’s teachings on homosexuality. As a limousine liberal, should you support or oppose this parishioner’s excommunication?
TARA : Well, I think it’s certainly wrong for Catholics who accept homosexuality to be punished for affirming the gay lifestyle, and I don’t think the church has the right to suppress unpopular opinions, so as a liberal, I oppose the excommunication.
REEGE : Is that your final answer?
TARA : Yes, Reege, it is.
REEGE : I’m so sorry, Tara, but excommunication is the liberal’s answer.
[Audience groan. Play dirgelike you’re-a-loser music.]
Yes, Tara, the man kicked out of the very liberal Episcopal Church USA was anti-homosexuality activist Lewis Green of Asheville, North Carolina. He was banned from church property and denied the sacraments because he publicly opposed the church’s pro-homosexuality policies. Therefore, the right answer for a limousine liberal is: Ban the [bleep].
[Audience laughter; more music.]
TARA : Does this mean I lose?
REEGE : Oh, no, Tara. Nobody loses on Who Wants to Be a Limousine Liberal? We believe in building self-esteem. Plus, our legal settlement with NOW gives you five more chances to win!
TARA : But there are only four more questions. . . .
REEGE : Wow! Math must really be your subject, Tara! Now let’s go to the next question. Tara, as a liberal, would you support or oppose investigating the personal sexual lives of political figures and using that information to attack their careers?
TARA : I think what happened to President Clinton was awful! Those mean-spirited Republicans were on a sexual witch hunt that was unfair and unnecessary, and besides, I think Bill Clinton is cute. I’d do him!
[Giggles, laughter from audience.]
So digging up dirt on people’s sex lives is not a liberal thing to do. That’s my final answer.
REEGE : Well, Tara, I’m afraid you’re wrong again! It was Clinton ally Tina Brown who paid $100,000 for a book outing homosexual staff members in Ken Starr’s office and revealing the personal sex lives of anti-Clinton journalists. I guess Kathie Lee’s glad Frank got out of broadcasting!
[Laughter, more music.]
Now let’s go to taxes. Tara, is it liberal to support regressive taxes that transfer money from poor black neighborhoods to affluent white suburbs?
TARA : Oh, that’s a hard one. Can I use a lifeline? I’d like to call Democratic governor Jim Hodges of South Carolina.
REEGE : Okay. AT&T, connect us to the governor’s mansion in Columbia, South Carolina.
[Sound of phone picking up.]
GOVERNOR : Huh? Hello?
REEGE : Governor Hodges, this is Regis.
GOVERNOR : Regis! How are ya, buddy? You tell that fine South Carolinian Vanna White I said hi.
REEGE : Wrong show, Governor. Anyway, Tara is here with a question: Does a good liberal support regressive taxes that take from the urban poor and give to the suburban rich?
HODGES : They do if they wanna get reelected, Tara. It’s called the lottery!
TARA : I don’t know. That still doesn’t sound very liberal to me. We’re supposed to help poor people.
REEGE : Oh, I’m so sorry, Tara. This just doesn’t seem to be your night. Liberals love the lottery because the money goes to help liberals! But don’t worry, we’ve still got the big-money lightning round. I’ll give you the ideological position, and you tell me if it’s conservative or liberal. Set the clock. Okay. Go.
[Ticking clock begins.]
Laws that treat people differently based on race.
TARA : Racist laws? That’s not liberal.
[Buzzer.]
REEGE : Sorry, that’s wrong. Have you forgotten affirmative action? Next: Businesses using their advertising clout to keep unpopular opinions off the airwaves.
TARA : Censorship? I’m against that, right?
[Buzzer.]
REEGE : Too bad, Tara. I’ve got two words for you: Dr. Laura.
Well, Tara, time’s up for tonight. The bad news is, you missed every single question. The good news is that the questions have been deemed inherently sexist by our judges, so you are declared the winner by default!
So congratulations, Tara, and good night, everybody! This is your ol’ buddy Reege reminding you that in the world of American liberalism, losers are always the big winners!
April 2000
A vain man can never be utterly ruthless; he wants to win applause and therefore accommodates himself to others.
—Goethe
Through a series of coincidences, I have appeared on national television a dozen times or so in the past year. Being a media minor leaguer, it’s always flattering and exciting to play talking head with the big boys—my ideas, my opinions being bandied about on TV screens across the nation, influencing the media elite in New York, Washington, perhaps even the White House.
Think about it: I, Michael Graham, lowly graduate of Pelion High, now a cable-network Cicero shaping the intellectual discourse of our great nation! And the reaction back home?
“Don’t you own a tie?”
The first call, the first accolade from a friend back home after my debut on ABC’s Politically Incorrect, and the very first comment out of his mouth is about my wardrobe?
Sure, I own a tie, I told him. But I hate wearing ties, and it’s a late-night talk show, and I was wearing a sport coat, and anyway, what I really wanted to know was what he thought of the devastating volley of sparkling witticisms I launched at the Clinton administration.
“Yeah, fine, right,” he said. “But Michael—the clothes! Jeans, sneakers, no tie? You looked like you were teaching a freshman English class at a technical college. You’re on national TV, for chrissake. Next time, wear a tie.”
This was particularly galling to me for two reasons. First, because the comments came from a friend who is both active in conservative politics and a heterosexual, which means both that
Second, my life as a clotheshorse and fashion plate has been an utter disaster. I was a fat kid growing up and was forced to wear clothes from the “husky” section of Sears’ boys’ department, which means they were made by unskilled laborers out of materials found in the store. What passed for a pair of pants bore a suspicious resemblance to a pup tent on sale the week before.
As I grew older, my fashion failings continued. I honestly believe that the day the leisure suit went from a symbol of ’70s style to a wardrobe punch line was the day I showed up at Pelion High in a brand-new powder blue model with lapels the size of an interstate off-ramp.
At Oral Roberts University, my dislike for dress clothes may have been aggravated by the campus dress code. Being forced to wear a tie to class every day was bad enough. The fact that my entire collection of neckwear consisted of those square-ended knit ties that were fashionable for about forty-five minutes during the early days of the Reagan administration just made it worse.
I should point out that I purchased none of these clothes for myself. Every item of clothing I have purchased in my lifetime could fit in a single dresser drawer at a Motel 6, with room left over for the Gideon Bible. Like almost every man, I own only clothes that women have bought for me. I wear them without question, the same way a prisoner wears his bright orange jumpsuit. Does it look stupid? Sure, but what am I supposed to do about it?
So when ABC called, the last thing on my mind was my wardrobe. But instead of winning praise for my insightful comments or clever repartee, I flunked the fashion test.
And my conservative friend’s critique was only the beginning. Not only did I get more snide comments about my wardrobe on Politically Incorrect, but the same thing happened after every subsequent television appearance, too. Every guest shot on C-SPAN or MSNBC would be followed by a steady stream of criticisms from friends, family, and ideological fellow travelers, all of them suddenly transformed into faux Ralph Laurens: Couldn’t they do something to your hair? They let you wear jeans? Why the sport coat? Don’t you own a suit? Were those really white athletic socks you had on?
Wait a minute, I interrupted, as one friend laid out his clothing critique. You mean you can’t remember anything I said about the Republican presidential primary, but you noticed what color my socks were?
“How could I miss them? Straight out of gym class. Jeez, Michael, who wears tube socks on national television?”
Now, I could get defensive and point out that David Letterman in fact wears sneakers on his show every night. I could also argue that as a humor writer and radio talk show host, I should utilize my wardrobe to highlight my hip, happenin’, counterculture role as an irreverent media gadfly of the entrenched political establishment. Kind of a John McCain type, if John McCain didn’t want to beat the crap out of Pat Robertson.
Yes, I could make these arguments, and in fact I did, but to no avail. When I mentioned creating a Michael Graham “look,” my friends just laughed. “You already have a look: geeky white Republican. Now lace up your wingtips, button down your collar and shut up.”
Mel Gibson can wear a black T-shirt with his gray business suit because he’s Mel Gibson, movie star. Woody Allen can show up for an interview in a ratty sweater and beat-up corduroys because he’s Woody Allen, cradle robber. And Jennifer Lopez can attend the Grammy Awards (almost) wearing a decorative shower curtain and a swatch of gauze because—well, because she is so incredibly hot. But me? I can’t catch a break.
I’ve learned my lesson. I’ll be back on TV soon, and though I haven’t a clue as to what the topic is or who the guests will be, please tune in: I’ve got a handmade silk tie that is to die for.
Christmas 1999
It is the only gift you will get this Christmas. And it is the only one you will give.
It is why a pair of socks wrapped in green paper sounds so much like a dinosaur when shaken by a small boy.
It is a middle-aged man, teeth gritted and face darkly red, trying to remain nonchalant as a nubile young saleslady holds up two lacy undergarments and asks him to guess which one will fit his wife.
It is what makes him answer, “The small one.”
It is the vaccination protecting a child’s belief in Santa from the sound of familiar voices in the attic on Christmas Eve.
It is the meaning of the word Pokémon in a seven-year-old’s bedtime prayer.
It is the scent of a crib warmed by a sleeping baby. It is the accompanying memory loss that makes a mother of teenage children lean over that crib and wish she could do it again.
It is why this mother believes any future children would be intelligent, respectful and pleasant.
It is why the street person’s hunger makes him sad instead of angry. And why the five-dollar bill you hurriedly shove into his shaking hand will be spent on a single Big Mac and a twelve-pack of Milwaukee’s Finest.
It is the only reason a married man shaves before coming to bed.
It is what makes his wife believe he’s just trying to improve his personal hygiene.
It is the sudden, listening stillness of a woman’s kitchen at Christmastime when she hears the screen door latch, even though he hasn’t come home in years.
It’s what turns the dollar-store, slave-labor, nylon-haired knockoff into a Ballerina Barbie when touched by six-year-old fingers.
It’s what makes her father blink back a tear and silently promise to give her a real Christmas next year.
It is why he can’t remember making the same promise when she was five.
It is the unexplainable meteorological phenomenon that puts the feel of coming snow in the air each Christmas Eve, even in South Carolina. It’s what presses small noses to windowpanes at bedtime, and causes you to tune in the local weatherman at 11 P.M. . . . just to make sure.
It is why we can’t imagine Christmas dinner without Gramma, and why Gramma sometimes looks up with a start when she hears her name. It’s why she thought, just for a moment, that it was her mother calling.
It is why she isn’t sure that it wasn’t.
It is the sole motivator for your sister to ever touch an oven. Especially after what happened last year.
It is the reason you really, honestly thought you were going to eat that piece of fruitcake when you cut it.
And when she has put your children to bed, stuffed the last bit of wrapping paper into a closet, taken the potpourri off the stove, turned out all the lights in your house and finally falls onto the sofa next to you as you sit quietly before the glistening tree, it is the only thing that can convince you that she might love you half as much as you love her.
It is why she does.
It is the reason women weep. It is the reason men fail. It is why every child, at least once in his life, has wanted to cry at Christmas.
It is as precious as a baby, wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger. It is as painful as a flesh-torn hand and a thorn-crowned head. It is the reason for both.
And if every Santa song and earnest prayer, every sincere gift and imagined wrong, every Christmas dinner and New Year’s toast, every unanswered invitation and unwelcome guest, every office party kiss and happy child’s hug—every human moment of the entire holiday season—could be stripped of its tinsel and pretense and price tag and reduced to its truest essence, we would find it there, the only one gift ever given at Christmas, the same gift, passed from hand to hand.
It is hope.
It is Christmas.
To the American People
Tuesday, November 5, 2024
Election Day
My fellow future Americans:
You are reading this modest collection of late-twentieth-century reminiscences on a day in my not-too-distant future. Many of the events recounted herein will be dimmed, perhaps even lost, before your time.
But as you prepare for this momentous day—Election Day—in the year 2024, I am confident that you will still feel the effects of the decisions that we, the Americans of 2000, made in your stead more than twenty years earlier.
Today, you are watching history in the making as William Jefferson Clinton—an active, healthy, though somewhat hefty man of seventy-eight—stands on the eve of a victorious political campaign for his third nonconsecutive term as president of the United States. As you look excitedly toward the future under the Clinton–Mary Cheney ticket, I hope you find time to also think of us, the generation that gave you this man and his legacy.
We were the generation of Americans who held President Clinton’s fate in our hands. If, back in the 1990s, we had not nurtured him, encouraged him, forgiven him and fostered his dreams of a felony-conviction-free future, there would be no Bill Clinton for you today.
There wouldn’t have been the Clinton-Buchanan administration of 2009–2017, to ride (and perhaps rein in) the surge of American nationalism after Mexico unilaterally annexed itself into our fifty-first through fifty-fifth states. If not for President “America First!” Clinton’s uniquely flexible political philosophy, our country might not have survived the turmoil.
And now in 2024, when our nation needs them most, Bill Clinton and his lovely new bride, Pamela Anderson Lee Clinton, are ready to serve once again. It is disturbing to think of the many times along the way when a single stumble could have denied us the leadership of this great man.
What if the truth about his draft record had come out before New Hampshire? If the truth of the Chinese campaign finance story had surfaced before the ’96 elections? If Ken Starr had granted Monica Lewinsky immunity in January 1998 instead of July? If the second independent counsel, Robert Ray, hadn’t mysteriously committed suicide with Vince Foster’s gun just days before bringing criminal charges against President Clinton? If that Chinese missile hadn’t missed the sorority house where the president was staying the night World War III broke out?
We could have lost the president at any of those moments or at hundreds of others in the national thrill ride that is the Clinton life story. But we didn’t; we hung on. We, the people of America in the last century, simply could not let go.
There were moments we were sorely tempted to look past a president who was a mirror of ourselves. Some said we should look beyond the reflection of Bill Clinton and toward our better selves. We occasionally longed to be a better America, a nation of courageous people who, through self-sacrifice and effort, would lift ourselves beyond our immediate emotions and desires . . . but then Survivor came on and we forgot about it.
But happily, there was Bill Clinton, always willing to take us back into his welcoming, unquestioning arms. He loved us—or at least craved our love—just the way we are.
If there is one lesson we have learned in our time that we could share with you, the Americans of our future, it is this: Bill Clinton isn’t just an American. He is America. He is at once both our fanciful vision of ourselves and an embodiment of who we truly are.
To leave him behind would mean so much more than a change in political parties. It would be to change ourselves, to change our character, to accept the fact that life is frequently difficult, that to be an adult means the deferment of juvenile desires, that our character is not revealed in our intentions, but in our actions.
The American people are not ready to accept that, and neither is Bill Clinton. And as long as we both have each other, we won’t have to.
God bless you, and God bless Bill Clinton’s United States of America.