CLINTON'S THE MAN!
New York Press ^ | 20 August 2005 | Russel Smith
There was a time, not so long ago, that the thought of reading one more obsequious profile of Bill Clinton was so abhorrent that I'd gladly sit through three consecutive screenings of an Adam Sandler movie instead. However, the media's mass thumb-sucking on Cindy Sheehan's antics at "Camp Casey" in the past two weeks left me actually savoring every word of Jennifer Senior's Aug. 22 New York article about her African trip with Clinton as a prescribed balm from the likes of Maureen Dowd, Eleanor Clift and, need you ask, Frank Rich.
Mind you, this odd occurrence must be understood in context. Senior's mash note to the man she claims "is still adored abroad" and "still considered president by the nation's estranged, bluer half" is indeed rough sledding, but since Clinton doesn't really matter anymore (unless he screws up Hillary's presidential campaign), it's the political equivalent of reading about Jennifer Aniston's hairdo or watching Katie Couric make a fool of herself each weekday morning.
The star-struck Senior recounts an evening with Bill in Mozambique—she's delighted that the alleged leader of the free world gave her "shoulder a squeeze"—in which the atmosphere was richer, and just as nauseating, as a triple-scoop "cookie dough" ice cream cone. She coos: "He's a furious chatterer; talking in uninterrupted spurts; interjections are difficult, rejoinders impossible. His unscripted conversation is a combination of highbrow and bawdy, shrewd and reassuringly profane."
Why profanity is "reassuring" is beyond me—maybe that's a silly dig at perceptions of George W. Bush—but perhaps the writer was afraid that Clinton's weird if calculated buddy routine with the president's father had neutered his Arkansan roots. Watching Bill work a crowd in Zanzibar, Senior makes the following observation: "One gets a perspective now that Ken Starr's cloying legion of moralists could never fully appreciate: To Clinton, the world's a seascape of temptations." Marc Rich and Sandy Berger, of course, acted on many temptations as well, but there's no need to revisit those old chestnuts. |
