More Kelly (the guy who lost his job at the New Republic because he insisted on telling the truth):
Would You Believe He's a Victim?
By Michael Kelly
Wednesday, February 18, 1998; Page A21
Much in the discussion of whatever transpired between Monica Lewinsky
and Bill Clinton has been repulsive, but the performance of the president's
defenders on "Meet the Press" last Sunday was a benchmark.
The height of the performance came when Tim Russert asked Arkansas
columnist and Clinton apologist Gene Lyons this question: "Do you believe
that the amount of circumstantial evidence that has been produced thus far
-- 37 visits from Monica Lewinsky to the White House after she left, gifts
being sent in, recordings on her home answering machine from the
president, job offers at the United Nations, a job at the Pentagon, Revlon
company, at American Express -- does that create, in your mind, some
concern that there may have been an inappropriate relationship between
the president and Monica Lewinsky?"
Lyons admitted that no one would believe him if he claimed the evidence
did not raise such a concern. With that wisp of a demurral out of the way,
he went on to posit an alternative reading of the evidence: "a totally
innocent relationship in which the president was, in a sense, the victim of
someone rather like the woman who followed David Letterman around."
He added: "There's no evidence that I've seen so far that would indicate
anything else. If you take someone like the president, who a lot of women
would find attractive if he came to fix their garbage disposal, and you make
him the president of the United States, the Alpha male of the United States
of America, and you sexualize his image with a lot of smears and false
accusations so that people think he's Tom Jones or Rod Stewart, then a
certain irreducible number of women are going to act batty around him.
And I'm not talking about her personally; I'm saying that's a prediction.
And so there's every possibility, with what we've seen, that this could be
an entirely innocent affair."
So, there you have the latest variation of what the president's spin 'n' smear
artists like to call an "alternative narrative" in the Lewinsky matter. The
president is a victim of Monica the Stalker (not that Lyons was talking
about Lewinsky "personally"; no, no, as the clever man was careful to say,
we're just musing out loud here about "predictions"). Well, of course it
makes perfect sense. She's a woman, isn't she? And Clinton is a man, isn't
he? And he's not any man, but the sort of man "a lot of women would find
attractive if he came to fix their garbage disposal." And we know what
women do with hunky garbage-disposal repairmen, don't we, boys? Of
course, we do; Penthouse tells us. What's more, Clinton is not, in fact, a
lowly repairman of household appliances. Why, he's "the Alpha male of the
United States of America," in the presence of whom "a certain irreducible
number of women are going to act batty" and fall deluded to long-running,
highly detailed fantasies in which they are obliged to perform hurried,
loveless acts of sexual service upon His Alphaship, and are then cast aside.
Again, as every Penthouse reader knows, the stuff of every schoolgirl's
dreams.
The poor man. The poor victim. My God, how he must have suffered.
Stalked through the halls of his own home, and nowhere to turn for
protection. Nothing standing between him and a 21-year-old stalker armed
with -- well never mind what she was armed with. Nothing except for his
wife, his chief of staff, his deputy chief of staff, his secretary, his personal
assistant, his special assistants, his National Security Council, his Marine
guard, three dozen or so Secret Service agents and the Joint Chiefs of
Staff. What's a president to do with a stalker but give her gifts, find her a
lawyer and advance her career?
The president has offered, sequentially, three reasons why he cannot
himself say what happened: that he had to gather the facts; that he could
not speak because of the rules of the courts; and that he dare not speak for
fear that Ken Starr would twist his words against him. None of these
arguments makes sense if Clinton's relationship with Lewinsky was, as
Gene Lyons put it, "a totally innocent affair." They all make sense, though,
if Clinton needs time to see what all the evidence against him is before he
presents the official alternative narrative.
Leon Panetta, Clinton's former White House chief of staff, said this
weekend that the president "at some point . . . has got to tell the American
people the truth of what was behind this relationship." Some point is now.
By allowing his apparatchiks to continue to float "predictions" and lies and
smears on his behalf, Clinton not only debases himself, he debases the
presidency. If there is a true alternative narrative, the president must
present it, before more damage is done.
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