Another view of the affair...
Nancy
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Alexander Cockburn,ÿ the Nation 8/7/98
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Love and Distraction
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The oddest sound after Bill Clinton admitted that, yes, he had not been entirely forthright about Monica was the complaint by some of his defenders that they felt "let down"...to express dismay now is like reeling back in the fourth act of Don Giovanni at the news that the protagonist is not a sound family man...
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There was grave talk of the 'agony' of the past seven months, of the "distraction" of the Lewsinsky affair, whimperings that we return to "the important issues".
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What important issues? This country's political culture is dedicated to the refusal to discuss any such issues or even to admit they exist...
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But it also can and should be said that Clinton summoned up the finest, most enlightened instincts of the American people, who, despite the outraged squawks of the better element, have refused to see anything particularly awful in his fling with Monica. It is a glorious moment in the centuries-long struggle against the window-peepers and Puritans who have blighted so many lives.ÿ In this sense, an exhibit in the Smithsonian of Bill's DNA on Monica's dress woud be a fitting and honorable legacy.
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"Between the crisis and the catastrophe," said Mikail Koltzov to my father at Munich time in 1939, "we may as well drink a glass of champagne." Monica, so zaftig and endearing, has been our champagne.ÿ With any luck, Bill Clinton's impeachment will be our caviar.ÿ How I yearn for it!ÿ To watch Newt Gingrich and Henry Hyde and Orrin Hatch pacing the battlements of moral rectitude will be as heady a tonic as was the French revolution to young Wordsworth.ÿ Bliss it is in this dawn to be alive!ÿ It could be as great a carnival of hypocrisy as this nation has ever seen.
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