Men's club salutes Clinton with cigars
11:04 a.m. ET (1505 GMT) October 1, 1998
RIO DE JANEIRO — Rio de Janeiro's unconventional men's club, the Pranksters Fraternity, paid tribute to President Clinton Wednesday by smoking cigars and toasting him with bourbon at the U.S. Consulate.
The 13 members, who say they represent the spirit of men across Brazil, chose National Secretary's Day to show support for Clinton and protest against investigations into his extramarital affair with a former White House intern.
"Each time they mess with him our stock market falls and our pockets are emptied,'' Pranksters Fraternity chairman Nelson Couto said in downtown Rio. "This is an act of peace and solidarity with Clinton.''
Decked out in white uniforms with bow ties, the group raised a white flag representing peace on a light pole in front of the U.S. consulate and played the American national anthem with trumpets and trombones.
The group has been doing satire since it was founded 25 years ago. It is made of middle-class businessmen, including shopkeepers and restaurant owners. They are well known in Rio, Brazil's culture capital, for capturing the mood of the moment. They appear in public about once a month.
Most Brazilians are sympathetic to the U.S. president and he got 81 percent approval ratings in local opinion polls taken after independent counsel Kenneth Starr released a report detailing Clinton's relationship with Monica Lewinsky.
Starr's report alleges perjury in connection with lying about the affair under oath and obstruction of justice in urging others to lie about it.
The same polls found that almost all — 95 percent — of Brazilian men backed him.
Some of sexual encounters explained in the Starr report have amused Brazilians, particularly one involving a cigar, and there have been nonstop jokes, cartoons and skits about Clinton smoking cigars.
But the main irritant for Brazilians in the Lewinsky investigation has been the uncertainty it added to unstable financial markets at a time when Latin America's biggest economy was at risk of sliding down the drain.
As the scandal unfolded, local traders started calling unexplained share price changes "Lewinsky movements''.
Rio adopted Clinton as a native son in 1997 when he visited and gamely participated in the city's two major passions: soccer and samba dancing
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