My Exit Strategy nytimes.com
In which acid tongued Maureen Dowd lets 'em all have it. I will grossly violate copyright and send out the whole thing, it even has an apropos SNL reference for the numerous fans of the truly tasteless here. Although she writes for the good gray Times, Dowd has not been at all kind to Clinton in the last year, but I'm sure that wouldn't keep anyone here from calling her a White House agent or something. I'm sure the whole thing will stumble on for a few weeks more, to the diminishing delight of a few and the ever increasing disgust of many more. To each his own.
Cheers, Dan, in a matter of speaking.
It was many, many, many hours into the dullest day in Washington history.
Ken Starr was giving that spooky smile of his and droning on with starchy phrases like "possible potential offenses," "at a fairly high level of generality," "not in a person-specific way" and, of course, his irritating tag for almost every observation, "and the like."
Detailing his endless, fruitless pursuit of Bill Clinton, he was like a prissy Elmer Fudd. I'll get that siwwy wabbit . . . and the wike!
One could only hope that Maxine Waters, the gentle lady from California, would completely lose it and lunge for the prosecutor's neck.
This pathetic scandal is like one of those unfunny "Saturday Night Live" skits that go on too long and get painful to watch.
The players are no longer thinking impeachment; they're just scrambling to save their credibility.
The Flummoxed Henry Hyde was flailing to keep alive the myth of the Judicious Henry Hyde, as he is routinely described. As Mr. Starr was spinning and grinning, Sam Dash was making a mad dash.
Monica was holed up in L.A., watching her griller on the grill and preparing to spin and sob on TV with Barbara Walters and in print with Princess Di's biographer. The wacky right-wing blondes who hope to give conservatism legs and the Clinton apologists were still throwing food at each other on cable, but who could stomach it?
We need an exit strategy. I have one.
We must suspend disbelief, and cynicism, and give every single unappetizing character in this morality play the benefit of the doubt. They are all shy, enigmatic, cruelly misunderstood creatures.
Bill Clinton: O.K., he was just mentoring her. He threw her across the desk and mentored her 'till dawn, as Michael Kinsley once wrote about another office romance. Besides, this most pastoral of Presidents was really only ministering to a troubled young soul in his flock. Besides, he was under a lot of pressure from the rabid pursuit of Independent Counsel Javert and needed an outlet real bad. Besides, he didn't really lie under oath because the sex was too lame to count.
Besides, he couldn't tell the truth because it would hurt his wife and daughter. Besides, it is none of our business. Besides, it depends on what the definition of "is" is. Besides, the stock market's zooming up again.
Kenneth W. Starr, Esquire: The counselor wasn't sex-crazed. He was just a lawyer in love with the law, the blind mistress with scales who sang a siren song and lured him deeper and deeper into investigating the romance between the President and the intern. He did not have any animus toward Mr. Clinton. For Pete's sake, he let him off the hook (O.K., so it was after the election) on Travelgate and Filegate and might yet let him off the hook on Whitewater. It wasn't an obsession because he was hardly even involved in that four-year, $40 million marathon. He revealed at the hearing that he didn't attend any of the grand-jury questioning or depositions and did not even bother to meet Monica. His goons only manhandled Monica's mother, interrogated a schoolchild, investigated a witness's adoption of a foreign child and held Monica hostage at a shopping mall in pursuit of almighty facts. Monica's 10 hours in mall custody were a nice little "sojourn" for her, as David Kendall put it, and Monica was still able to shop and visit the food court under F.B.I. supervision.
Monica Lewinsky: She was only trying to adjust her thong underwear, not flash it. She really did have some fresh ideas on education reform. The Big Creep just wasn't listening.
House Republicans: They only meant to give the President a good scare, not drive him from office. They always understood it would be the height of hypocrisy to lynch the President for an office romance given the fact that so many members of Congress fool around with their own nubile aides and shed their first wives to marry babes who work in their offices.
House Democrats: Never mind the President's perjury and obstruction of justice and witness tampering and abuse of power. Parliamentary procedure was at stake -- not to mention Mr. Kendall's shot at prime time.
Linda Tripp: She really needed to tape her best friend, a vulnerable young woman in need of guidance, because -- oh good Lord, forget it. This one is indefensible. |
