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Politics : Clinton's Scandals: Is this corruption the worst ever? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: cool who wrote (7016)	9/26/1998 10:34:00 AM
From: dougjn	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 13994

Although Salon is certainly not a mass publication mainstream journal, it seems increasingly obvious that an unintended consequence of Starr's no-holds-barred attack on Clinton in his referral is greatly increased candor in our national discussions about sex. This was happening in the sixties and early seventies, but then came to be greatly rolled back through the one two punches of the resurgent religious fundamentalists and even more importantly, the rise of neo-Puritanism among many of the (by then aging) feminists. The following is (slightly) redacted to somewhat mitigate the offense it may give to some parties. Although with the precedent of Starr's report established, I'm not sure why I bothered. The impeach-him mob's lamentations about the sordidness of the details and the agony of explaining "oral sex" to little Sally or Dylan are especially laughable, because unrequited head and cigar play are certainly more common on Capitol Hill than in Peoria. The rest of the country generally can't get b[*] jobs from pretty groupies, but they're turning out not to mind that Clinton can. We've all known about Clinton's adultery and the lying that accompanies it for years, and nobody believed his denials about Lewinsky back in January. The only news in the Starr Report is the steamy stuff, and it looks now like people's emotional reaction to that will decide the president's fate. Monica and the president explored an amazing span of fellatial landscape over the course of those nine "encounters." Monica's immediate eagerness to s[] presidential d[] offsets the encounters' one-sidedness and makes her seem less victim, more vixen. The b[] j[] the president got while he talked on the phone were a puerile celebration of power, but they also formed a secret alliance between the president and the intern -- the joke was on the lawmakers on the line, not on Monica. Her pathetic, poignant query between b[] j[] No. 4 and 5 -- "Is this just about sex ... or do you have some interest in trying to get to know me as a person?" -- represents a complicated power shift in the relationship: Her acknowledgment that she is in thrall to him pressures him, and he acknowledges his own thrall with 45 minutes of conversation after b[] j[] 6. Starr miscalculated by including such homely details in his opus, because they end up humanizing Monica and Schmucko, not demonizing them. The strangest motif in the Starr Report has to be our ever-dualistic president's withholding of his bodily fluids, which combined tantric control with Christian guilt and courtly consideration with emotional withholding. His pullouts are the sexual equivalent of "I didn't inhale": the president once again having his cake, eating it because he can, then rationalizing that it's OK because he couldn't really taste it. But again, we already knew this about him. The only thing more strange than Clinton's paranoia about giving up the presidential jizz is that his fears were eventually vindicated. It shows a real knack on his part for finding the worst angels of our natures. Clinton's consistently high approval ratings make sense in a cynical age. He is so responsive to polls that judging him is like judging ourselves, and we don't seem to expect much from either party. Now that the decision to impeach rests with the public, we the people can do our part to counter Washington's punitive, joyless and false take on sex. Because Clinton can't express anything until it's been vetted, he needs us to tell him that we care more about his policy making than his sex life. He needs us to acknowledge (because he can't) that this is how men in power behave. He needs to hear that b[] j[**] are OK. SALON \| Sept. 25, 1998