by Gore Vidal
But, no. We are assured that the moral chaos is the result of sexual education and “littering,” as the ad puts it, “the swamp” with “condoms that for about the past five years have been dispensed by adults running our high schools . . . or by machines located in, by coincidence, the bathroom.” Presumably, the confessional would be a better venue, if allowed. So, on the one hand, it is bad, as we all agree, for a woman to give birth and then abandon a baby; but then too, it’s wrong, for some metaphysical reason, to help prevent such a birth from taking place. There is no sense of cause/effect when these geese start honking. Of course, t.w.m.i.p. has its own agendum: Outside marriage, no sex of any kind for the lower classes and a policing of everyone, including generals and truly valuable people, thanks to the same liberals who now “forbid nothing and punish anything.” This is spaceship-back-of-the-comet reasoning.
The sensible code observed by all the world (except for certain fundamentalist monotheistic Jews, Christians, and Muslims) is that “consensual” relations in sexual matters are no concern of the state. The United States has always been backward in these matters, partly because of its Puritan origins and partly because of the social arrangements arrived at during several millennia of family-intensive agrarian life, rudely challenged a mere century ago by the Industrial Revolution and the rise of the cities and, lately, by the postindustrial work-world of services in which “safe” prostitution should have been, by now, a bright jewel.
Although the “screed” (a favorite right-wing word) in the Times ad is mostly rant and not to be taken seriously, the spirit behind all this blather is interestingly hypocritical. T.w.m.i.p. is not interested in morality. In fact, any company that can increase quarterly profits through the poisoning of a river is to be treasured. But the piece does reflect a certain unease that the people at large, most visibly through sex, may be trying to free themselves from their masters, who grow ever more insolent and exigent in their prohibitions—one strike and you’re out is their dirty little secret. In mid-screed, the paper almost comes to the point: “Very simply [sic], what we’re suggesting here is that the code of sexual behavior formerly set down by established religion in the U.S. more or less kept society healthy, unlike the current manifest catastrophe.” There it is. Where is Norman Lear, creator of Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, now that we need him? Visualize on the screen gray clapboard, slate-colored sky, omni-ous (as Darryl Zanuck used to say) music. Then a woman’s plaintive voice calling “Hester Prynne, Hester Prynne!” as the screen fills with a pulsing scarlet “A.”
So arrière-garde that it is often avant-garde, t.w.m.i.p. is actually on to something. Although I shouldn’t think anyone on its premises has heard of the eighteenth-century Neapolitan scholar Vico, our readers will recall that Vico, working from Plato, established various organic phases in human society. First, Chaos. Then Theocracy. Then Aristocracy. Then Democracy—but as republics tend to become imperial and tyrannous, they collapse and we’re back to Chaos and to its child Theocracy, and a new cycle. Currently, the United States is a mildly chaotic imperial republic headed for the exit, no bad thing unless there is a serious outbreak of Chaos, in which case a new age of religion will be upon us. Anyone who ever cared for our old Republic, no matter how flawed it always was with religious exuberance, cannot not prefer Chaos to the harsh rule of Theocrats. Today, one sees them at their savage worst in Israel and in certain Islamic countries, like Afghanistan, etc. Fortunately, thus far their social regimentation is still no match for the universal lust for consumer goods, that brave new world at the edge of democracy. As for Americans, we can still hold the fort against our very own praying mantises—for the most part, fundamentalist Christians abetted by a fierce, decadent capitalism in thrall to totalitarianism as proclaimed so saucily in The New York Times of June 18, 1997.
The battle line is now being drawn. Even as the unfortunate “girl” in New Jersey was instructing the deejay, the Christian right was organizing itself to go after permissiveness in entertainment. On June 18 the Southern Baptists at their annual convention denounced the Disney company and its TV network, ABC, for showing a lesbian as a human being, reveling in Pulp Fiction violence, flouting Christian family values. I have not seen the entire bill of particulars (a list of more than 100 “properties” to be boycotted was handed out), but it all sounds like a pretrial deposition from Salem’s glory days. Although I have criticized in these pages the Disney cartel for its media domination, I must now side with the challenged octopus.
This is the moment for Disney to throw the full weight of its wealth at the Baptists, who need a lesson in constitutional law they will not soon forget. They should be brought to court on the usual chilling-of-First-Amendment grounds as well as for restraint of trade. Further, and now let us for once get to the root of the matter. The tax exemptions for the revenues of all the churches from the Baptists to the equally absurd—and equally mischievous—Scientologists must be removed.
The original gentlemen’s agreement between Church and State was that We the People (the State) will in no way help or hinder any religion while, absently, observing that as religion is “a good thing,” the little church on Elm Street won’t have to pay a property tax. No one envisaged that the most valuable real estate at the heart of most of our old cities would be tax-exempt, as churches and temples and orgone boxes increased their holdings and portfolios. The quo for this huge quid was that religion would stay out of politics and not impose its superstitions on Us the People. The agreement broke down years ago. The scandalous career of the Reverend Presidential Candidate Pat Robertson is a paradigm.
As Congress will never act, this must be a grass-roots movement to amend the Constitution, even though nothing in the original First Amendment says a word about tax exemptions or any other special rights to churches, temples, orgone boxes. This is a useful war for Disney to fight, though I realize that the only thing more cowardly than a movie studio or TV network is a conglomerate forced to act in the open. But if you don’t, Lord Mouse, it will be your rodentian ass 15.7 million Baptists will get, not to mention the asses of all the rest of us.
The Nation
21 July 1997
* COUP DE STARR
Like so many observers of the mysterious Starr Ship that President Clinton seemed to sink so gracefully on television, I was mystified by the marauding pirates’ inability to go for any loot other than details of his indecorous sex life, a matter of no great interest to anyone but partisans of the far right and a press gone mad with bogus righteousness. But along with mystification over the pirates’ obsession with whether or not a blow job is sex (neatly finessed by Clinton because the wise judge in the Paula Jones case had forgotten to include lips in her court’s menu of blue-plate delights), I had a sense that I had, somehow, been through something like this once before. Where had I stumbled over the notion that a presidential election could be overthrown because of sexual behavior that is not a crime, at least beyond the city limits of Atlanta, Georgia? Sex as politics. Politics as sex. Sex Is Politics. Then I remembered. In January 1979 I had written a piece in Playboy with that title, because something new was happening in American politics back then.
The ERA and gay rights were, at that time, under fire. . . . At that time! Clinton’s support for women and gays, at the beginning of his first term, was more than enough to launch the Starr Ship. But twenty years ago, the right had already vowed that so-called valence issues would be its principal choice of weapon. Or, as a member of the Conservative Caucus put it then, with engaging candor, “We’re going after people on the basis of their hot buttons.” In other words, sex, sex, sex. Save the Family and Save Our Children were the slogans of that moment, and one Richard Viguerie was the chief money raiser for the powers of darkness. “Viguerie is not just a hustler,” I wrote in Playboy. “He is also an ideologue.” He was thinking of creating a new political party. “I have raised millions of dollars for the conservative movement over the years,” he said, “and I am not happy with the re
sult. I decided to become more concerned with how the money is spent.” Viguerie was working with a group called Gun Owners of America.
Another of Viguerie’s clients is Utah’s Senator Orrin Hatch, a proud and ignorant man who is often mentioned as a possible candidate for President if the far right should start a new political party. . . . “I want,” says Viguerie, “a massive assault on Congress in 1978. I don’t want any token efforts. We now have the talent and the resources to move in a bold, massive way. I think we can move against Congress in 1978 in a way that’s never been conceived of.”
I duly noted that this sounded like revolution.
As it was, the bold, massive move against Congress did not take place until 1994, thanks to the twelve-year Reagan/Bush snooze, capped by Clinton’s political ineptitude. But now that the Man from Hope has gained a personal, if temporary, victory against our would-be revolutionaries, I suggest that before the obligatory Capitol Reichstag fire, a charge of treason be brought against Kenneth Starr. Since all sovereignty rests with We the People, Starr’s attempt to overthrow the presidential elections of 1992 and 1996 constitutes a bold, massive blow at the American people themselves: a unique attempt in our history and one that must be swiftly addressed in order to discover just who his co-conspirators are and how best to undo their plots. Yes, Hillary, there was—and there is—a right-wing plot with deep roots. Meanwhile, Senator Orrin Hatch, do you solemnly swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you Moroni?
The Nation
26 October 1998
* STARR CONSPIRACY
On August 17 the forty-second president of the United States, William Jefferson Clinton, will commit what could be a fatal political error by allowing himself to be questioned under oath by a special prosecutor, Kenneth W. Starr, who has taken over four years and spent 40 million taxpayer dollars in trying to prove that Mr. Clinton must be guilty of something or other and so should be impeached by the House of Representatives and tried and convicted by the Senate (as the Constitution requires) for what the peculiar Mr. Starr will argue is a high crime or misdemeanor, like treason or taking bribes or insufficient racial bigotry.
Foreigners are mystified by the whole business while thought-ful Americans—there are several of us—are equally mystified that the ruling establishment of the country has proved to be so mindlessly vindictive that it is willing, to be blunt, to overthrow the lawful government of the United States—that is, a president elected in 1992 and reelected in 1996 by We the People, that sole source of all political legitimacy, which takes precedence over the Constitution and the common law and God himself. This last was a concept highly uncongenial to the enlightened eighteenth-century founders but not, we are told, to a onetime judge of meager intellectual capacity but deep faith in all the superstitions that ruling classes encourage the lower orders to believe so that they will not question authority.
First, what is the president guilty of? Attempts to prove that he did something criminal fifteen years ago in Arkansas in a real estate deal came to nothing. Undeterred, Mr. Starr kept on searching for “high crime and misdemeanors” as the Constitution puts it. Had one of Clinton’s associates in the White House been murdered, possibly by Mrs. Clinton, said to be his mistress? This “murder” was found to be a suicide, the result of depression brought on by savage attacks from a fascist newspaper called The Wall Street Journal. The restless Starr moved on to other areas. Meanwhile, in 1994, Congress became Republican and political partisans are now reveling in the political paralysis of the Democratic White House. According to Starr, the fate of the Republic now depends upon whether or not Clinton lied under oath when he denied having had sexual relations with a White House intern, Monica Lewinsky, assuming anyone can define, satisfactorily, a sexual relation. Does a blow job performed on a passive president, idly daydreaming of the budget, count as intercourse? Finally, semanticists are stuck with the English word “intercourse.” Inter means between at least two people. Intra would be what we call a gang bang, not practical in the Oval Office unless sturdy Secret Service lads join in. Did they? As I write, the nation awaits the laboratory analysis of what is, according to Monica, a presidential semen stain on her elegant blue dress, carefully preserved so that, when her time comes, she can take her place in history alongside if not Joan of Arc, Charlotte Corday.
A few years ago two pollsters did an elaborate study of a wide spectrum of the American population. Many questions were asked on many subjects. The results were published in a book called The Day America Told the Truth, not a confidence-inspiring title when over 90 percent of those polled confessed to being “habitual liars.” That the president of such an electorate should lie about sex makes him more sympathetic than not. Certainly, if so irrelevant a question was asked of George Washington, he would have run Mr. Starr through with his sword while Abraham Lincoln would have thrown him out the window. But irrelevance is now the American condition, both as a global empire and incoherent domestic polity. Two thirds of all the world’s lawyers are American and they have made a highly profitable, for them, mess of our legal system. They could not prove, in the Fifties, that Alger Hiss had been a spy for the Soviet so they sent him to prison on an unconvincing perjury charge. Al Capone was never convicted of murder or extortion: he was put in jail for income tax evasion. This is law in its decadence.
After four years, Starr has found no crime that Clinton has committed except denying a sexual relationship with Monica which she has already said, under oath, never took place but now says, under oath and with a wink from Starr for her previous perjury, did take place. The president cannot be indicted by a civil grand jury. He need not speak to Starr, who is, ironically, his employee. The president’s attorney general, Janet Reno, with the connivance of two right-wing senators (one is Jesse Helms, tobacco’s best friend) and a panel of three right-wing judges, came up with Starr as special prosecutor to investigate, originally, Whitewater and then anything else that might undo the results of two presidential elections.
What is behind this vendetta against Clinton, a popular president? First, the most powerful emotion in American political life is the undying hatred of certain whites for all blacks. For American blacks, Clinton is white knight. Arkansas is also a southern state where the Ku Klux Klan is still a force. When the schools were desegregated in the Fifties, a battle line was drawn. A former judge and a member of the White Citizens Council known as “Justice” Jim Johnson waged a war against blacks in general and Clinton in particular. “Justice Jim” is also associated with someone The Observer (U.K.) calls “a convicted fraudster,” David Hale, in charge of the “Arkansas Project,” funded by a conservative billionaire named Richard Mellon Scaife. This brings us to the Clintons’ other nemesis: the wealthy conservative ruling class. In order to avoid taxation, they have through their lawyers, both in and out of government, placed their capital in tax-free foundations for “charitable” purposes. But to have such a foundation one must never use it to meddle in politics. But Mr. Scaife does meddle. He gives money to such disreputable papers as The American Spectator, which has published numerous wild stories about the Clintons. A year or so ago, Mr. Scaife rewarded Starr with a professorship at Pepperdine University, which Starr accepted and then, as the publicity was bad, he hastily returned to his war on Clinton. Presumably, he will be paid off by Scaife once his holy work is done. Every society gets the Titus Oates it deserves.
Mrs. Clinton is correct when she says that there is a right-wing conspiracy against them. Unfortunately for her, Americans have been trained by media to go into Pavlovian giggles at the mention of the word “conspiracy” because for an American to believe in a conspiracy he must also believe in flying saucers or, craziest of all, that more than one person was involved in the JFK murder. Mrs. Clinton, perhaps, emphasizes too heavily the “right-wing” aspect of her enemies. It is corporate America, quite wingless in political as opposed to money matters, that declared war on the Clintons in 1993 when the innocent
couple tried to give the American people a national health service, something every civilized country has but we must never enjoy because the insurance companies now get one third of the money spent on health care and the insurance companies are the piggy banks—the cash cows—of corporate America.
In order to destroy the health service plan, insurance and pharmaceutical companies, in tandem with lively elements of the American Medical Association, conspired to raise a half billion dollars to create and then air a barrage of TV advertisements to convince the electorate that such a service was Communist, not to mention an affront to the Darwinian principle that every American has the right to die unhelped by the state, which collects half his income in life with which to buy, thus far, five and a half trillion dollars worth of military hardware at stupendous—to this day—cost. Then, not content with the political destruction of the Clintons’ health plan, corporate America decided to destroy their reputations. Nothing personal in this, by the way. But how else can the ownership of the country send a warning to other feckless politicians that the country and its people exist only to make money for corporations now so internationalized that they cannot be made to pay tax on much—if any—of their profits. Starr is now the most visible agent of corporate America wielding a new weapon under the sun: endless legal harassment of a twice-elected President so that he cannot exercise his office as first magistrate.
All sovereignty in the United States rests, most vividly, on the concept of “We the People of the United States” (with the sometime addition of “in Congress Assembled”). The Constitution, the common law, and even the wealth of corporate America or the rage of lumpen white Americans against the blacks must bow to this great engine which could, through a constitutional convention, sweep into limbo all our current arrangements. President John Adams wanted a republic not of men but of laws. He could not have foreseen the madness of our present condition with everyone at law and expensive prisons filling up while a partisan lawyer, through legal harassment, is busy undoing the presidential elections of 1992 and 1996 because his paymasters did not like the results.