2. Starr seems to be on what could be called a fishing expedition, if you fish with dynamite.
3. Starr is so sleazy he is actually on the trail of a Clinton love child! One Arkansas state trooper was reportedly asked whether a certain woman had given birth to a child, and did “it look like” Clinton?
Lessee. Chubby cheeks and face, a nose like Silly Putty. What baby doesn’t look like Bill Clinton?
Maybe Starr feels he has to do something dramatic because he made such a fool of himself a few months ago when he announced he was leaving Whitewater to become dean of the law school at Pepperdine University, which he described as a “once-in-a-lifetime” job offer.
Pepperdine is in Malibu, California, overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Other schools award Ph.D.s. Pepperdine awards SPFs. Starr may as well have become dean of french fries at McDonald’s Hamburger University.
Going after someone important for seemingly minor, unrelated charges is a tried-and-true tactic of law enforcement officials; remember that the feds didn’t nail Capone for murder or racketeering—they got him for income tax evasion. But this is ridiculous. Focusing the Whitewater investigation on Clinton’s sex life is like going after O. J. Simpson by trying to prove he illegally disconnected the catalytic converter on his Bronco.
Starr’s tactics are so cheesy that next to him, Clinton looks like Gandhi.
Starr says his rationale is that a person might spill intimate criminal details during pillow talk. This seems improbable to me. It is hard to imagine the conversation:
“Oh, baby, you make my knees knock. Your teeth are like pearls. Your eyes are like limpid pools. Hey, did I tell you that I just made $230,000 selling a nine-acre tract of barren land in violation of Banking Regulation RM-8750, Subsection 1-W?”
I don’t think so. Speaking of the law, you’ll remember that last week I wrote that although I was available for jury duty, I hadn’t yet been called to the courthouse. Well, this week I was. I was part of a jury pool of about sixty people for a cocaine trafficking trial. The judge explained the allegations and read us a series of fifteen questions. If you said yes to any of them, you then got a chance to explain your answers to the judge and the attorneys for the prosecution and defense. The questions were straightforward, such as: Have you seen the defendant before? Have you seen the lawyers before? Does anybody in your family work in law enforcement? Do you believe the government when it says that no spaceship landed at Roswell, and those aliens were really just crash dummies, even though eyewitnesses said they spoke in a musical cadence and ingested water through their spinal columns?
I answered yes to one question: Were you the victim of a crime in the last ten years? (Yes, my car was stolen a few years ago. And my editor is killing me.) I was worried about the man sitting to my left. He said yes to eleven of the fifteen questions, including: Is there any reason why you could not sit on this jury because you don’t believe in the American judicial system? Of all the juries in the world, Che Guevara has to walk into mine.
Anyway, I went to talk to the judge, and I explained that my car was once stolen. And the judge asked me, “Is there any reason that experience would make it hard for you to judge this defendant?” I smiled and said, “Not unless it was him who stole my car.”
I explained how the police found my car quickly, and the defense attorney asked, “Do you feel beholden to the police?” I said, “No, but they did a good job.” And the defense attorney said, with some irritation, “That’s twice you’ve mentioned the police now.” And I said, “Well, they got my car back. I thought I ought to disclose that. Would you feel better if I had said that the local chapter of the United Mine Workers recovered my car?”
At that moment I sensed I was not going to be put on the jury. Guess what? I was right.
Sweatin’ the Small Stuff
So far the funniest thing I’ve heard since the Starr report hit the fan was when Bill Clinton urged the public not to “get mired in the details here.”
I love that. It’s exactly what I would have said if there was a 443-page report about me, and on 442 of those pages was the phrase “unzipped his pants.”
I’d want to go in a different direction, too.
“My fellow Americans, how ’bout Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire, huh? Man, they’re slamming the ball. And those Yankees? Geddoudahere. Thank you, and good night. Drive safely. Go and sin no more.”
So let’s forget about all those pesky, squishy details. Who needs a nation thigh-high in the spinach dip? (Says my friend Nancy: “I’ll never look at spinach dip the same again.”)
I’ve been avoiding reading footnotes ever since college, and this is no time to start parsing Ken Starr’s report for references to Altoids and cigars. Does anyone really need to know that Monica Lewinsky had the most torrid relationship with a Cuban since Lucille Ball?
In fact, if I might be, ahem, blunt, I think we’ve all heard enough about the president’s position on young people’s tobacco use.
(I can’t help it. Every time I hear the word “cigar” now, I think of the line Groucho Marx used on his quiz show to a female contestant who’d borne fifteen children: “Madam, I like my cigar, but I take it out of my mouth once in a while.”)
David Kendall, the president’s lawyer, has been trying to distract the public, too—with his face. The sides don’t match; it looks like something Picasso painted.
Of course Clinton tried to use Czech Republic president Vaclav Havel for cover the other day at their joint news conference. Havel was here to speak about the potato harvest and NATO enlargement. The White House press corps kept questioning Clinton about engorged tubers.
Havel delivered careful, one-sentence answers like he was the Prague Yoda or something. But he got his own laughs. After all, it was his idea to invite Lou “Take a Walk on the Wild Side” Reed to play the White House state dinner.
Clinton will take whatever cover he can get at this point. He has made it known that he’s receiving “pastoral care” from a roster of clergymen that grows every day. He’s surrounded by more priests than the Notre Dame football team. Except they’re protecting interns from offensive lines.
Clinton has suggested there could be a bright side to this whole thing because it could serve as “a learning experience.” I know plenty of guys who are ready to enroll at Clinton University. (Syllabus: all the good parts in Delta of Venus and Tropic of Cancer. School Motto: “Ladies Drink Free.”)
And I’m personally ready to pledge his frat, I Phelta Thi.
If you think the release of the president’s videotaped testimony will hurt him, wait until porn stars start doing live reenactments of the Starr report on cable access.
Wow. Who in the government would watch that? I mean, besides Clarence Thomas?
But that, at least, would be more exciting than CNBC, CNN, and MSNBC, all of which are rapidly becoming the Impeachment Channel with Greta Van Susteren and Joe diGenova.
Geraldo Rivera has moved the most seamlessly from the days of all-O.J., all the time to all-Monica, all the time. Geraldo sits there, slamming into Clinton like a hurricane for having demeaned the presidency with his cheap sex obsession—the same Geraldo who wrote gleefully in his autobiography that he had sex with the wife of Senator Jacob Javits in her mirrored bathroom and shagged the ex-wife of the prime minister of Canada in a rowboat in Central Park.
The other night political consultant Ed Rollins proclaimed to Geraldo, “I care about adultery. Adultery broke up my marriage.”
Geraldo attempted to comfort Rollins by declaring, “You were victimized by adultery. I have victimized by adultery.”
Thanks for sharing, guys. Now go back into the forest and beat on some drums.
But the worst revelations lately are the sexual confessions of members of Congress. As kids we thought there was nothing worse than picturing your parents doing it. Now I have to imagine Helen Chenoweth, Dan Burton, and Henry Hyde checking in for a threesome at Plato’s Retreat.
Last week Hyde refer
red to an affair thirty years back as a “youthful indiscretion.” He was forty-one when it began. Hank, get outta here, the window on your youthful indiscretions closed during the Korean War! Next he’ll ask us to ignore his acid experiments at that rave on his fiftieth birthday.
Right here, right now, I’m personally begging Senator Barbara Mikulski not to be part of this horrifying trend.
But back to Mr. Bill and Miss Monica. As a sportswriter, there are some details my boss George and I have paid considerable attention to. And we have a theory. Notice the dates when Monica says she and the Prez were playing with Mr. Macanudo.
November 15: a Wednesday during football season.
December 31: the day before the New Year’s Day bowl games.
January 21: the Sunday between the conference championships and the Super Bowl.
February 4: the Sunday after the Super Bowl. The sex was in the morning, hours before the Pro Bowl, which starts late because it’s from Hawaii.
March 31: the day between the semifinals and the championship of the Final Four.
April 7: the Sunday before the Masters.
My point is that every one of these sexual encounters took place when there were no sports on TV to distract Clinton. The man is a total sports geek. Remember where he was at 1 A.M. a few years ago when that small plane crashed into the White House? He was up in the attic watching West Coast college football on ESPN.
The problem is that District Cablevision stinks. You can’t get WGN. You can’t get WOR. The man simply couldn’t get his sports fix.
All Hillary had to do was give him a satellite dish, and this never would have happened.
Let this be a lesson to the rest of you.
A Starr-Crossed Tale
There once was a man named Ken Starr.
In matters of law he went far.
For fame he did reach,
The Big Creep to impeach.
He came close. But, heh-heh, no cigar.
Forty million Starr spent to inquire,
Whether Bill in his lust did conspire,
To obstruct and to lie,
Cover up and deny.
(Did Vernon get Revlon to hire?)
Starr’s charges got meaner and leaner.
No high crime, and no misdemeanor.
They centered on sex,
As opposed to bad checks.
Starr spent years to indict Clinton’s wiener!
Now the president looks like he’ll dance.
He’ll avoid doing time for romance.
So Bill’s in the clear.
He has saved his large rear.
“Go pay Paula. And pull up your pants.”
Ms. Lewinsky was taped by Ms. Tripp,
Saying blah-blah and da-da-dip-dip.
Quoting Babba and Bubba,
And her own stagestruck mother.
It was torture—a slow, steady drip.
They examined the president’s id.
With witnesses locked on the grid.
There were Currie and Willey;
Marcia cried herself silly.
And who could forget Sid the Squid?
William Ginsburg defended Lewinsky.
Her pulkes he found quite munchinsky.
But Cacheris and Stein,
Struck a deal so divine,
Ginsburg ended up just a buttinsky.
As I gazed at this noble committee,
I was stunned to see nobody pretty.
There’s just mutt after mutt.
Nadler’s Jabba the Hut!
Are they voted in just out of pity?
All the randy details Starr compiled,
Delighted his side of the aisle.
Myopic and smug,
A fancy-pants thug,
Starr has substance, but no sense of style.
He glories in being called “Judge.”
As if no one could ever begrudge,
His implacable gaze,
His self-righteous ways,
His four-hundred-plus pages of sludge.
Starr warbles as sweet as a crooner.
He sails effortlessly, like a schooner,
As the Democrats grate him,
And poke him, and bait him.
Abbe Lowell tries to grill him like tuna.
On the stand Starr receives much affection.
From Republicans: blanket protection.
But then questions get rough.
And, unsure of his stuff,
He resorts to some navel inspection.
I’d have loved to see Carville alone,
With his singular brand of corn pone,
Foam-flecked and growling,
Baying and howling,
Gnawing at Starr like a bone.
But the White House chose Kendall to clamor,
At Starr’s prosecutorial hammer.
He got under Starr’s skin.
Which by then had worn thin.
And they hissed back and forth, yam and yammer.
The election has rendered this moot,
There’s no juice in the impeachment fruit.
Voters stood up for Bill,
Sent more Dems to the Hill.
Good-bye and good riddance to Newt.
I’m now ending this chapter and verse,
With a thought that’s both blunt and that’s terse.
Say we’re done with the parsing,
And the rest of this Starr thing.
Or just drive me away in a hearse.
The Clinton Show
In defense of Bill Clinton the Democrats deny nothing. They eagerly confirm that the president is a weasel and a liar, that what he did with Monica Lewinsky was “sinful” and “morally reprehensible.” Whenever Clinton’s name is mentioned, Democrats get a pinched expression and sniff the air nervously, like somebody broke wind.
But of course they wouldn’t vote to impeach Clinton. Like Clinton—who’s so sorry he should consider changing his name to Brenda Lee—they prefer the option of censure. At this point the president would gladly wear his underpants on his head and run around the Rose Garden if the Republicans would only call this off.
The Democrats say they don’t want to put the people through “the horror of what will follow.” Impeachment, they warn us, will paralyze the country.
I’ll tell you what will paralyze the country: another day of looking at Henry Hyde. Where does he get his suits, Sunny’s Surplus? His jackets are so bulky, it looks like if you pulled a string they’d inflate.
What a cast of characters on the Judiciary Committee. Democrat Robert Wexler shouts like a hyena. His district is in South Florida—Heaven’s waiting room—and Wexler probably won because he was the only candidate people could understand without a hearing aid. Republican Mary Bono has the lights on, but nobody’s home. She makes her late husband, Sonny, seem like Alistair Cooke.
Have you ever heard anything more stultifying than these hearings? It’s like being trapped in an elevator with the Japanese cast of Cats. Republican counsel David Schippers lectured for two hours and forty-five minutes straight. When he was done, the run toward the House bathroom resembled the Oklahoma Land Rush. If that’s the way politics is conducted, how could you blame Clinton for taking a “Monica break” now and again?
What’s with all the Watergate crawlbacks? It’s like somebody set up a Monsters of Impeachment Reunion Tour. Did you get a load of Robert Drinan? He looked like the Creature from the Black Lagoon.
Jack Kevorkian, please pick up the white courtesy phone.
The hearings have been a terrible letdown. All hat, no cattle. It’s like the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings—but without the Coke can.
(Another letdown last week: the Frank Sinatra files released by the FBI. They spend forty years stalking Frank, and they can’t come up with a single piece of credible evidence to prove what everyone knows: that Frank personally ordered the murders of Bing Crosby, Dinah Shore, and Secretariat. Kitty Kelley had more on Frank in 40 pages than the FBI h
ad in 1,275. What was J. Edgar Hoover doing all this time, trying on bustiers? And someone dares to call Henry Hyde the chairman? Francis Albert Sinatra was the Chairman of the Board, baby, and don’t you forget it.)
Yet as horrifying as these impeachment hearings were, I don’t want to see it stop now.
I want exactly what the Republicans want. I want to subvert the will of the people and make a joke out of the national interest by putting the president of the United States on trial for the high crimes and misdemeanors of his ding-a-ling. (Then I want to put Bob Inglis on trial for that smirk of his.)
Look, I didn’t sit through all these months of Geraldo Live to see it end here—with the last word going to some pompous law professor lecturing me on what the Founding Fathers meant when they allowed for impeachment in the Constitution. (As if this is possible. The Constitution was written 220 years ago. I only saw one witness all week old enough to know what they were thinking: Elizabeth Holtzman.)
I don’t want impeachis interruptis.
I want a trial in the Senate that lasts for months. And I want to see Strom Thurmond try to stay awake through all of it.
I want Linda Tripp questioned about what she does to collect a $90,000 check at the Pentagon—besides talk all day about bikini waxing with Monica. I want to see Lewinsky’s big can on the witness stand. I want to hear her talk about the sex in glorious, graphic Larry Flyntesque detail, so I can be insanely jealous.
Chairman Hyde says, “It’s not about sex.” Of course it is—that’s why we were all riveted to our TVs back in January. When it became about perjury and the law, like this week, we switched the channel to Sunset Beach.
The president’s lawyer said people don’t want any more “salacious muck.”
Which people has he talked to?
I say: Gimme muck.
I for one am unafraid of the “horror that will follow.”
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