News Digest

Archive [November 1998]

Image vs. Reality

Last month, in fashion magazines like Vanity Fair and Glamour, designer Tommy Hilfiger ran a series of ads that caught the attention of the Clinton Administration. The ads depicted a sexy young woman sitting on an executive desk in what looked like the Oval Office. That is, until Clinton ordered the company to cease and desist.

Hilfiger said a legal officer from the While House notified them by letter of a “While House policy precluding the use of the While House or its likeness in advertising imagery.” Hilfiger obeyed instantly, killing the ad.

Of course. White House policy apparently does not preclude the use of sexy young women on the actual executive desk in the actual Oval Office in the actual White House.

Banned in China

After trying to edit and sanitize the Starr report, China’s censors finally gave up and banned it altogether. According to the Associated Press, Chinese officials “disliked the report’s salacious details and worried that its contents would somehow damage improving Chinese-U.S. relations.” (No truth to the rumor that the Chinese misunderstood phone transcripts showing Bill bragging to Monica about a “Clinton missile.”)

Branding the Chinese-language report an “illicit publication,” China’s official Propaganda Department ordered it off bookstore shelves. Perhaps not surprisingly, it has become an underground bestseller. (Sohoo, a Chinese Internet search engine, is getting thousands of hits a day at its Clinton scandal site.) The material is especially popular with the huge crowd in China hiding out from Congressional subpoenas.

It’s Only Sex

The Army is proceeding against Maj. Gen. David Hale, a retired two-star general accused of “serious misconduct.” The investigations of Hale could eventually lead to a formal court-martial.

“The allegations include dereliction of duty, false official statements, conduct unbecoming an officer and adultery, and involved misconduct toward subordinate members of his unit and their spouses,” the Army said. In a report, the Pentagon’s inspector general concluded that Hale, who retired in February as the Army’s deputy inspector general, “engaged in a pattern of inappropriate behavior” from 1996 to 1997 with the wives of four subordinates while Hale was stationed in Turkey as the deputy commanding general for NATO land forces in southeastern Europe. The report charged that Hale also sanctioned the misuse of government funds for travel and made false and misleading statements to investigators and Pentagon officials.

Hale “strongly denied all the allegations of inappropriate conduct,” according to the report, but did acknowledge a “relationship that he maintained with the former spouse of a subordinate Army officer.”

I say, leave him alone! This is his private life! Besides, the sex was consensual! It’s just sex and sex lies! Everybody lies about sex. Who cares? Who wouldn’t lie? Lying about sex is the honorable thing to do — in fact, sex lies should become an official military requirement. The Army is obviously full of a bunch of anti-Hale partisans. Let’s move on.

Cigar Business

Competition breeds excellence. Now there are two companies vying to produce the quintessential Lewinsky cigar. The Custom Cigar Company, a California outfit (www.customcigar.com), is offering the Lewinsky Presidential Classic, described by Agence France-Press as a “premium, handmade Dominican Republic cigar.” The cigar band features “an obvious yet tasteful representation” of revelations from the Starr report. Boxes of 25 are also emblazoned with the official Lewinsky logo.

The “Monica Cristo,” on the other hand, which is, according to The Washington Times, “a hand-rolled Dominican Churchill, aged two years, with Sumatra wrapper, mild to medium blend, with hints of coffee and a mild aftertaste,” was created by an entrepreneur in Virginia (www.originalmonicacristo.com).

These popular new Dominicans cannot be helpful to the Cuban cigar trade. Which might be what Cuban president Fidel Castro was alluding to when he complained recently about the “huge mess” surrounding the Clinton scandal. He noted that the “accusations, revelations, all that” were taking up too much of Clinton’s time: “In other words,” he said, “the business of Cuba has been left aside, in second place.” Obviously, Cuba needs a Monica stogie.

Liberal Emotion

For years I have been pointing out the core difference between liberalism and conservatism: at the heart of liberalism is the emotions of liberals; while at the heart of conservatism is the thinking and analysis of the best of human minds. Mine, for instance.

Here’s the latest evidence of how flawless my theory is. One of the country’s veteran feminazis has graced us with her very own psychological comparison of Presidents Clinton and Nixon. According to Gloria Steinem, it’s all about love: “If Richard Nixon had ever loved anything, had been emotionally spontaneous or available in any way, we would have a better country today,” she said. But, of course, Bill Clinton — the Phone Sex President — doesn’t lack emotional spontaneity. Continued the founder of Ms. magazine; “Clinton’s fault is an excess of energy and emotion, not one of coldness or cruelty.”

Naturally, Steinem lets the country’s Perjurer-in-Heat off the hook. Poor Bill Clinton. He’s working so hard for us, caring so deeply for our children, that something just had to snap. Of course he committed adultery over and over again in the Oval Office. Of course he lied about it for months. Of course he’s still lying about it. The man’s only human, after all.

Isn’t it a small price to pay to have a President with so much energy, so much emotion? … So much love?

Love Fan

At a recent Hollywood party, Vice Perpetrator Al Gore found himself next to rock star Courtney Love — widow of grunge rocker Kurt Cobain. As reported in The Times of London, Algore attempted lo ingratiate himself with Love, the leader of Hole, a band which “specializes in drug-addled musings on promiscuity and despair.”

“He goes, ‘I’m a really big fan’,” recounted Love, “And I was like, ‘Yeah, right. Name a song, Al.’”

His answer was lame: “I can’t name a song, I’m just a really big fan.”

The Times points out that Gore and his wife, Tipper, “were the driving forces behind the campaign to make record companies put stickers on records that contained lyrics with sexually explicit content.”

Yet another demonstration that Algore will never be a Bill Clinton, who no doubt is a genuine fan of Love’s Hole.

That Was Then, This Is Now

“That the President’s conduct does not rise to the level of an impeachable offense should now be clear to everyone.” So Mike McCurry declared on Sept. 21, the day America saw the President on video lying through his teeth to a federal grand jury.

Lying under oath not impeachable, Mr. McCurry? Let’s turn to the most celebrated speech ever given on the subject of impeachment — delivered by a liberal icon, the late Congresswoman Barbara Jordan of Texas.

As a member of the House Judiciary Committee voting to impeach Richard Nixon in 1974, Jordan cited the impeachment criteria of the South Carolina ratification convention: “Those are impeachable ‘who behave amiss or betray their public trust,’” she noted.

“Beginning shortly after the Watergate break-in and continuing to the present time,” Jordan continued, “the President has engaged in a series of public statements and actions designed to thwart the lawful investigation by government prosecutors. Moreover, the President has made public announcements and assertions bearing on the Watergate case which the evidence will show he knew to be false.” Barbara Jordan considered lying to be impeachable even when the President is not under oath.

To quote from the eulogy at her funeral in Houston in 1996, “Through the sheer force of the truth she spoke … Barbara always stirred our national conscience.”

Barbara Jordan’s eulogy was delivered by President Bill Clinton.

Memory Test

It was a rather routine two-car fender bender in Washington, D.C., so we never would have known about a new emergency protocol in the District if one of the drivers hadn’t been Jackie Spinner of The Washington Post. Spinner, who suffered a broken hand and a cut on her head, told her colleagues at The Post that a paramedic asked her a series of questions to test her mental state: “What is your name?” Typical. “Who is the President?” Routine. But then: “Who is the President’s girlfriend?”

Later, Battalion Chief Alvin Carter, the D.C. Fire Department spokesman, explained that the girlfriend question was used “because so much attention had been paid throughout the world to the President’s situation.” When The Post asked what the correct answer would be, Carter said: “If they answered ‘Alice in Wonderland,’ the person’s mental state isn’t where it should be.”

Oh, I wouldn’t be so sure. How do you know Alice isn’t Jane Doe No. 6?