SCRAPBOOK
Scrapbook CONYF.RS AND WANNTSKT: SADDAM'S AMFN CORNER John Conyers may be the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee—point man in the effort to protect Bill Clinton as much as possible...
...then its Bill Clinton can keep fiddling with his cigar...
...LIES, DAMN LIES, AND POLLS Last week's ABC News/Washington Post poll had some interesting things in it that didn't make it into the summaries...
...The Scrapbook may start checking under its car in the morning before putting the key in the ignition...
...You know I respect your great intelligence...
...This middle group i obviously a swing group, and could presum ably be persuaded to favor impeachment i Congress moves ahead and if the prospect n longer looks so radical...
...On Tuesday, Oct...
...And the Iraqi Ambassador to the United States, Nizar Hamdoon, knows you are maniacally bent on instigating a war between the NATO powers and Baghdad...
...In fact, the show may be funnier now than in its putative heyday...
...The comparable num bers are worse for Democrats: 68 percent o likely voters think they are mainly interested in protecting Clinton, and only 27 percen believe John Conyers et al...
...THAT'S NOT FUNNY The undisputed leader in Clinton humor this year is Saturday Night Live...
...our favorite George Washington biographer, Weekly Standard contributor Noemie Emery, reminds us that Washington was in strapping health only the day before he died...
...Suffice it to say, they do not mean to call attention to the depredations of Saddam Hussein and his thugs, but to agitate for an end to the post-Gulf War U.N...
...But the next day, The Scrapbook's favorite online publication corrected itself: "Because of a transmission error, yesterday's opening quote—'I'm not saying there's not a lot of perks that you do experience as a celebrity that are very, very positive and pleasant...
...sanctions—as if those sanctions were not already collapsing thanks to the Clinton administration's lack of resolve...
...Wanniski ends with a bad parody of a Mafioso offering disingenuous concern to someone he is about to have rubbed out: "Richard, we have been shoulder-to-shoulder in the Cold wars since we met in 1969...
...onl 35 percent think the GOP's main interest is ii finding out the truth...
...The Forward had reported a recent meeting of Perle, former CIA director R. James Woolsey, and congressional staffers at which a discussion took place of American backing for a plan to liberate Iraq from Saddam Hussein...
...If SNL's Gerald Ford can fall repeatedly down staircases...
...We are keeping our eye on you...
...He explained on the Today show that "people have offered me help in my lifetime, and obviously that's something the president could use at this time...
...Iraq policy has come under attack from Jude Wanniski— the onetime close adviser to Jack Kemp and other prominent Republicans...
...29 memo to Perle: "I'm prompted to write this note of caution having spotted the following item in . . . the Forward, the Jewish weekly...
...Farrakhan once threatened Washington Post editor Milton Coleman with physical harm...
...The Iraqis read the Forward...
...Meantime, the prospect of a tougher U.S...
...if its Ronald Reagan can nap without cease...
...Writes Wanniski: "I've talked to Hamdoon about you and he knows you would like to get the Baghdad regime kicked out of the United Nations so that it has no voice in the United States...
...Scrapbook CONYF.RS AND WANNTSKT: SADDAM'S AMFN CORNER John Conyers may be the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee—point man in the effort to protect Bill Clinton as much as possible from the impeachment process—but that doesn't mean he can't find time in his busy schedule to help Saddam Hussein, too...
...6, Conyers will play host to an "ad-hoc congressional hearing" (i.e., provide a propaganda platform) at which the National Iraq Network, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, and other inveterate Iraq-defenders will bemoan "the plight of the Iraqi people...
...Then he was afflicted with a sudden throat ailment, which quickly took him—to the bafflement of his doctor...
...Clinton, said Grammer, is the victim of a "self-destructive" impulse: "It's a condition you have to treat...
...CORRECTION OF THE WEEK There was a lapse, understandable as you will see, in People magazine's Online Daily of Sept...
...The Scrapbook is happy to report that Quinn grossly misinformed his (undoubtedly huge) audience...
...Whew...
...It should, in fact, have been attributed to Woody Allen...
...Here are a few choice excerpts from Wanniski's Sept...
...Now Wanniski threatens former Reagan administration defense official Richard perle—for being a menace to Saddam Hussein's interests...
...Why, even George Washington, the Father of our Country who swore that he could not tell a lie, succumbed to syphilis—and what faithful truth-teller ever "died of the clap...
...But you should know that there are a few of us out here who know all about your diabolical schemes to foment conflict for the sake of conflict...
...Days after the Quinn sermonette, Kelsey Grammer, of Frasier, who was to guest-host SNL, announced that he, too, would refrain from having fun at Clinton's expense...
...In recent years, as The Scrapbook has periodically chronicled, Wanniski has made himself into a sort of disciple of Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan...
...are truth-seekers...
...Washington most certainly did not die of the clap...
...the other because impeachment is "too disruptive...
...But just emotionally I have a tough time with it'—was mistakenly attributed to President Clinton...
...At the beginning of the new fall season, Colin Quinn, who does the fake newscast, announced that it was time to take it easy on Bill Clinton: After all, the president is doing a fine job, and many great men indulge in a little hanky-panky...
...Some 61 percent of likely voter think Republicans in Congress are mainl interested in hurting Clinton politically...
...Okay, sure, but spare us the pathos...
...And as a byproduct of his conversion from supply-side publicist to Farrakhan evangelist, Wanniski seems to have become infected with the minister's characteristic thug-gishness...
...OUR KIND OF SCHEDULE...
...Continues Wanniski: "You really have to be more careful, Dick...
...Meanwhile, though the public is quit< cynical about the motives of congressiona Republicans in their handling of the Star referral, it's even more cynical abou Democrats...
...Thus, public opinion at the end of September seems to have been sorted out into roughly equal thirds, where the president's future is concerned: Those who want to be rid of him, those who will go to the barricades for him, and those who think impeachment will disturb their sleep...
...One camp opposes impeachment because what the president did is "not serious...
...Where would Hamdoon get such an idea about Perle, who is nowadays a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a venerable Washington think tank...
...While only 38 percent of likely voters say the president should be impeached, the 60 percent who say he should not be are not a monolithic group...
...They fall into two camps of roughly equal size (with some overlap...
...There are a couple of disturbing signs, though, that SNL is going soft...
Vol. 4 • October 1998 • No. 5
