Editorials: Everything's Ducky/No Escaping the Sexual Revolution
Tyrrell, R. Emmett Jr.
EDITORIALS by R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. Everything's Ducky Throughout the history of this great and gaudy Republic second-term presidents have often become what historians call "lame...
...From the standpoint of their own intellectual integrity, they would be better off watching reruns of "McHale's Navy," than watching "NBC Nightly News...
...These people seem to believe that, by watching the evening news, they are not just combating boredom, but acquiring knowledge...
...American life would become a libidinous utopia—an entire nation of sybarites, walking around with continual smiles on their faces...
...That a second comes so soon suggests that America's politicians are not taking their history very seriously...
...It would only have taken four justices to tip the Court towards taking up the question of White House immunity on this matter of sub-poenaed documents...
...All the advocates of free love, who had been droning on about the joys of sex for decades, were abloom with hope...
...Yet there is justice in this irony...
...Thus student body president Bill Clinton has lost two in a row...
...Now they are a constant in American life...
...My ignorant television pundits thought the "sexual revolution" has something to do with the large number of women now in the workforce or the rise of feminism...
...Winning or losing the cases was not their preeminent objective...
...Unfortunately, after my stint with the television pundits I have discovered that they and many others who are equally consumed with the feminist rant are wholly ignorant of what historians recognize as "the conditions" leading up to sexual harassment...
...As though the weight of presidential affairs (whoops, an unfortunate choice of words) might allow the president to delay making mortgage payments on his private home, if he had a private home, or delaying paying parking tickets, if he had something to park...
...Most of the offices they have won have been phony, and the real offices they have won have accommodated their phoniness...
...Richard Milhous Nixon was our first "duck president...
...Starr's investigation...
...They also could float their self-serving legal sophistries above the heads of the American people whose knowledge of the law is understandably not that of the Bar...
...At one point in Intelligence and Democratic Action, Frank H. Knight says: "The worst trouble...
...they know so much that is not true...
...Starr's tangled maneuverings in the courts and complain of his investigation's expensive duration, his taxpayer-financed "partisan fishing expedition...
...Allow me to explain the Clintons in this matter...
...The Clintons, to the surprise of many Supreme Court watchers, entered into these proceedings, hyperbolically labeling the Independent Counsel's positions "irresponsible" and the lower court's decision "extraordinary" and "unprecedented...
...It is only right that they suffer for their stupidity...
...People who assume that, since they watch television news, they know all that is worth knowing about American higher education and scores of other matters, "do not know they are ignorant...
...The case was frivolous—the Court's unanimous decision manifests that as does Morris's admission...
...By the tradition of the Supreme Court advocacy...favors understatement over hyperbole...
...Terry Krieger "Thugs" JUNE-SEPTEMBER 1972 18 August 1997 • The American Spectator...
...Sex is always a difficult topic, but that it is so difficult to discuss sex publicly today is curious...
...Well, truth be known, there are more taboos out there today than when Queen Victoria was seated on her throne and showing no ankle or even forearm...
...Visit 'F AS Online at \\ \V\5 .tipeCtat01.0114 16 August 1997 The American Spectator No Escaping the Sexual Revolution Of late I have been in the company of pundits on television cornmentary shows...
...My guess is that their forgetfulness is studied...
...And—wouldn't you know it—he now stands accused of one of the feminists' most grievous misdeeds, sexual harassment...
...We have made every crude remark and offensive gesture into an occasion for filing lawsuits...
...So unexpectedly painful have been the consequences of the thing that its aging beneficiaries and advocates have even forgotten its name...
...You can imagine the controversy that set off...
...After all, America is supposed to be so sexually liberated...
...In sum and in fine, they are ignorant of the sexual revolution...
...This is the first American presidency almost wholly populated in its higher levels by former members of high school and college student governments...
...He was exposed by his Arkansas bodyguards as ithyphallic, albeit dependent on those bodyguards for sexual liaisons and, who knows, perhaps even sexual counsel...
...Adapted from RET's weekly Washington Times column syndicated by Creators Syndicate...
...For them politics is all posturing, more so than with any earlier collection of pols...
...Characteristically he has been having it both ways, enjoying the sex and supporting the feminists as they shut the revolution down...
...As aforementioned, he is a champion of the feminist rant and now he is a victim of feminist legalities...
...Everything's Ducky Throughout the history of this great and gaudy Republic second-term presidents have often become what historians call "lame duck presidents.' Our amazing Boy President of 1997 is in danger of becoming merely a "duck president," as in duck, here comes another subpoena, or duck, here comes another devastating Supreme Court decision—now, two in less than a month...
...Ha, the sexual revolution has not come to that happy pass...
...Progressive spirits such as Clinton created the conditions for sexual harassment...
...Since his earliest days as an apple-polishing student, Boy Clinton has been pursuing office...
...Those ignorant of recent history think American men since colonial times have been using lewd language in public, grappling female body parts, and insisting on sexual favors in the work place...
...Hence all the windy gabble on television now about sex—King Willie's case is proceeding through the courts...
...Unfortunately, this latest setback at the Court now makes clear that the Court will not be a party to the Clintons' frivoling with the law forever...
...It is another of those delectable ironies of the age that our Boy President would find himself entoiled in such a case...
...Of course, seated on the American throne today is an authority figure very much the opposite of Queen Victoria, namely, Hot Springs' own King Willie...
...Yet it was not unimportant...
...They have been at play with politics since puberty...
...Cox went on to observe that the Clintons' arguments before the court were unusual...
...So has Hillary, and Ira, and Reich, and most of the rest...
...Of course, those of us who have fully investigated the Clintons, their lives, their legends, their press releases, and all those brushes with the law, recognize that the Clintons almost certainly anticipated these last two judicial Waterloos...
...There was a day before the sexual revolution when good mannersand more restrictive sexual mores rendered the sexual harasser a lonely groper and, in the eyes of the public, a C. ) pervert...
...We are entering interesting times...
...Even in the Clintons' latest setback at the Supreme Court they tasted the sweetness of at least a small victory...
...Then, too, Clinton henchmen such as James Carville could point to Mr...
...is not so much ignorance, but that people do not know they are ignorant...
...By claiming attorney-client privilege over documents sought by Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr, the Clintons impeded Mr...
...But as Douglas R. Cox observed in the Wall Street Journal following the Court's decision to let a lower court decision stand, "It suggests that the Supreme Court gives less weight to the Clinton administration's judgments that a case merits review than it has traditionally afforded the legal arguments of past administrations...
...Just dragging the criminal investigators now sniffing at their heels into the dense underbrush of the American judicial process was a victory for them...
...An intelligent observation is always deemed by such pompous dolts as extremely controversial...
...He presents himself as champion of the feminist cause...
...Here we have another example of liberalism creating a problem with one set of reforms — the sexual revolution...
...Jones's lawyers would be prevented from sending their embarrassing interrogatories, and the press would have nothing to report...
...In better times the crude remarks and offensive gestures were rare...
...25 YEARS AGO IN The American Spectator What worries me is not just that many people apparently do not take their own experience seriously enough, but that they take television news very seriously indeed...
...In others they are a grave evil (the workplace where the feminist neurosis prevails...
...But the Paula Corbin Jones decision was also a "victory" for the Clintons...
...America's treatment of the law is different...
...They confect exaggerated claims of "attorney-client privilege" or "executive privilege," drag these monstrosities into the courts, and then blame Independent Counsel Starr for the length of his inquiry...
...Savor the Clintons' strategy...
...This is always a daunting experience...
...These sophistries could confuse many and intensify the pro-Clinton citizens' sense of grievance for the Martyred Couple...
...In fact, they are acquiring familiarity with themes that drastically simplify life...
...and exacerbating that problem with still more misconceived reforms—all the unworkable laws and adjudication regarding sexual conduct...
...Olfi Read RE T's editorials every Nl cek...
...Particularly at the Supreme Court level it is taken seriously...
...Remind me never to appear before the Supreme Court...
...The Paula Corbin Jones decision of May 27 was, to be sure, a thunderously unanimous judicial decision against fanciful claims by the Clintons to "temporary immunity" for the president against lawsuits originating in matters preceding his presidency...
...Worse still, it is a little late in the game for the Clintons to start taking the law seriously...
...Most recently the subject was sex...
...He began his presidency talking about his underpants to teenagers on MTV...
...Former Clinton advisor, Dick Morris, admitted just that, claiming recently that the Boy President's lawyer, David Kendall, had admitted that by taking the case to the Supreme Court the Clintons hoped to hide it from the electorate in 1996...
...In the twilight of sexual revolution, the shoulder is an erogenous zone...
...Actually history records the "sexual revolution" as being that liberation of sexual restraints that took place sometime between the late 1950's, when the restraints against pornography were loosened by the courts, and the late 1960's, when the youth movement led by various dirty old men (and a few sexologist women) broke down community restraints against foul language in public, open-air nudity, and widespread licentiousness...
...It is fitting that he be among the victims of our sexual mullahs...
...On one of the talk shows I recently visited, a lady actually told me that she considered it sexual harassment for her employer to compliment her work with a pat on the shoulder...
...Bill Clinton, according to the testimony of friends and former employees, has had a ball thanks to the sexual revolution...
...Gingerly, one must approach the painful heart of the matter: one is seated with ignoramuses, happy to be ignorant, in fact, prosperous because of their ignorance...
...We did not then need ,C, ----, the vague laws and spurious -'--- -. lawsuits we now have...
...In some settings they are viewed as the soul of humor (television's situation comedies...
Vol. 30 • August 1997 • No. 8
