Current Wisdom

...Single lines with such messages can be heard in just about every Hollywood movie...

...But maybe we should be thankful for small favors...

...That question focuses the mind brilliantly as an American president gets set to be grilled on his sex life on August 17...

...And depending on how open they are, which they usually aren't, I've kind of dabbled around with it...

...I am deeply sorry that, in the course of this misadventure, I have hurt Hillary and my daughter, my friends and associates and all of the citizens of this great and wonderful country...

...The first year of Clinton's second term was devoted to completing the major achievement of his first: a budget deal with Republicans that assured a new era of surpluses...

...MAY 9, 1998] Minneapolis Star Tribune Another splendid cri de coeur from Mrs...

...We smile as we munch our burgers—oblivious to the torture and cruelty involved to "process" that meat sandwich...

...At a moment in time when the U.S...

...I'll go shopping for one...

...We are making great headway on many fronts in this country of ours...

...Do they not deserve the truth of how they died...

...I didn't think that would really be a turn-on for me...

...However another sub-message tarnishes his pedestal of morality...

...HOWARD CREECH via Internet [MAY 1998] 92 October 1998 • The American Spectator Minneapolis Star Tribune A hinterlands Publius sets off a constitutional feeler: I wonder if Bill Clinton could sue for a third term...

...He gives money to such disreputable magazines as the American Spectator which has published numerous wild stories about the Clintons...

...I hope you will forgive me as you would a wayward son, as I admit to having had an affair with Miss Lewinsky...

...Witness the suffering children who watch as their pet lambs fetch $4.5o a pound at the Sonoma County Fair Auction chopping block, then loaded onto the death camp trucks destined for the slaughterhouse...

...Once such laws became devices for blackmail, however, they were scrapped in most places...

...That's not where he started, but that's clearly what he sank to...

...In a lucid analysis in the New Yorker, legal writer Jeffrey Rosen points out that the law has always recognized that all lies are not the same...

...We are in the midst of a gigantic economic boom that is the result of the leadership of the Democratic Party and some bipartisans from the other side of the aisle...

...AUGUST 25, 1998] Washington Times "Crossfire" co-host Bill Press administers the Clintonistas' coup de grace to the pathetic Judge Starr, eighteen days before the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy drugged President Bill Clinton, implanted that mysterious transmitter in his poor brain, and perpetrated his calamitous August 17 apology to the Nation: But what Monica's reportedly saying, now that she's finally talking, is actually a big defeat for Mr...

...Humans surely are the nastiest creature to inhabit this heavenly planet...

...Both Barbara Bush and Nancy Reagan did a stint at Smith, and Hillary Rodham graduated from her alma mater with flying colors...

...Clinton, I have had the pleasure of making her acquaintance on several occasions, including a dinner at my brother's house two weeks ago...

...In 1993, at an intimate supper for loo (the guests included Toni Morrison and Julia Roberts), I watched in awe as the newly installed First Lady confidently whispered to the head waiter when to begin serving dessert...

...AUGUST 16, 1998] New York Times Ms...

...The "ugly woman in the barn," story and the "double E cup breast size" story propagate the myth that women are valued solely on breast size and beauty...

...All this horror, blithely conducted by the meat-eating mongers right in front of their tearful children...

...When will our society start treating women better...

...AUGUST 26, 1998] Dallas Morning News On the opinion page of the venerable Dallas Morning News columnist Stanley Marcus proffers sage advice that might have saved the Abraham Lincoln of the 1990's: So what should Mr...

...They'll claim they have that one god on their side, when we all know she only cares for those who cares for others...

...Guns killed American soldiers": How dare these people now prate that guns don't kill people...

...After all, if, as Monica has reportedly said, Clinton made her feel they might end up together after he left the White House, Starr could have pursued a "breach of promise of marriage" case, too...

...I'd considered one before, when I was going out with Nick, but then—oh, I bagged it...

...I promise I never will give you cause to doubt me ever again...

...Allow me to quote Brigid Brophy's "Unlived Life: A Manifesto Against Factory Farming": "Whenever people say 'We mustn't be sentimental,' you can take it they are about to do something cruel...

...So I decided to remain bound by the moral tenets governing the actions of Southern gentlemen, 'who may kiss and never tell' a soul...

...AUGUST 12, 1998] The Press Democrat (Santa Rosa, California) A member of the Vast Vegetarian Conspiracy waxes poetical: Humans, bedeviled by an insatiable urge to consume the flesh of other earthly mammals, will stop at nothing to sate their trivial palatal passion with tasty Veal Parmesan or their cheap rain forest-destroying burgers...

...Wendy Wasserstein, the playwright, ponders a Chekhovian moment: As a 1971 graduate of Mount Holyoke College, I have always been struck by the fact that the three most recent First Ladies had all attended women's colleges...

...In the 19th century, for example, women or their fathers were able to sue men for "breach of promise of marriage...

...Though I am not a close friend of Mrs...

...Lies about sexual matters have increasingly been put beyond legal sanction...

...But anal stuff is such a turn-on for Mark that I thought, what the hell...

...Sue Allen of the anti-bosom movement: We viewed the movie "Saving Private Ryan" as a family last weekend...

...God bless you and this wonderful land...

...As usual, Steven Spielberg aptly depicts a message of morality with his themes of the vast brutality and the lasting impact of war...

...AUGUST 15, 1998] The Hoosier Democrat The Indiana Democratic Party's mellifluous state chair, Joe Andrews, explicates the essence of Republican philosophy for the yokels assembled for the 1998 Jefferson-Jackson Day Speech: On the issues, Republicans will fight for the far self-righteous, the far rich and the far out...

...They want an America that is one color, that speaks with only one language, that knows no disability and knows only one god...

...Like their Seven Sisters classmates, all three women were trained to develop an independent intellect as well as the grace to serve living room teas...

...So as Bill Clinton looks Kenneth Starr in the eye on Monday, his anger will come not simply from the unprecedented public humiliation Starr has forced the president and his family to endure...

...SCOTT KLYNSTRA Clearlake Park [AUGUST 10, 1998] Lexington Herald-Leader The honored John Ed Pearce, columnist and rhetorician, during reflections on the fighting at Normandy Beach, erupts with the novel thought "Nazis did not kill American soldiers...

...Here are the kinds of words that I believe may make the difference and that I think the voters may accept...

...Now, since the rumors of Miss Monica Lewinsky's testimony before the federal grand jury have been reported by the press, I feel released from my pledge of silence...

...Yes, I had sex with the President of the United States, she admits, but he never asked me to lie about it...

...Clinton knew he had just two years to put his stamp on the post-deficit era, because the last year of his term would be consumed by the next presidential race...

...I had no idea where this graduate of Yale Law School and children's rights advocate could possibly have picked up such a skill...

...They want an America that cares only about number one—myself...

...As you know, I was born in the South and have spent most of my life there until I came to Washington...

...It will also come from having lost fully half the time left him to chart the nation's path...

...Even if the Lewinsky matter were to disappear magically the day after his testimony, Clinton has already lost a crucial year...

...JULY 29, 1998] Popular Photography An enlightening lecture on how to be a proper Neo-Imperialist from Howard out there on the Internet, wearing his pajamas, sipping his tenth cup of coffee: Robert Silvers' "Wow" image [March '98, page 66] is bland and visually boring...

...Thoughtless lines in films, thrown at us under the guise of hilarity, reach deep into the psyches of our girls and remain as unhealing abuses...

...How dare they demean the sacrifice of the men who fell to the guns that day so that they might have the right to stand now and spout the indecency that guns do not kill people...

...After nearly two decades, this meant public debate could finally turn to something other than fixing deficits...

...Visual stimuli can cross borders of language, race, religion, and politics...

...Third, the image is arrogant and fosters the idea that all the world's currencies are just dollars in disguise...

...We even manufactured our own religions' beliefs to make sure that we gave ourselves total "dominion" over the other earthly animals...

...I adhere to the Southern gentleman's code, 'A gentleman never tells.' "I am proud of my Southern heritage...

...With that one admission, Monica Lewin-sky exposes the total absurdity of the entire Starr investigation: it's all about sex...

...We live in a multicultural, multiracial, multi-ethnic world, and photography is the single best tool available to encourage understanding and tolerance...

...Starr...

...You know....But never, never a strap-on...

...When will the constant stream of subtle, mean messages about women end...

...And if they add 'We must be realistic,' they mean they are going to make money out of it...

...Second, the image relates more to computer programming than to photography...

...It was guns...

...Meaningful legislation after late 1999 will be impossible...

...stands as the world's only superpower, this image indicates an amazing lack of sensitivity...

...thus, daily we murder millions of animals for their flesh because "God" says it's OK...

...Fourth, and most important, the image is a prime example of what "American Neo-Imperialism" really means...

...AUGUST 12, 1998] Salon On the public-policy page of that superb Internet magazine, recommended so highly by Our President, thoughtful commentary (the lead articles) from pretty Courtney Weaver, future White House intern: "I have had many, many boyfriends who seem to have an anal fixation...

...What was killing our men that day there on the beach, tearing them apart, ending their lives, their hopes and dreams, blasting away their futures...

...I am a product of Southern culture and Southern ethical and moral standards...

...They're still on the books in 17 states and the District of Columbia—where, like many dumb old laws, they go unenforced thanks to prosecutorial discretion...

...AUGUST 1, 1998] The American Spectator • October 1998 93...

...Clinton say to the grand jurors and later to the American people...