Culture Vultures: Kids Today
Steyn, Mark
This is the background image for an unknown creator of an OCR page with image plus hidden text. man in the world, locked in combat with the government of the last superpower on the face of the...
...At a party in Hollywood recently, he happened to find himself next to Courtney Love, widow of grunge rocker Kurt Cobain and now lead singer with the popular beat combo Hole...
...But, even if he had, I can't imagine Ronald Reagan having a Guy Lombardo LP—or 78, or whatever they had back in the eighties —on the Oval Office desk...
...But once in a while the effort of keeping up the act begins to show...
...I can't be the only busy executive who's found himself buzzing through to the outer office: "Miss Jones, I'm scheduled for oral sex with my intern this afternoon...
...In a sane world, the vice president's ignorance of the Love oeuvre would be cause for celebration: It would have been far more shocking if he'd glibly reeled off his three favorite Hole tracks...
...In this case, when you're with one, stop pretending to dig her...
...I'm a really big fan," gushed the Vice-Panderer...
...I blame Steven Spielberg, whose own variable birth date has been the subject of two lawsuits...
...Do What You Have To Do," sings Sarah McLachlan on Bill and Monica's "song #5...
...But Al Gore hopes to succeed Bill Clinton and, if there's one thing Bill Clinton has his fingers on the pulse of, it's the youth of America...
...Now all his fellow Hollywood "suits" wear it, too: Soon there'll be no "suits" left for these relentlessly casual types to look down on...
...Just for the record, Guy Lombardo didn't play at President Reagan's inaugural, if only because he'd been dead for four years...
...time to lead her gently into the outer office, after informing her that regrettably they'll have to cut out the oral sex, and join her in a duet of "Try a Little Tenderness...
...Name a song, Al.'" The panicked veep floundered helplessly until his minders eventually moved in to put him out of his misery...
...In 1993 , in the week Bill Clinton took his oath of office, I happened to be on a radio show with the editor of Vanity Fair, Graydon Carter, who'd just returned from the "MTV Inaugural Ball...
...And for God's sake don't get that second Hootie and the Blowfish album again: Mindy in Accounts still won't speak to me...
...Despite being a 50-year-old executive with a billion dollars in the bank, he's so determinedly boyish he insists on the same uniform of sneakers, jeans, sweatshirt, and baseball cap he's always worn...
...As she subsequently told Spin, "I was like, 'Yeah, right...
...But he has time to listen to the new Sarah McLachlan...
...It's a poignant vignette, with an eerie echo of a British Labour Party veteran's advice to politicians in trouble...
...The airhead Valley Girl...
...So did America: All that stuff about the bridge to the twenty-first The American Spectator • December 1998...
...Spielberg's Hollywood is like The Rewrite ofDorian Gray: The younger these fellows dress, the more stuntedly immature the product gets...
...He tells his fellow citizens repeatedly that he needs to "get back to work for the American people...
...We would, frankly, be disappointed to press the nuclear strike button and find it just cranked up the new Natalie Merchant CD...
...Like, duh...
...Oh, lighten up, he said: "It's no different from Reagan having Guy Lombardo and the Royal Canadians at his inaugural...
...An executive for "Felicity," Riley Weston's show on the WB network, said: "We thought we had found a staffer who spoke the language...
...I have it, too, and it's wonderful...
...man in the world, locked in combat with the government of the last superpower on the face of the earth, and he's dressed like the junior clerk at the video store...
...We don't need Dress-Down Friday, we need DressUp Monday To Thursday...
...But the Cold War is over and in the Cool War the president can hold his own, with a song for every occasion...
...The question is: Is 44 In a sane world, Gore's ignorance of the Love oeuvre would be cause for celebration...
...n our youth-crazed culture, Miss Weston is not, of course, the only one trying to pass as an eager teen, and in fairness she's doing a better job of it than many others desperate to make it in Hollywood...
...If he's still interested, Hole's new album is called Celebrity Skin and Al might find its title song useful for a Gore 2000 campaign theme: "No second billing 'cause you're a star now...
...Whenever I listen to song #5 I think of you...
...time to have go-minute phone sex with Monica...
...When I first read it, Monica's note brought me up short and I gave an involuntary shudder...
...I hasten to add that he doesn't literally have his fingers on the youth of America: As his grandjury testimony made clear, he favors a scrupulously hands-off approach...
...Can Al Gore rise to the top of the bill...
...According to Denis Healey, the First Rule of Holes is: "When you're in one, stop digging...
...No, the father of our country...
...Most of us assume that, if like Monica we ever got to rummage around the president's desk for half an hour, we'd at least stumble across some IMF Russian bailout proposals or a NATO plan to bomb Serbia...
...17 he...
...Take Al Gore: Like Riley Weston, he's uncannily in tune with the concerns of today's youth —global warming, gay rights, you name it...
...I think my Robert Goulet eight-tracks are beginning to throw her off...
...But then it occurred to me: Maybe the new Sarah McLachlan CD is on the Oval Office desk because the president actually likes it...
...Like most guys with an eye for pliant young flesh (again, Bill "Look, No Hands" Clinton insists he wasn't actually plying Monica's flesh, but let that pass), I recognized the moment: The meaningless sex is great, the girlish giggle is charming (in small doses), but damn it, now she wants to know what kind of music you like...
...But turn to footnote 707 of the Starr Report, a letter from Monica to Bill: "When I was hiding out in your office, I noticed you had the new Sarah McLachlan CD...
...Sarah McLachlan...
...To her credit, showing a disdain for establishment approval rare among today's aristorockracy, Miss Love declined to be impressed...
...In the Oval Office...
...One of the many fun games to play with the Starr Report is to pull quotes at random and guess whether it's Bill or Monica talking: "If I had known what kind of person you really were, I wouldn't have got involved with you...
...Find out what ghastly caterwauling the young people are into these days and order up ten CDs in assorted colors...
...Isn't it a bit pathetic, I suggested, that the inauguration of "the most powerful man in the world" should be officially marked with a formal ball thrown by the rock video channel...
...But what is it that Bill Clinton has to do...
Vol. 31 • December 1998 • No. 12
