Culture Vultures: In Search of Phil Clinton
Steyn, Mark
CULTURE VULTURES by Mark Steyn In Search of Phil Clinton S o I went to the Multiplex and said I wanted to see the Clinton film. "Certainly, sir," said the sales clerk. "We have Wag the Dog,...
...The president's eleven-day, or maybe twelve-day trip (it depends on who's doing the counting) was designed to get him away from all the unpleasantness at home, but Donaldson asked him about executive privilege...
...The Man in the Iron Mask This sly inside-the-Beltway satire is credited to "Alexandre Dumas" but it's so knowing it can only be the work of Joe Klein, or possibly even Eleanor Clift...
...Still, if you enjoyed Primary Colors, here, in reverse order, is a Top Ten of Techniclinton Motion Pictures: to...
...Clinton and executive privilege he had said, "All I know is—I saw an article about it in the papers today...
...There is some doubt as to whether Phil Clinton actually exists or whether he's simply a fictitious figure invented by the Democratic National Committee to front Indonesian campaign contributions...
...It certainly doesn't compare with Clarence Thomas, with his persistent, shameful pattern of making offensive remarks about carbonated beverage containers...
...Instead, with his lank brunette hair, he looks like the moonfaced girl from the Addams Family movies...
...7. Zulu Based on President Clinton's recent expedition to Africa, the most dramatic scene comes when a small band of white men try to stave off thousands of Zulus who've been waiting in sweltering temperatures for the chance to be felt by the president and come swarming over the grope line...
...Good grief...
...Julia is a role model for many young people, said the First Lady...
...Last year, you'll remember, Mrs...
...When an exuberant crowd of Ghanians had pressed in on him in Accra, Clinton lost his composure...
...But things get a little rough and she slaps his face—as Kathleen Willey wanted to do...
...But she soon decides to put up with the incorrigible old groover because he's the only man who can save the world from a "vast, right-wing conspiracy...
...The White House insisted the timing of the trip had nothing to do with Monica Lewinsky, Paula Jones, or Kathleen Willey, but it had been planned for August or September, and it was obvious it had been cobbled together in a hurry...
...For one thing, the Pope was in Nigeria on a long-scheduled visit, when Clinton dropped in almost next door in Ghana...
...Also, Clinton and his entourage were supposed to stay overnight in Ghana, but it was discovered only belatedly there was no place to put them...
...Willey was wise to restrain herself...
...But as Bwana Sam reported, with an appropriate touch of asperity, Clinton refused to reply...
...Yeah, right," she said...
...Loyally, the rich boy decides to stick with his chum, though towards the end he's increasingly distant and remote...
...The enraged aliens then destroy the planet...
...4. Love Story The first Clinton film to tell the story from the vice president's point of view...
...Pat, naturally, was identifying with the mountain men...
...He pushes her roughly down to crotch level—the Monica Lewinsky position...
...Still, that might just be his acting...
...6. The Michael Douglas "Primary Urges" Collection Everyone assumes that Michael Douglas played Clinton in The American President...
...But other than that, the film is stunningly accurate in every detail...
...In his 1996 presidential campaign, to the delighted roars of his heartland supporters, Pat warned the Washington establishment that he was coming to get them "like a character from Deliverance...
...Apparently Rawlings is now an inspiration to all Africa...
...Who needs body bags coming back from the Gulf when you're getting such terrific numbers on the oral sex...
...No," she said...
...The president howls...
...The person said no (or "Ouch"), they were untied, it didn't happen again...
...This is a reference to the mysterious unseen Clinton twin Phil, the man in the iron pants, rumored to be languishing in the Arkansas State Penitentiary...
...I cried...
...Is every film about Clinton...
...The Al Gore figure is a rich, pampered preppie who falls for a colorful, dirtpoor character from the wrong side of the tracks (Bill Clinton, played by Ali McGraw...
...Wanna take a peek at me wedding tackle...
...Alas, Hollywood is rarely that responsible...
...The press secretary said the president had grown alarmed when he saw a woman who had fallen, and he was afraid she might be trampled...
...Washington insiders will recognize this as the merest variation on recent events: President Clinton, you'll recall, sent war hero M. Larry Lawrence to the front of Arlington Cemetery just so he could spend more time with Larry's wife...
...5. Contact Talented as they are, Douglas, Travolta, Di Caprio can't compete with the real thing...
...In one scene, we see him send a war hero to the front just so he can spend more time with the guy's woman...
...Trust Hollywood to get everything completely backwards...
...That's about Bruce Babbitt...
...A brainy, feminist colleague played by Elizabeth Hurley (the Gloria Steinem character) tries to explain that in the nineties men respect women and no longer assume they're gagging to be shagged senseless...
...His African speeches reflected that...
...But this film makes a reasonable stab at it by casting as "Louis" the country's second favorite heartthrob, Leonardo DiCaprio...
...The next day, in Uganda, other reporters tried again, and the president stiffed them too...
...The last white guy to show up in Africa in a bush jacket was Stewart Granger when he made King Solomon's Mines...
...And why not...
...Next year, it'll have its own category at the Oscars (Best Original Score...
...He places her hand on his crotch and she grabs it hard...
...Moreover, Africa knows him best not as President Rawlings, but as Flight Lieutenant Rawlings, the rank he has self-consciously clung to for most of the last twenty years...
...We have Wag the Dog, Primary Colors, The Full Monty, and Slick Will Hunting...
...intelligent lawyer and futures trader whose non-smoking husband is continually assailed by deranged nymphomaniac chain-smokers determined to destroy their plans to bring compulsory federal smoke-free daycare to every nicotine-shrouded town in America...
...What's an African trip for, anyway, if not to escape all that nonsense...
...It's about an administration that arranges a war to distract attention from a presidential sex scandal and improve his poll numbers...
...As Clinton said, "Today, Ghana lights the way for democracy...
...In this version, the thinly-disguised Clinton character is called "Louis XIV...
...Louis," his musketeers moan, could be a great king if only he would stop exercising his "executive privilege" on the Versailles interns...
...Was it true he was invoking it so that Hillary Clinton, among others, would not have to answer questions from Kenneth Starr...
...She struggles to break free...
...Wisely, Leo does not attempt to look like the president...
...Clinton's close advisers and friends have described as private bursts of temper...
...I'd love to answer that question," he says, "but you and I both know that there's an inquiry going on, and under the rules of that inquiry I'm not allowed to say anything until all the facts are in...
...Who can forget those quickened-up musical finales in which Benny, having accidentally brushed against the odd breast or two, finds himself pursued by a chain of irate dolly birds he can never quite shake off— Gennifer, Paula, Monica, Kathleen— followed by a posse of ambitious lawyers and journalists, while a high-speed "Hail to the Chief" plays on the soundtrack...
...Last year, President Clinton appeared as himself in this Jodie Foster film in which aliens from outer space initiate contact with the most powerful world leader and ask him about life on earth...
...The plot revolves around the efforts of a small group of disillusioned musketeers — "Athos," "Porthos," and "Aramis" (that's to say, McCurros, Panettos, and Stephanopoulos) — to replace "Louis" with the man in the iron mask, Louis' twin brother "Philippe," who languishes in the Bastille...
...But one day a glamorous Clintonesque stud (Tom Selleck) turns up, kisses him smack on the lips, and causes David to question his identity: Is he perhaps a deeply closeted Clintonite too...
...My head was reeling...
...So Clinton left Ghana after only eight hours...
...Subpoena The Teenage Witch...
...50 May 19 9 8 • The American Spectator NB: In an amusing touch, for the lavish masked ball at the palace, every guest—male or female—shows up in big hair...
...If Absolute Power, directed by Clint Eastwood, is anything to go by, it's quite a sensible one...
...Clinton criticized Julia Roberts for smoking a cigarette in My Best Friend's Wedding...
...Oh, sure, and when Clinton first was asked about Mrs...
...On the other hand, Clinton was not addressing Africans in his speeches so much At least Bill Clinton was right to apologize to Rwanda...
...Clinton, his face contorted in anger, raged at the crowd to get back, as ferociously pounding drums seemed to lend it momentum...
...f44 PRESSWATCH by John Corry The Great Escape N o question but that it was Africa: Sam Donaldson was in a bush jacket...
...and then dropping his flares...
...Nonetheless Bwana Sam did remember he was ABC's White House correspondent, and he showed that while Bill Clinton could run, he still couldn't hide...
...And, besides, like most women, she finds it rather cute when he says, "Shagadelic, baby...
...Instead of playing a heavy smoker, she should be playing, say, a non-smoking dazzlingly MARK STEYN is theater critic of the New Criterion and movie critic of the Spectator of London...
...Earlier, in Fatal Attraction, Douglas plays a Clinton figure whose discreet paternal friendship is completely misunderstood by a crazed, possessive fantasist (Glenn Close...
...Phil is identical to Bill in every way, except that he steers clear of babes and prefers instead to reach out to poor people through a system of universal health care and an open policy on gays in the military...
...In the meantime, we should pause to consider, as the First Lady has done, the awesome power of film...
...Well, perhaps, but if Ghana does, it's a very dim light...
...As the New York Times reported the next day, "Mr...
...In real life the administration was savvy enough to cancel the war with Iraq precisely because it was in danger of distracting attention from the sex scandal...
...In Deliverance, four Atlanta businessmen go for a weekend in the wilds, but are kidnapped by a couple of stump-toothed leathery old mountain men who tie one of their number to a tree and sodomize him...
...it was a rare public displayof what some of Mr...
...You remember Kathleen Willey, March's White House Psycho Slut of the Month...
...Mike McCurry, of course, said it wasn't that way at all...
...ed to get away from Washington, and it showed...
...When Rawlings first came to power, he executed his three predecessors and all the judges on Ghana's supreme court...
...Clinton wantJOHN CORRY is TAS's senior correspondent...
...Bwana Sam wanted to blend in, but the temperature in Ghana was ioo degrees, and he must have been terribly uncomfortable...
...She cut quite a sympathetic figure until the Clinton attack dogs set about their work...
...Still, he probably was happy to leave—he could put an embarrassing incident behind him...
...The American Spectator • May r 9 9 8 51 What kind of pathetic answer is that, her critics demanded to know...
...They move in together, but the preppie soon notices that his working-class pal is tragically succumbing to a chronic sickness that requires him to spend all day in bed—or, at any rate, the anteroom to the Oval Office...
...A living anachronism in his ludicrous medallion, crushed velvet Nehru jacket, and ruffled cuffs, Clinton Powers—sorry, Austin Powers — staggers from one woman to another, going "Hey, baby, fancy a shag...
...Philippe" is identical to "Louis" in every way, except that he doesn't hit on every chick in the palace and wants instead to reach out to the poor people of Paris...
...There are dozens of Clinton movies out there...
...In the film's most disturbing sequence, Douglas gives Close a rabbit, but, on the advice of counsel, she subsequently returns it to his secretary...
...As the National Organization for Women recently explained in a clarification of their position, tying someone to a tree and sodomizing them does not constitute sexual harassment...
...In Ghana, for example, he denounced military dictatorship, and praised President Jerry Rawlings...
...The Western's dead, the musical's gone, no one can do screwball comedy: if only by default, the Clintopic is Hollywood's last surviving genre...
...3. Deliverance For a look at future presidential material, don't forget this seventies classic, which proved so inspiring to a young Pat Buchanan...
...Well," she said, "I don't think you can slap the President of the United States...
...8. In and Out Kevin Kline plays David, a ferocious right-wing bastard who's happy and content in his small, close-knit right-wing bastard community of shadowy foundations and slimy, disaffected state troopers...
...Diplomatic niceties, as well as good sense, meant that he should have waited...
...Coming soon to a Multisex near you...
...What were they all about...
...9. Austin Powers, International Man of Mystery For a wackier Clinton biopic, try this version of the story: Mike Myers plays the Clinton figure, a clapped-out sixties swinger for whom the last thirty years might just as well have never happened...
...He screams again...
...52 May 1998 • The American Spectator...
...But he essayed the role a couple of years earlier in Disclosure, the Michael Crichton film that explicitly addresses the issue of sexual harassment...
...If I'd known the choice was this bewildering," I said, "I'd have stayed home and watched that zany new ABC Friday night sitcom about an over-reaching special prosecutor and his persecution of pudgy Valley Girls...
...A heartwarming tale of one man's struggle to come to terms with who he is—or, anyway, who he's likely to be for the foreseeable future...
...2. The Benny Hill Show This is perhaps the performer who comes closest to capturing the subtle, nuanced, many-layered personality of our most complex president...
...It's not like she's an obscure elected official whose tastes are nobody's business but his own: Julia has a duty to set an example...
...But, even during the "6o Minutes" interview, skeptics wondered: She said she wanted to slap him on the face, so why didn't she...
...Take, for example, that so-called Clinton film Wag the Dog...
...1. Absolute Power This film didn't make too much noise when it came out last year, but, with hindsight, it provides much food for thought...
...Douglas is an all too recognizable Clinton, a devoted family man in a low-level job (leader of the free world) who's sexually assaulted by Demi Moore, playing a ruthless, predatory senior executive (entry-level Pentagon clerk...
...The problem is we can no longer tell if he's lying on purpose or unintentionally, or if he believes what he says, or if anything he says or does has any meaning at all...
...The president's female aide organizes the cover-up...
...At this point, the Secret Service men outside the door burst in, see this woman physically threatening their president, and, as they're trained to do reflexively, shoot her dead...
...Absolute Power opens with a late-night rendezvous between President Richmond (Gene Hackman) and the young, attractive wife of one of his major campaigndonors—a Shelia Lawrence type...
...We're also showing Dances With Sharks...
...The Golden Tulip, the biggest and perhaps best hotel in Accra, the capital, was owned by Libyans, and that would not do...
...Admittedly, the film cannot entirely solve the usual problem of Clinton movies—i.e., what Hollywood leading man could possibly match what everyone from Katie Roiphe to Billy Graham to Bill Clinton has recognized as the uniquely irresistible sexual allure of the president...
Vol. 31 • May 1998 • No. 5
