NUTS TO Double Talk
Clinton, Kate
NUTS TO Double Talk BY KATE CLINTON The photos one Sunday in The New York Times of Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich as young boys in their Western wear confirmed my suspicion that they had been...
...I want everyone to know what they've been whispering and mumbling for years...
...Last winter's interminably televised Winter Olympics have been replaced this winter by marathon broadcasting of This Old House, with the Newt Gingrich Deconstruction Company...
...G. on her way into the White House taking one last drag and flicking her Camel into the magnolia bush...
...I think there should be term limits on Larry King, too...
...The only difference in these otherwise homogeneous hopalongs was that Bill was wearing a white hat and little Newtie was wearing, what else, a black hat and packing the largest six-shooter, larger than Uma Thurmond's thumb, aimed at his crotch...
...Gingrich was the heavily mediated shift in focus from the fact that Newt called Hillary a bitch to a question of Connie Chung's journalistic credentials...
...It's Newt Speak, the deliberate use of ambiguous, deceptive talk seeking to mold public opinion...
...It must be one of those hallucinogenic mushrooms that makes you think you can cut taxes and cut the deficit, all at the same time, dude...
...I hate it when they're quiet...
...But now sometimes I wish Bill, and Newt for that matter, would just give it a rest...
...I confess to experiencing frequent episodes of involuntary morphing whenever I look at Bill or Newt...
...If I look long enough, Bill blends to Newt and back to Bill and then to Newt again in a dizzying sort of MTV Grecian Formula 44 commercial...
...After twelve years in the wasteland of rhetorical indirection under Ronald ("Bit-burg...
...With the exception of Frank Rich, it seems that everyone is writing his own A.M...
...At least you know where they stand.* Kate Clinton is a comedian...
...It breaks the rhyming tradition...
...Well, now I was sure you said Pittsburgh") Reagan, George ("didn't want to use a subject, wouldn't be prudent, CIA habit of speech") Bush, and Dan ("As Rodney King said, 'Why can't we all get a lawn?'") Quayle, it was at first rather refreshing to listen to Bill Clinton because he didn't induce major wincing whenever he spoke...
...And what is a Pataki anyway, if not some mind-altering mushroom grown in the wet and damp upstate muck of Cuomophobia...
...But I'd rather have him talking...
...When the Democrats won for a minute in 1992, Ralph Reed of the Christian Coalition said, "We're going to get real quiet...
...I'm glad it's out there...
...I'll take even whispering over rhyming innuendo...
...I like it when they are stomping around in their bigot old wingtips...
...When Newt's next in line, Dick Armey, a man who certainly must know what's in a name, referred to Barney Frank as Barney Fag, the name-calling from Newt's bullying pulpit was loud and clear...
...See Newt take a lead pipe to the back of Bill's legs...
...NUTS TO Double Talk BY KATE CLINTON The photos one Sunday in The New York Times of Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich as young boys in their Western wear confirmed my suspicion that they had been separated at birth...
...Maybe it's an after-effect of the infection I got from spending thirty days in a ditch...
...Gingrich said it...
...Perhaps because I have an older brother named Bill Clinton, I do take all this shape-shifting quite personally...
...Great shot of Mrs...
...Rosenthal Out of My Mind column...
...And just as Connie stalked Tonya last winter, she's out stalking the truth again, this time with the Gingriches...
...When I watch Newt, I don't feel as much like Big Brother is watching me, as I am watching my Big Brother—or listening and listening to him...
...He takes occasional cyborg-surfing safaris on the animal farm—always wanting to jump up and go after a giraffe...
...TV's not much better...
...It was a photo-odd Sunday in The Times—that article on the Ivy League bobbitized posture photos was something...
...Who can forget Time magazine's infuriating cover of Leona Helmsley with the words Rhymes with Rich, or when that blue-blood pitbull Barbara Bush opined in rhyme the same about Geraldine Ferraro...
...You can almost hear Bill's mom, Virginia Kelley, putting the kibosh on little Bill's pistol packing, while Newt's crusty military stepfather informs Kathleen, "My son will have a gun, damn it...
...I even dreamed recently that I was Newt's lesbian sister...
...See, the privileged are victims, too...
...In their side-by-saddle photo, Bill and Newt are seated even then on their high horses, in full cowboy drag, mouths shut for once, squinting, early Eastwood, into the sun...
...Newt's as big a nerd as Willy is a wonk, and the fact that they can both speak for three hours without taking a breath does not a leader make...
...The bizarre thing about that interview with Mrs...
...Is it my imagination, or has The New York Times slipped even more since Governor George Pataki was elected...
...Since Democrats don't know how to take their own side in a fight, they made Hillary invite Newt and his mom over for a tour of the White House...
...I had a better haircut—more Dorothy Hamill than Prince Val...
...I'm glad Mrs...
Vol. 59 • March 1995 • No. 3
