President Prolix
Scrapbook President Prolix Whew! The Scrapbook just finished David Remnick's 23-page profile of Bill Clinton in the latest New Yorker, and we feel as though we've been subjected to one of the...
...It's a way of relieving aggression...
...Clinton did not notice...
...presidential advisers ("I am sick of Karl Rove's bull—t...
...Their website is www.unmetneeds.com...
...She spent the last decades of her life in New York, and in 2001 wrote The Rage and the Pride—a bold, book-length attack on the jihadist ideology of Osama bin Laden that became a worldwide bestseller...
...What's the air-conditioning situ—" He was in mid-syllable when [Clintonite Ira] Magaziner and [former Clinton chief of staff John] Podesta turned to him, their eyes wide...
...People come up to me all the time and say they support the troops...
...his critics ("If you only knew how many millions of Republicans wanted me to go to jail...
...That morning Clinton "was worn out and in a foul mood...
...But neither would we use a few slips as an excuse to sidestep her powerful argument: that political Islam was an enemy irreconcilable with European culture, no matter how hard the West's gullible elites might struggle to "understand" it...
...18, 2006, issue of the Nation...
...Dept...
...Remnick's article, entitled "The Wanderer," provides an update not only on Clinton's post-presidential activities, but also on the incipient campaign to elect his wife, the junior senator from New York, to the presidency...
...You see, "when one of them makes a kill, they share the food, unlike all the other apes...
...What's Your Excuse...
...Instead, Ermey kindly suggested supporting Unmet Needs...
...I ask them how," quips Ermey...
...coffee ("This stuff doesn't really have an effect on me, I guess...
...We rode another half hour until finally someone intuited that Clinton's mood had passed and a brave soul turned on the A.C...
...and . . . bonobo apes...
...Ermey promises "every cent goes to the families of the troops" who have had their tours extended...
...his wife's presidential ambitions ("I don't know if she can win if she runs...
...Afterward, "They fall to the ground and have group sex...
...No kidding...
...Clinton aide Eric] Nonacs didn't realize who had shut off the air and said, "Hey, isn't there any air in here...
...Or less...
...All of which, we think, tells you more about Clinton and his courtiers—journalistic and otherwise—than 23 pages in the New Yorker...
...To say such things was an act of moral courage...
...The Scrapbook was terrified and delighted to meet R. Lee Ermey last week when the actor (a retired Marine best known as the drill instructor in Full Metal Jacket) was in town promoting a worthy cause called Unmet Needs...
...And, lest you be asked what is your major malfunction and ordered to choke yourself, we recommend you check it out on the double...
...If families need home or car repairs, Unmet Needs is there to buy the parts while volunteers lend their expertise—thus saving them the costs of labor...
...They've left jobs paying $3,000 a month for $1,000 a month in the military—just enough to pay the mortgage...
...Amy Alexander on Tavis Smiley's The Covenant with Black America, in the Sept...
...Still, there's one scene in "The Wanderer" that's worth the whole piece...
...Remnick accompanied Clinton to New Hampshire, Germany, and what seems like most of Africa, dutifully transcribing the 42nd president's thoughts on a variety of topics, including, though not limited to, the Bush administration ("Nixon was a Communist compared to this crowd...
...After visiting the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, the gunnery sergeant was moved to help, ultimately becoming the spokesman for Unmet Needs, whose existence is made possible by the Veterans of Foreign Wars and the Vermont-American company (makers of power-tool parts...
...Vladimir Putin ("One sly dog...
...That was at a time when Americans were still figuring out what kind of war they were in and Europeans were already beginning to waver...
...Ermey proudly reports Unmet Needs has already saved 90 families of soldiers from eviction...
...For that, as much as for her book's analyses, Fallaci will be remembered, and will deserve to be remembered...
...Very soon the air inside the van was stale and overheated...
...Nonacs, thankfully, was quick to understand...
...Outside the weather was "hot and steamy...
...The bonobo apes, Zookeeper Bill wistfully explains, have "the most incredibly developed social sense...
...Kind of like George Wallace did when he was beaten for governor...
...The Scrapbook just finished David Remnick's 23-page profile of Bill Clinton in the latest New Yorker, and we feel as though we've been subjected to one of the ex-president's infamous, hours-long, rambling, exhausting soliloquies...
...It first appeared in the Italian daily Corriere della Sera just 18 days after September 11, in what must have been a Herculean writing effort for a woman already suffering from cancer...
...Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist—and former Remnick colleague—Susan Schmidt of the Washington Post ("A Xerox machine for Ken Starr...
...Oriana Fallaci, 1929-2006 Oriana Fallaci, who in the 1970s was probably the most famous journalist in the world, died at 77 in her native Florence on Friday...
...Then, "unaccountably," Clinton absently reached up and, with a flick, shut off the air-conditioning...
...In some cases, families have had to struggle to pay the bills...
...Her dismissal of Muslim culture as having little of value beyond Averroes and Omar Khayyam was intemperate and indefensible...
...They stop and think and say, um, 'I don't say anything bad about them.'" Then the old drill master squints and says, "Well, that's nice...
...The Scrapbook did not share all of Fallaci's views...
...the 2000 Gore campaign ("He won, that's crystal clear to me...
...Clinton thinks this "would drive the Christian right crazy...
...It's also about the what-if fantasies of Clintonites...
...The weather had changed...
...of Mixed Metaphors hile it's hard to judge now whether this movement will have legs, the fact that the book hit the New York Times bestseller list in March and continues selling like hot cakes suggests that its message is striking a chord with lots of Americans...
...African Americans ("I know how black folks think...
...But the piece is much more than that...
...President George W. Bush and the American right ("He made up his mind that he'd never lose it...
...Not a few people made the calculation that if Monica Lewinsky hadn't been on pizza duty during the government shutdown of 1995 (and Clinton not so predisposed to share the snack) there might never have been a Bush Presidency at all, or a hyped case for war in Iraq, a botched occupation, a skyrocketing budget deficit, a morally and bureaucratically bungled reaction to Hurricane Katrina, and a loss of American prestige around the world...
...At which point The Scrapbook braced itself for a code red beating...
...Today, many more of our men and women in uniform, activated through the reserves, are married and have children...
...The van was cramped and stuffy and the windows were all closed...
...They do everything they can to put food on the table," says Ermey, "but sometimes it's not enough...
...Since the Nigerians would allow only one vehicle inside the presidential palace, Clinton and his entourage all had to ride in "one white van...
...When Ermey served in Vietnam, he explains, most of his men were young and unmarried...
...Late in the trip to Africa, Remnick accompanies Clinton and his staff to Abuja, the capital of Nigeria, to meet local strongman Olusegun Obasanjo...
...As Rem-nick sees it, Clinton had to live with the fact that he had hurt Al Gore in the 2000 election, thereby jeopardizing his Presidential legacy—and, as it turned out, so much else...
Vol. 12 • September 2006 • No. 2
