Mrs. Clinton's Very, Very Bad Book
O'ROURKE, P. J.
Mrs. Clinton's Very, Very Bad Book By P. J. O'Rourke "When Chelsea needed permission at school to get aspirin, she told the nurse to 'Call my dad, my mom's too busy.'" -Eleanor Clift and Mark...
...Clinton's call for enormous expansion of state power...
...And Mrs...
...Clinton doesn't even dislike business, as long as business is done her way...
...Whew, that was a close call...
...Clinton shows no evidence of having read even the dust-jacket of The Bell Curve, but never mind...
...Whatever the reasons for the apparent increase in physical and sexual abuse of children, it demands our intervention," she says...
...I myself am a Methodist...
...Children have many lessons to share with us," says Mrs...
...Clinton puts it...
...Poverty, injustice, the need to take a couple of days off work-in the Mrs...
...Stupidity is an excellent medium for the vigorous conveyance of certain political ideas...
...Not that Mrs...
...Just wait until the second Clinton administration...
...But Mrs...
...She's been to college...
...Chelsea was taking in my milk, but because of the awkward way I held her, she was breathing it out of her nose...
...And she flatly states, "The teenage years, we all know, pose a special challenge for parents...
...The guards could not figure out what we were up to, and we laughed for hours afterwards...
...You think getting your driver's license renewed is a pain now...
...And she tells us that in Bangladesh she met a Louisiana doctor "who was there to learn about low-cost techniques he could use back home to treat some of his state's more than 240,000 uninsured children...
...Clinton taps the expertise of- what else to call them?-experts...
...No relatives lived nearby...
...Clinton opines that "one of the conditions of the consumer culture is that it relies upon human insecurities to create aspirations that can be satisfied only by the purchase of some product or service...
...Hours...
...Very important intellectuals like Garry Wills consider her a very important intellectual like Garry Wills...
...And no concentration camps either, just lots and lots of day care...
...I tried some rice pilaf with lentils, beans, and chick peas with a group of fifth and sixth graders, who not only ate what was served but said they liked it...
...And ditto, my dear, for dumb...
...CC: Miss Illinois...
...Then she patronizes her audience, talks down to them, lowers the level of discourse to where it may be understood by the averagelet's be frank-Democrat...
...I share my husband's belief that 'nothing in the First Amendment converts our public schools into religion-free zones,'" says Mrs...
...We marched with our Scout troops or school groups or rode bikes in holiday parades through our town's small downtown, to a park where all the kids were given Popsicles...
...Such as vaccinations for kids, maybe...
...We walked to our neighborhood store, brought the coconut home, and tried to open it, even pounding on it with a hammer, to no avail...
...She has a big, long r?sum...
...Clinton: "Less developed nations will be our best models for the home doctoring we will then need to master...
...Says Mrs...
...Clinton fails to acknowledge that some poor journalism professor named Barbara Feinman did a lot of the work...
...The cattle on my dairy farm right now," she said, "are receiving better health care than my children...
...I added the part in italics for comic relief, something It Takes a Village doesn't provide...
...Quiz tomorrow...
...But around the family are the larger settings of paid informers, secret police, corrupt bureaucracy, and a prison gulag...
...She spends too much time arguing both sides of the social, if not political, issues-a thing done deftly by her husband and rather less so by her...
...There was Hillary the zealous and committed, ideological wide-load, antithesis to that temporizing flibbertigibbet and political roundheels her husband...
...The only classical fascist element missing from It Takes a Village is "social Darwinism...
...And there will be no uniforms other than comfortable, durable clothes on girls...
...Clinton apparently belongs to the synod from Mars...
...Clinton talks long and often about the "harsh consequences of a more open economy...
...Clinton's introduction to the chapter titled "Kids Don't Come with Instructions": There I was, lying in my hospital bed, trying desperately to figure out how to breast-feed...
...Then there was Hillary guile incarnate, swindling the widows and orphans of Arkansas in bank stock, real estate, and cattle trading deals, sending her minions to rifle the office of Vince Foster before his body had cooled and loudly touting the virtues of feminism while acquiring her own wealth and prestige by marriage to a promising lunk...
...My neighbors were not at home...
...Clinton seems to possess the highly developed, finely attuned stupidity usually found in the upper reaches of academia...
...In It Takes a Village, Mrs...
...Nor does Mrs...
...And let us avert our eyes from the Kim Il-Sung-type dust-jacket photograph showing Mrs...
...There are Jews in it...
...Clinton is, for instance, doggedly pro-Clinton...
...Sometimes a few of the fathers dressed up in sheets and told us ghost stories...
...Clinton seems to play at being a horse's ass, when she makes statements such as "some of the best theologians I have ever met were five-year-olds...
...Frantically, I pushed every buzzer there was to push...
...This is real 'family values' legislation," she says of the Family and Medical Leave Act, a law she calls "a major step toward a national commitment to allowing good workers to be good family members"-something workers never were, of course, until the government made them so...
...Clinton surrounded by joyous-youth-of-many-nations...
...Some of this needful counsel is gleaned from Mrs...
...But let us not confuse stupid with feeble or pointless...
...Let us marshal the evidence: Arguments Contra Stupidity Arguments Pro President of her class at Wellesley It was the 60s, decade without quality control Involved in Watergate investigation So was Martha Mitchell Partner in most prestigious law firm in Arkansas Examine phrase "most prestigious law firm in Arkansas" Went to Yale Went to Yale Married Bill Married Bill Is good on television Not as good as Tori Spelling The jury seems to be out...
...We have failed to penetrate the various masks of the public persona...
...Of course the dairy farmers could have, I don't know, sold a cow or something, but that would have been playing into the hands of anti-government extremists...
...Clinton cannot help but result in a treasure trove of useful advice on child rearing...
...And on page 153 of It Takes a Village we share a good one: When my family moved to Park Ridge, I was four years old and eager to make new friends...
...But, she says, "After many years of working with and listening to American adolescents, I don't believe they are ready for sex or its potential consequences...
...Clinton, and on the next page she endorses the joint Justice Department/Department of Education guidelines on religious activities in the public schools, which state: "Schools may not provide religious instruction, but they may teach about the Bible...
...But It Takes a Village contains plentiful evidence that we members of the press do not know the true woman...
...Surely the imbecility of It Takes a Village is calculated, cynical, an attempt to soften the First Lady's image with ordinary Americans...
...Well, don't do that to a little kid...
...For instance, "A number of our most powerful telecommunications and computer companies have joined forces with the government in a project to connect every classroom in America to the Internet...
...Clinton claims to have once been a Goldwater Republican...
...As of 1992, the Arkansas rate was 10.3 vs...
...Clinton does, "We can encourage girls to be active and dress them in comfortable, durable clothes that let them move freely...
...Ethnic groups do not suffer persecution except insofar as a positive self-image is required among women and minorities at all times...
...Clinton thereby unwisely violates the first rule of literary collaboration: Blame the coauthor...
...Bold thoughts...
...Frantic, I called a trusted friend who came to my rescue...
...My father came from a long line of Methodists, while my mother, who had not been raised in any church, taught Sunday school...
...Interesting lessons they must have been...
...Says Mrs...
...Watching one parent browbeat the other over child support or property division by threatening to fight for custody or withhold visitation, I often wished I could call in King Solomon to arbitrate...
...I can only wonder if any of those words were from one times one by cummings: a politician is an arse upon which everything has sat except a man Until now the First Lady has had two media aspects or avatars...
...And what parent will not applaud Mrs...
...We talked with God, walked with God, ate, studied, and argued with God...
...The children are cradled in the family, which is primarily responsible for their passage from infancy to adulthood...
...Furthermore, Mrs...
...Clinton won't buy into (with your money...
...Though one shudders to think of the lawsuits the Children's Defense Fund would have brought against old Sol for endangering the welfare of a minor, bigamy, and what Mrs...
...So unlike the lovely time people are having in North Korea...
...And we need only turn to the contents page to reap the benefits of her many lonely hours spent in philosophical contemplation of puerile ontology: "Kids Don't Come with Instructions," "Security Takes More Than a Blanket," "Child Care Is Not a Spectator Sport," "Children Are Citizens Too...
...Clinton crafts this jewel of equivocation: "I strongly favor promoting choice among public schools" (italics not in the original...
...Imagine hearing this kind of "news you can use" sandwiched in the middle of the Top Ten countdown: "So you've got a new baby in the house...
...Its real long...
...Clinton world view there is no social problem that's not an occasion for increased political involvement in private life...
...It's real old...
...A poultice of buffalo dung is helpful in many cases...
...Clinton miss a chance to swipe at family values, often putting the phrase in quotation marks to signify ironic scorn...
...And she lets us in on her deep personal sorrows...
...cummings inspired us to debate other moral issues...
...The Child Care Action Campaign . . . advises that 'jigsaw puzzles and crayons may be fine for preschoolers but are inappropriate for infants.'" And Ann Brown, the chairhuman of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, is cited for suggesting that "baby showers with a safety theme are a great way to help new and expectant mothers childproof every room in their homes...
...From the time I was a child I loved being around children...
...a national average of 8.5...
...Admittedly, the fascism in It Takes a Village is of a namby-pamby, eat-your-vegetables kind that doesn't so much glorify the state and nation as pester the dickens out of them...
...She frames herself as wife, mother, and Christian, favors making divorces harder to get, mentions responsibility about every third page, and goes as far as to tell this bald-faced lie: "We reject the utopian view that government can or should protect people from the consequences of personal decisions...
...And Mrs...
...Videos with scenes of commonsense baby care- how to burp an infant, what to do when soap gets in his eyes, how to make a baby with an earache comfortable-could be running continuously in doctors' offices, clinics, hospitals, motor vehicle offices, or any place where people gather and have to wait...
...Clinton's own experience of partly raising one child with only a legion of household help courtesy the taxpayers...
...Don't let her cry herself red in the face...
...Every time I walked out the door, with a bow in my hair and a hopeful look on my face, the neighborhood kids would torment me, pushing me, knocking me down, and teasing me until I burst into tears and ran back in the house...
...That crabbed, restrictive screed the Bill of Rights comes to mind...
...And no doubt the Swiss and Japanese, who owe their low crime rates to keeping their kids awake till all hours shooting hoops, would agree...
...There, I've spared you from reading the worst book to come out of the Clinton administration since-let's be fair-whatever the last one was...
...My husband was out of town...
...However that may be, let us understand that we have here a Christmas card with ideas, "a reflection of my continuing meditation on children," as Mrs...
...Clucks the First Lady: "The influence of profit-driven medicine continues to grow...
...I shall be certain to propose the creation of this novel office at the next Town Meeting in Sharon, New Hampshire...
...Several times...
...We will have to rely for our answer on old-fashioned textual analysis...
...Clinton calls "the misuse of religion to further political, personal and even commercial agendas...
...Children," she ventures, "need to hear from authoritative voices that kindness and caring matter...
...Elsewhere the tone is xeroxed family newsletter, the kind enclosed in a Christmas card from people you hardly know: One memorable night, Chelsea wanted us to go buy a coconut...
...Churches," she says, "are among the few places in the village where today's teenagers can let down their guard and let off steam...
...Clinton chooses a thesis that can hardly be refuted, "Resolved: Kids-Aren't They Great...
...Clinton explains, however, that church is good...
...Clinton's Very, Very Bad Book By P. J. O'Rourke "When Chelsea needed permission at school to get aspirin, she told the nurse to 'Call my dad, my mom's too busy.'" -Eleanor Clift and Mark Miller, Newsweek, March 1, 1993 It takes a village to raise a child...
...She assessed the situation calmly...
...I'm sure my fellow residents will be as pleased as I am at the notion of a public servant going from door to door at convenient hours announcing, as Mrs...
...The narrative voice is, I believe, intended to be that of an old family friend, an old family friend who is, perhaps, showing the first signs of Alzheimer's disease: On summer nights, our parents sat together in one another's yards or on porches, chatting while the kids played...
...Finally we went out to the parking lot of the governor's mansion, where we took turns throwing it on the ground until it cracked...
...Then let us postulate something we might call a "bell trough" and draw a conclusion from this that innate stupidity is hard to measure too...
...As I looked on in horror, Chelsea started to foam at the nose...
...You are the child...
...I can't understand the political opposition to programs like 'midnight' basketball," she says...
...Oh, Honey, look what Mom brought-a huge bouquet of rubber bands to put around all the knobs on our kitchen cabinets...
...a sock turned into a hand puppet is enough to fascinate them for hours") to keeping older kiddies fit ("If your children need to lose weight, help them to set a reasonable goal and make a sensible plan for getting there...
...Elitism" is noted, as is "Fascism's rejection of reason and intelligence and its emphatic emphasis on vision...
...This is also an excellent method of educating offspring about sexual abuse and, perhaps, capital punishment...
...And won, I'll warrant...
...If a name must be put to these stupid politics, we can consult the Columbia Encyclopedia under the heading of that enormous stupidity, fascism: "totalitarian philosophy of government that glorifies state and nation and assigns to the state control over every aspect of national life...
...But some kinds of stupidity cannot be faked...
...Just think how you'd feel if you were hungry, wet, or just plain out of sorts and nobody paid any attention to you...
...Clinton, "are like the tiny figures at the center of the nesting dolls for which Russian folk artists are famous...
...T]he village needs a town crier-and a town prodder," she says...
...She gives examples of corporate activities that statists can cozy up to...
...Mommy, did they put Jesus on the cross before or after he came down the chimney and brought all the children toys...
...She recollects past do-goodery: "In Arkansas we enlisted the services of local merchants to create a book of coupons that could be distributed to pregnant women...
...She is determined that every child should reach his or her full potential in mind and body ("One of my pet theories is that learning to tie shoelaces is a good way of developing hand-to-eye coordination...
...There is no form of social spending that Mrs...
...Clinton is oblivious to the idea that the government programs she advocates may have caused the problems the government programs she advocates are supposed to solve...
...Is the First Lady a dunce...
...Give her a break, and give her some attention now...
...Only the lamest arguments are summoned to support Mrs...
...And on the subject of pedagogics in general, Mrs...
...Clinton really can't be stupid...
...It's been replaced by "social creationism," expressed in such Mrs...
...Clinton, "It would be great if we could get kids to postpone any decision about sex until they are over twenty-one...
...But she could not afford to get her preschoolers inoculated as well...
...Eliot and e.e...
...Clinton is highly critical of The Bell Curve by Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray...
...There are times in It Takes a Village when Mrs...
...Smart is not something you simply are, but something you can become," says Mrs...
...The Columbia article points out that fascism "is obliged to be antithe-oretical and frankly opportunistic in order to appeal to many diverse groups...
...let us take her underlying point that innate intelligence is hard to measure...
...This is an interesting public-relations gambit, repositioning the Dragon Lady to show how much she cares about all the little dragon eggs...
...The village is Washington...
...Clinton's hint "to explain to the child in advance what the shots do, perhaps by illustrating it with her favorite dolls and stuffed animals...
...Lest the reader think I exaggerate the First Lady's brown-shirt (though from a New York designer and with nice ruffles) tendencies, let me leave you with a few vignettes from Mrs...
...Indeed the profit motive is to blame for many, many of America's problems...
...Clinton also shares her many virtuous thoughts with us...
...Yet, at bottom, Mrs...
...A nurse appeared promptly...
...The woman was holding her baby upside down...
...Nearly everything about It Takes a Village (Simon & Schuster, 318 pages, $20) is objectionable, from the title-an ancient African proverb that seems to have its origins in the ancient African kingdom of Hall-markcardia-to the acknowledgments page, where Mrs...
...I thought she was strangling or having convulsions...
...Anyone who makes the least demur to the Clinton administration agenda (whatever it may be this week) is an extremist: "As soon as Goals 2000 passed, it was attacked by extremists...
...But if the purpose of It Takes a Village is to get in good with the masses, then explain this sentence on page 182: "I had never before known people who lived in trailers...
...Clinton, "need straight talk about contraception and sexually transmitted diseases to help them deal with the consequences of their decisions...
...Clinton offers pat little anecdotes of this ilk: I will never forget the woman from Vermont whom I met at a health care forum in Boston...
...Nonetheless, the similitude exists...
...And she vapors: "Socially minded corporate philosophies are the avenue to future prosperity and social stability...
...After every month's pre- or postnatal exam, the attending health care provider validates a coupon, which can be redeemed for free or reduced-price goods such as milk or diapers...
...Intentionally...
...Perhaps she just muffed her note-taking during his 1964 nomination acceptance speech...
...Clinton has no thought for the infinite growth of cost and dependency inherent in entitlement programs...
...Hear her on the subject of nurseries and preschools: "From what experts tell us, there is a link between the cost and the quality of care...
...Our spiritual life as a family was spirited and constant...
...The profound cogitations of Mrs...
...Children," says Mrs...
...Don't call the White House if the kid refuses to be left alone in the room with Fuzzy the Bunny...
...She ran a dairy farm with her husband, which meant that she was required by law to immunize her cattle against disease...
...She uses a few statistics of the kind that come in smudgy faxes from minor Naderite organizations: "135,000 children bring guns to school each day...
...Clinton statements as "I have never met a stupid child...
...And then there is Mrs...
...In 1980, Arkansas had an infant mortality rate of 12.7 per 1,000 live births, almost identical to the national average of 12.6...
...The writing style is that familiar modern one so often adopted by harried public figures speaking into a tape recorder...
...She's a nitwit...
...But what if the reason is our intervention...
...But Mrs...
...Though perhaps they may be allowed to decide what sex they are, since adolescents, says Mrs...
...Featured prominently in the fascist paradigm is "an authoritarian leader who embodies in his [or her!] person the highest ideals of the nation...
...But It Takes a Village is so much more than just a self-help book for idiots...
...When violence is newsworthy they should report it, but they should balance it with stories that provide children and adults with positive images of themselves and those around them, taking care not to exacerbate negative stereotypes...
...It was already seven-thirty, and two-year-old Chelsea was running a fever and throwing up after a sleepless night for both of us...
...I suppose that looking back at her diaries, rediscovered in the East Wing book room, she found the following entry: " 'Extremism in the defense of liberty is (illegible).' Remind myself to ask that nice girl in PoliSci class who's president of SDS what the Senator said...
...We have neglected to learn who the real Hillary Rodham Clinton is...
...Clinton's ideal world: At the Washington Beech Community Preschool in Roslindale, Massachusetts, director Ellen Wolpert has children play games like Go Fish and Concentration with a deck of cards adorned with images-men holding babies, women pounding nails, elderly men on ladders, gray-haired women on skateboards . . . Journalists and news executives have responsibilities too...
...She blithely speaks of "a single mother in Illinois who . . . described herself as falling into the childcare netherworld because she makes too much to qualify for state programs but finds that the price of daycare 'is well out of reach.'" Why should every taxpayer in the nation become Miss Illinois's husband when there is one particular taxpayer honestly obliged to do so...
...It is often said that children are our last and best hope for the future," claims Mrs...
...Can she...
...Clinton has swell tips on everything from entertaining toddlers ("Often...
...She just got here...
...And she says the "extreme case against government, often including intense personal attacks on government officials and political leaders [italics added by an extremist, me], is designed not just to restrain government but to advance narrow religious, political, and economic agendas...
...Clinton cannot really be called a commie or a pinko or even a liberal in the contemporary hold-your-nose sense of the word...
...She says that in her Methodist youth group, "we argued over the meaning of war to a Christian after seeing for the first time works of art like Picasso's Guernica, and the words of poets like TS...
...Clever device...
...Clinton does her best to steal conservative thunder or, anyway, troglodyte rumblings...
...Clinton always had it easy: But for two years when Bill was not governor (and Chelsea was still very young) our only help was a woman who came during work hours on weekdays...
...My own version of every woman's worst nightmare happened one morning when I was due in court at nine-thirty for a trial...
...The woman who normally took care of Chelsea called in sick with the same symptoms...
...One whole chapter of her book is titled "The Bell Curve is a Curve Ball...
...Anyway, Mrs...
...Brave insights...
Vol. 1 • February 1996 • No. 22
