President Quimby
SHIFLETT, DAVE
President Quimby Don't Worry About "The Children" By Dave Shiflett While the Troubles may not be hurting the Clinton poll numbers a lick, respectable opinion has it that the scandal definitely...
...Yet we are hard-bitten, tax-gouged, clear-eyed realists who also want our children to understand that Washington is a place where lowlifes gather to exert power over the rest of us, often out of a misplaced sense of moral superiority...
...Lowlifes like President Quimby and his groveling courtiers...
...The youth of America, as evidenced by my 12- and 16-year-old sons, are hardly treading unknown waters here...
...His response to discovery is uniform: "Vote Quimby...
...Quinn went on television early in the scandal to tell my sons that the election of President Quimby proved America had "grown up" about philandering...
...The Quimby linkage will disturb some parents, especially Beltway dwellers, who point out that the current occupant of the White House, for all his abilities to amuse, also happens to be the only president The Children have known...
...That's not all bad...
...Quimby also sways with the political tides, is fond of public-works projects, has a gift for gab as well as grab, and is beyond shaming...
...They know just what to make of all this, which is why they've taken to calling the president of the United States by the name Quimby...
...This point is made indelibly as The Children contemplate the likelihood that the president may have celebrated the unmatched majesty of the White House by engaging in bus-station sex just outside the Oval Office...
...The good news is that most of this worrying is misplaced...
...Should our youngsters ask why that is, our only response may be: "Shut up and eat your vegetables...
...Similarly, "bad" role models, whether Joe Camel or the Bud-weiser frogs, are thoroughly demonized...
...Or, to put it another way: A baboon can go around in a morning coat, but he remains a baboon...
...We want our children to know that Washington has played a positive role in the world, and in fact continues to do good here and there...
...Quimby is, in short, an amiable sleaze, and much closer to Clinton than anyone in Wag the Dog, whose art does not imitate White House life nearly as much as The Simpsons does...
...For those who don't partake, Diamond Joe is a Kennedy-clone politician who walks like a Kennedy, talks like a Kennedy, and loves like a Kennedy with a fresh annulment under his belt...
...That is, brazen family betrayal is fully acceptable, a message even Hollywood is hesitant to send in such uncertain terms...
...We know that while President Quimby has his shortcomings, he is a pedagogue of the first stripe...
...Quite the contrary...
...The Simpson family can hardly open a closet door without encountering the middle-aged pol having at a babe about half his age—right around 21, I would guess...
...Consider former journalist Sally Quinn, now a Washington fixture...
...Yet we have twice put Quimby at the apex of national life, where he and his acolytes mock fidelity, integrity, honesty, and most everything else we tell children is important...
...As a result, parents are said to be struggling on two fronts: one, to shield their kids from the fouler aspects of the allegations, and two, to help them avoid becoming unduDave Shiflett is a writer living in Midlothian, Va ly cynical about democratic institutions...
...Yet others of us (I write from 100 miles south of the Beltway—not far from Kathleen Willey's place, as it happens) have a more refined view...
...Hearing a Washington throne-sniffer tell them otherwise teaches them a great deal about Washington mores...
...Quimby and Company have driven home another message parents pound into their children from an early age: The opulent clothing of power and prestige are often quite far removed from personal virtue...
...So a Gold Star for Sally—and heads up, Ben...
...The resemblance to our current president (known as the Nookie Monster among the Sesame Street cohort) does not stop there...
...Because this scandal may stretch on for quite some time, these anxieties must be considered a threat to the mental equilibrium of one of the nation's most vulnerable populations—boomer parents—and therefore deserve a closer look...
...Well, to a point...
...All but the most morally dense child knows this message to be false, for they see everywhere the damage done by family betrayal...
...Their kids may not be able to name a single cabinet member, but they do know the names Paula and Gennifer...
...These days we often go to fanatical lengths to protect the interests of The Children: Not long ago, to give one example, a boy in our local school was suspended for 10 days after being caught possessing an Alka Seltzer, a reflection of the somewhat Islamic "no tolerance" form the anti-drug passion now takes...
...The name comes from a character in The Simpsons: Mayor "Diamond" Joe Quimby...
...This, these parents insist, is a calamity...
...President Quimby Don't Worry About "The Children" By Dave Shiflett While the Troubles may not be hurting the Clinton poll numbers a lick, respectable opinion has it that the scandal definitely isn't doing The Children any good at all...
...This lesson is coming through loud and clear...
Vol. 3 • March 1998 • No. 25
