SCRAPBOOK

...Thomas's reticence after his nomination ordeal, however understandable, has been unfortunate...

...The issue is not his race, but the content of his ideas," the Times intoned...

...Ireland finally seems to be "getting it...

...They wish it were otherwise, but, when they step back, they know it usually isn't...

...they wouldn't do this if we were from some other state," she managed to overreach even her-self—blaming bias against hillbillies for the pursuit of her Rhodes Scholar husband...

...Alas, records exist to be broken, and just two days later, in a column in the Los Angeles Times, the novelist Gore Vidal proved once again why he is the silliest person in America still allowed access to pencil and paper...

...The Washington Post, on the other hand, was editorially gracious: "Justice Thomas has no duty to parrot the orthodoxies of affirmative action simply because he is black," allowed the Post editorialist, adding that "it is time for Justice Thomas's critics to engage him in a debate on the merits and flaws of his work, instead of on the specious question of whether he is an adequately authentic black justice...

...It is, moreover, an Arafat kick in the teeth to the council and to the very notion of accountability...

...It's just one more example of the enduring damage done to public discourse by Anita Hill, her media handmaidens, and the U.S...

...When he concludes, "I should not in the least be surprised" if Starr "were to be put promptly on trial for treason against the United States and its people," Vidal shows the gulf that exists between the professional crank and even the most talented amateur...

...SORRY production glitch in our last issue lopped off the final words of David Gelernter's "The Future of Art...

...I come to state that I'm a man, free to think for myself and do as I please...

...Vidal has always been more than a little bit nutty and more than a little bit slutty...

...They can take it, understanding as they do—in words today's Establishment knows how to laugh at but could never begin to understand—that it has always been and will always be an honor to live for art...

...CLINTON AND THE FEMINISTS Last week, National Organization for Women president Patricia Ireland told the Fox News Channel, "I think what we've seen, if these charges are true, is a man who follows a traditional model of dividing the world between women you have to respect, like Hillary Clinton, Madeleine Albright, and Donna Shalala, and women who can be used like tissue paper...

...Until you've read the scene in Myra Breckinridge in which a half-transgendered woman takes a boy up to her room for an afternoon romp, you have no idea of just how polymorphous a perversity can be...

...To buy off other critics, Arafat appointed 10 new ministers, most without portfolio but with the usual perks—car and driver, for starters...

...Some democracy...

...He is the only justice who is regularly, and insultingly, described by black and white liberals as not really thinking for himself, but rather "serving a particular political master," as the particularly poisonous Time columnist Jack E. White, put it...

...The elected 88-seat Palestinian Legislative Council did an audit of Arafat's administration and found that nearly half his $800 million budget was being lost to graft or waste...

...Absolutely not, he decides, unless the "sturdy Secret Service lads join in...

...senators who did their bidding...

...Here is the final paragraph as it should have appeared: "Today's serious artists face Establishment indifference...

...The policy mindset that wants a strong Milosevic to do business with, and fears deposing Saddam Hussein because there might be instability in Iraq, is at work here, too...

...9), which delineated Clinton's two types of women—"the Donna-Hillary axis" and "the Gennifers, Paulas, and Monicas...

...CLARENCE THOMAS'S TRIUMPH In his much-noted recent address to the National Bar Association, Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas finally got proper revenge on the critics who call him a race traitor, rebuking them to their face with courage and judiciousness: "I have come here today," he said, "to assert my right to think for myself, to refuse to have my ideas assigned to me as though I am an intellectual slave because I'm black...

...In his defense of the president, though, Vidal proves more narrow-minded: "Does a frictive act performed on a passive president, idly daydreaming of the budget, count as intercourse...

...A cabinet shake-up there has indeed been...

...However much she tries, Hillary doesn't have what it takes to play in this league...

...Thomas's was a masterly performance...

...What is behind this vendetta against Clinton...

...Feminists, Emery noted, have to wonder how "this man, who gets to spend his days with Janets and Donnas and is wed to the world's most wonderful woman, can be mauling twinkies after work...

...All three ministers accused of corruption have been kept in office...

...SCRAPBOOK THE DEFENDER CLINTON DESERVES When Hillary Rodham Clinton blamed a "vast right-wing conspiracy" for the brouhaha over her husband's occasional use of Monica Lewinsky, she seemed to have reached the apex of silliness...

...It is the racist world of American business—typified, Vidal believes, by Richard Mellon Scaife—that "declared war on the Clintons in 1993 when the innocent couple tried to give the American people a national health service...

...That must be what provoked a hissy fit at the New York Times editorial page, which has remained notoriously and unthinkingly hostile to Thomas...

...Palestinian tax revenues go directly to Arafat, but where they go after that appears to be anyone's guess...

...I've come to assert that I am a judge and I will not be consigned to the unquestioned opinions of others...

...Indeed...

...And it is bigoted corporate America that has unleashed Kenneth Starr, "a one-time judge of meager intellectual capacity but deep faith in all the superstitions [i.e., God] that ruling classes encourage the lower orders to believe so that they will not question authority...

...Two critics of corruption were demoted and resigned in protest...

...But when she added last Monday, to an interviewer from the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, that "a lot of this is prejudice against our state...

...While there are other members of the court who regularly rule against racial preferences, Thomas noted, he is the one who's regularly excoriated for it...

...Why hasn't the administration done anything about this...

...BOSS ARAFAT Yasser Arafat showed once again this month that he is absolutely opposed to expanding Palestinian democracy...

...Some partner...

...indeed, it is hard to recall any Supreme Court justice delivering such a memorable speech in recent years...

...As reported in the Jerusalem Post, the departing minister of agriculture Abed Sallah summed it all up: "This is a new government in which the effective ministers have been kicked out and the corrupt ones have remained...

...Vidal demands —and plumps for the two most obvious answers: "the rage of lumpen white Americans against blacks" and "the wealth of corporate America...

...Hmm: THE SCRAPBOOK was reminded of our contributor Noemie Emery's "All the President's Women" (Feb...

...The council demanded a cabinet shake-up and recommended that three ministers be prosecuted for corruption...

...Since the Clinton administration has been silent on what happened, here is a brief account...

...The Scrapbook would like to see all the editorials the Times has published seriously addressing Thomas's constitutional and jurisprudential arguments...

...The "peace process" is thought to require a strong Arafat as a "partner" in "building peace and democracy...