SCRAPBOOK
Scrapbook THEMEA CULPA SPEECH CLINTON REJECTED All day Monday, August 17, cable-TV junkies like THE SCRAPBOOK heard White House leaks about “The Speech.” While the president was being grilled by...
...I should have acknowledged that I was wrong months ago...
...I’ve been honored that you, the people, have entrusted it to me...
...THE SCRAPBOOK has obtained a copy: My fellow Americans: No one who is not in my position can understand fully the remorse I feel today...
...THE SCRAPBOOK is now off to the library to look for a copy and will report back next week on its findings...
...NPR, IN FROM THE COLD Back during the Cold War, all THE SCRAPBOOK’s rightwing friends had nicknames for the notoriously leftwing news shows on National Public Radio—Morning Sedition, for example...
...Since I was very young, I’ve had a profound reverence for this office I hold...
...THE SCRAPBOOK wondered if this was a quote left over from research for all those “bridge to the 21st century” speeches Clinton used to give, or merely the first entry under forgiveness in Bartlett’s Quotations...
...But this, as ABC producer Chris Vlasto says, is “sheer revisionism...
...You would think that, instead of perpetuating his defamation, Brill would apologize...
...Tim Russert reported what his White House sources were telling him: namely, that senior adviser Paul Begala was tap, tap, tapping away on a speech whose essence would be the “three C’s”: candor, contrition, and closure...
...Their forgiveness and love, expressed so often as we sat alone together this weekend, means far more than I can ever say...
...HILLARY CLINTON, CO-CONSPIRATOR What, exactly, is the line now for those who wish to stand four-square behind Hillary Rodham Clinton, feminist superhero...
...Is she extraordinarily smart, or extraordinarily naive...
...Hillary Clinton, remember, told Matt Lauer on the Today show on January 27 not that there had been no sex with Monica but rather, “That is not going to be proven true”—a crafty and lawyerly evasion, if ever there was one...
...But maybe Berry’s formulation was something cleverer, more in keeping with the logic-chopping “I didn’t inhale” legalism of the Clinton White House...
...only to her “implication” that Monica and her mother had removed the evidence from it...
...She was “misled,” not about the dirty deed itself, but about his testimony...
...Cough up $75 or more during pledge drives, and you could be designated not the usual “friend” or “patron” but, yes, “comrade...
...Last Wednesday, the Washington Post reported that according to the first lady’s spokeswoman, Marsha Berry, Hillary “learned the nature of [the president’s] testimony over the weekend...
...An even greater reward is in store for any reader who happens to have Fuller’s Book of Monica in his personal library and would care to lend it to SCRAPBOOK, 1150 17th St., NW, Suite 505, Washington, DC 20036...
...Yes, komissar...
...This was widely interpreted as not-terribly-believable flackerly: Hillary, like all her husband’s supporters, had been shocked and saddened—astonished!—to learn of the actual nature of his relationship with Monica Lewinsky...
...But I did...
...DISCONTENT Like one of those in-bred attack dogs, Steven Brill simply cannot relax his jaws once he bites...
...A Nexis search reveals that, if Dear Abby can be believed, 17th-century English clergyman Thomas Fuller is the author...
...Forbes once attributed it, on the other hand, to Fuller’s contemporary George Herbert...
...Asked recently about his criticism of Judd, he said, “I think it’s more news today than it was back in January, where we didn’t know whether [Monica Lewinsky] was going to testify...
...He choked on them...
...She never expected he would have to admit to even some of the truth under oath...
...Staffers assure us that it’s all for the sake of alliteration...
...Just because it wasn’t ripe and necessarily appropriate to report it in January doesn’t mean you just stay off it...
...But he is apparently no more capable of doing that than is the object of his campaign contributions— Bill Clinton...
...And you know, now it seems like there may be something there, and that’s completely appropriate...
...Assuming that Hillary knew the truth in January, then Marsha Berry’s statement, when you parse it—and every White House statement must now be parsed—means something very damaging...
...Indeed, someone had even come up with what sounded like a fortune-cookie quote: “He who cannot forgive others breaks the bridge over which he must pass himself...
...What I did was wrong—and there was no excuse for it...
...But I didn’t...
...It was with nostalgia for those days gone by that we learned recently of the new moniker for donors to NPR-affiliate KAJX of Aspen, Colorado...
...I thought I was shielding my family, but I know that in the end, for Hillary and Chelsea, delay has only brought more pain...
...Added Berry, “She was misled...
...I mean, because the issue is timing...
...But the so-called “Begala speech” actually did exist in draft form and was presented to (and rejected by) the president...
...Finally, I also want to apologize to all of you, my fellow citizens...
...I never should have had any sexual contact with Monica Lewinsky...
...According to the script, the approved spin was that the president should be forgiven...
...Judd had that story dead to rights...
...Brill made Judd out to be a credulous partisan, eager to report any rumor that the Starr-Tripp-Goldberg axis fed her...
...I take full responsibility for my actions—for hurting my wife and daughter, for hurting Monica Lewinsky, for hurting friends and staff, and for hurting the country I love...
...I hope you can find it in your heart to accept that apology...
...It’s “Komrade,” with a K, as in KAJX...
...I have let too many people down...
...THE SCRAPBOOK hopes the source is Fuller, since he is the author of, among many other undoubtedly fine works, a 1642 treatise called—no kidding—Book of Monica...
...SURREAL SPIN Last week, John F. Harris of the Washington Post reported that there were White House talking points for staff who were being asked how they felt about Clinton’s confession of sex with Monica...
...But in this case, I have fallen short of what you should expect from a President...
...The entire Washington establishment, most of Congress, and his top political advisers imagined the president could be prevailed upon to speak these words...
...Chief of staff Erskine Bowles, we were told, was busy briefing senior congressional Democrats about the imminent presidential mea culpa...
...But now we’re apparently supposed to believe that she is not so smart after all...
...Until the weekend before his testimony, Hillary was counting on Bill to be able to get away with perjury...
...God bless you and goodnight...
...Judd, of course, was correct about the dress, and she was brave in refusing to waver in the face of the ridicule worked up by Brill...
...I am proud of what we have accomplished together...
...This speech was, of course, never given...
...For the first five years of the Clinton presidency, the emphasis was certainly on smart: First in her class at Wellesley, Yale law school, author of everything from erudite law-review articles to the bestselling It Takes a Village, not to mention architect of the magnificent but tragically doomed 1994 health-care plan...
...I do want to assure you, as I told the Grand Jury under oath, that I did nothing to obstruct this investigation...
...Brill portrayed her as a fool because of it...
...Meanwhile recognition will be bestowed on the first reader who can authoritatively source the broken bridge quote...
...But it’s not Judd who’s the fool...
...Brill has been trotting out another spin, too: that he never objected to Judd’s reporting about the existence of the dress...
...None of this ever should have happened...
...In his errorridden article “Pressgate” in the inaugural issue of his magazine, Brill’s Content, he took after Jackie Judd of ABC News for her reporting in January that Monica Lewinsky had a dress and that it was . . . well, you know...
...So Brill—who has anointed himself journalism’s sage of sages—prefers that a story be over a half a year late...
...I have failed my own religious faith and values...
...What’s interesting about this draft is what it tells us about Bill Clinton...
...Yet Brill is hardly a gracious loser...
...The president said that, and that’s true...
...But Bartlett’s turns out to be unhelpful...
...Okay, so maybe she really is smart—in a certain way...
...I pledge to you that I will make every effort of mind and spirit to earn your confidence again, to be worthy of this office, and to finish the work in which we have made such remarkable progress for the past six years...
...While the president was being grilled by Kenneth Starr and his prosecutors, White House officials were working the phones hyping the soon-to-be-delivered, long-awaited Clinton apology...
Vol. 3 • August 1998 • No. 48
