SCRAPBOOK
THE CTINTON-FTYNT DEMOCRATS The enduring political photo of 1998 will be the one of the president on his trip to Africa, caught unawares by a TV camera as he triumphantly chews a stogie and pounds...
...And if he lies over and over again, he falls an even greater distance...
...That makes the lie worse...
...The transcript is amusing: QUESTION: Joe, since you and the president and others have called for an end to the politics of personal destruction, is the president prepared to call Larry Flynt and James Carville and others who are vowing to pursue those who supported impeachment...
...If someone I hardly know lies to me, it is bad...
...According to a NOW newsletter, the fear was that "a specific woman leader" would be replaced by an "abstract 'Liberty.'" Yes, this would have been an outrage...
...No, of course not...
...The questions ended with a Kafkaesque flourish: "How do you feel now that you have completed this form...
...The solution is not to take the bar away...
...The bigger the role model, the worse the lie...
...LOCKHART: Well, I—I'd hardly put Larry Flynt and James Carville in the same category...
...How is lying made worse...
...We need to raise the bar high enough so that better people will run for office...
...THE CTINTON-FTYNT DEMOCRATS The enduring political photo of 1998 will be the one of the president on his trip to Africa, caught unawares by a TV camera as he triumphantly chews a stogie and pounds a tom-tom drum to celebrate the end of Paula Jones's sexual harassment lawsuit...
...The very same day it reported Williams's plans, the Post also reported that the U.S...
...The next day Lockhart finally issued a lame statement criticizing Flynt...
...Peter wrote, "then surely you are old enough to learn some lessons from them...
...As it happens, Lockhart serves an administration notorious in Washington for its constant efforts to shape the news by complaining to, even browbeating, the executives of newsmagazines and television networks, but one takes his point...
...Then all we will get is the biggest bully or the guy with the most money...
...I think, Wolf, you would be . . . QUESTION: A newsmagazine...
...attorney's office has initiated a criminal probe into whether a star-studded, going-away gala for Barry in October was illegally paid for by the D.C...
...The end of Washington's mayoral era of dashikis and Italian suits worn tie-less deserves some fanfare...
...I mean, that—you can't expect him to get personally involved in that...
...We don't see coins with George Washington or Abraham Lincoln stressing their role as fathers...
...If your answer to the last question was yes, give us one reason why...
...Now, Shogren reported, the president "laughed about the fact that Larry Flynt, publisher of Hustler magazine, had become the latest influence on the Washington political debate...
...We need to restore the expectation that includes honest behavior...
...decided that the [last inaugural] parade wasn't well-attended," so they won't be having one...
...If you lie, it will make things worse for you, too...
...But—but...
...TALE OF TWO MAYORS The new mayor of Washington, D.C., Anthony Williams, is planning a "common folks" inaugural party with "tickets cheap enough for everyone to afford...
...THE PRESIDENT FALLS OFF A MOUNTAIN" Not long ago, the executive director of Boys Town uSA, Fr...
...But it is much worse if my mother lies to me...
...LOCKHART: I'm sorry, a magazine . . . what a magazine publisher does...
...That's why the President falls off a mountain when he lies...
...Yes, he falls a great distance...
...Everybody—and I mean everybody—can see that the President lied over and over again, and then lied to cover up the lying...
...As Al Kamen reported in his Washington Post column, the shooting of a protected gray wolf in New Mexico led to an accusatory federal mailing to hunters in the area, who were threatened with investigation if they didn't fill out a form asking questions like these: "Do you know who shot the wolf...
...According to the account in the Washington Post, "Williams said he and his wife...
...Lying did not help him...
...Ahhh, just when The Scrapbook was about to despair over the future of feminism...
...Did you shoot the wolf...
...That's really not our problem...
...Spencer Tracy couldn't have put it better...
...Your tax dollars at work...
...The problem is just the opposite...
...Otherwise, human flourishing is diminished...
...Or maybe Williams is just shrewd...
...The problem, according to a recent alert from the Washington Feminist Faxnet, is that the young Indian will appear on the coin carrying a child on her back (she was six months pregnant when the journey began...
...QUESTION: Why...
...Clinton regaled his listeners with a description of a letter that Flynt wrote to independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr—whose investigation of Clinton's affair with Lewinsky led to his impeachment— congratulating Starr for aiding the cause of pornography...
...government...
...The evening before, surrounded by House Democrats at his impeachment rally, the president had unctuously asked that we "get rid of the poisonous venom of excessive partisanship...
...She is a much bigger role model in my life...
...Should we believe your answers to the questions...
...But the best was still to come...
...Not surprisingly, Clinton flack Joe Lockhart was pursued on this subject the following day at the daily White House press briefing...
...Now that the mint is proceeding with Sacagawea, the line of attack has changed...
...If you are old enough to know about these matters," Fr...
...It is—or should be—an enduring image because it so vividly captures Bill Clinton's boundless arrogance and contempt for the truth...
...The main lesson is about lying...
...Perhaps this is meant to strike a note of modest populism, as befits the almost-bankrupt municipal government of the nation's capital...
...The day after he was impeached, the president was caught in a similarly unguarded moment by Los Angeles Times reporter Elizabeth Shogren at a White House Christmas party...
...Too bad there won't be a bigger party for Williams...
...Mint to terminate the failed Susan B. Anthony dollar coin and replace it with one bearing the image of Sacagawea, the 16-year-old female Indian guide and interpreter who traveled with Lewis and Clark on their westward expedition...
...The first line of attack came from the National Organization for Women, which declared earlier this year that it opposed dislodging Susan B. Anthony...
...To put it another way, if many people are lying, the solution is not to approve of lying, but rather to rekindle the fires of devotion...
...But Carville and the private investigators continue on unrebuked...
...LOCKHART: Let me take this— I don't think we have any control over what a—a newsmagazine publisher does...
...You may say if we raise the bar too high, no one will run for public office...
...SORRY, SACAGAWEA Feminists have spent the past year in ideological contortions over President Clinton's transgressions, but that doesn't mean they've lost their voice on other important causes—like the decision by the U.S...
...HOW NOW GRAY WOLF When Henry Hyde dispatched those 81 questions from the House Judiciary Committee to the president last month, maybe he should have asked the Clinton administration's inquisitors at the U.S...
...Val J. Peter, felt compelled to write a letter to the boys and girls in his charge about the recent goings-on in Washington...
...The letter is a remarkable distillation of what is, and always has been, at stake in the Lewinsky scandal, and it's worth quoting at some length...
...Fish and Wildlife Service to toughen up the wording...
...It made things worse for him . . . much worse...
...WFF has nothing against kids," cautioned a December 11 fax from the group, "but a strong woman with a place in history that has nothing to do with motherhood should be shown as an individual...
Vol. 4 • January 1999 • No. 16
