SCRAPBOOK
Scrapbook CLINTON'S GREATEST HITS Of all the instances of Clin-tonian State of the Union excess over the past six years, The Scrapbook was prepared to award first prize to the moment last Tuesday...
...Equal treatment under the law is one of those civil rights...
...This sordid but telling little episode has a sordid but telling little epilogue—also contained in the Starr report...
...After fearlessly denouncing deadbeat dads, the president declared: "Our first challenge is to cherish our children and strengthen America's families...
...The president laughed and said, according to Lewinsky, that "he cherishes the time that he had with me...
...She testified that he then lifted her top, touched her breasts, and "unzipped his pants and sort of exposed himself...
...Paul's Cathedral...
...According to Wills, Lader's remarks about the Puritans had nothing to do with the vendetta that sex-obsessed Republicans are now pursuing against the president...
...What's interesting is precisely how the president was demonstrating respect for his own family two days before voicing those admirable sentiments...
...A few phone calls and a press release later, Merri-am-Webster had issued an apology and AOL had shut down the online thesaurus to remove the entire entry, which will also be removed from future print editions of Merriam-Webster's thesaurus...
...Instead, the line was merely an unattributed quote from humorist Finley Peter Dunne...
...on Sunday afternoon January 21, 1996, Bill Clinton researched family values at the White House with Monica Lewinsky...
...Among many others who heard it, though, says Hoke, "there was a collective psychic gasp: What a stupid, inappropriate thing to say, casting aspersions at religious people at a religious ceremony...
...others are only antiquated—for example, uranian, relating to a nineteenth-century English society...
...Top Democratic leader Les Miller, perhaps unsurprisingly, said "Mr...
...If Wills is right, then Finley Peter Dunne's descendants might want to sue for royalties...
...That speech, unlike this year's, had a section on "strengthening families...
...This year Americans gave thanks that they had been saved from the Puritans...
...According to her sworn grand jury testimony: "I didn't know if this was sort of developing into some kind of longer-term relationship than what I thought it initially might have been, that maybe he had some regular girlfriend who was fur-loughed...
...Scrapbook CLINTON'S GREATEST HITS Of all the instances of Clin-tonian State of the Union excess over the past six years, The Scrapbook was prepared to award first prize to the moment last Tuesday night when the president ostentatiously mouthed the words "I love you" to Hillary...
...And if you review the video tape of the speech and the beaming reaction of the first lady, there is, as always, not the slightest hint of insincerity...
...During the first Thanksgiving, Lader told the crowd "the puritans gave thanks that they had been saved from the Indians...
...Family is the foundation of American life...
...Would you believe Merriam-Webster's lists "pious" and "decorous" as synonyms...
...related terms) bisexual, epicene, transvestite, lesbian...
...The nerve...
...inverted, queer, uranian...
...Thank you Hillary...
...When the president's secretary Betty Currie finally handed over to the office of Independent Counsel the box of gifts she had retrieved from Monica Lewinsky, that box contained a hat pin, two brooches, an inscribed photograph of the president with Lewinsky, two T-shirts, a baseball cap—and "an inscribed copy of the 1996 State of the Union Address...
...She then performed her version of Hail to the Chief...
...Some of the terms are clearly pejorative...
...of course the last thing Connerly wants is a war...
...Last week, we printed an amplification from Nicholas Wills, vice president of the American Chamber of Commerce (UK) and host of the event at which Lader spoke...
...It was a courtesy call—Connerly may launch a ballot initiative in Florida modeled on the one he led in California—but the courtesy was not reciprocated...
...ambassador to the Court of St...
...Some sophisticated Englishman in the audience laughed...
...I'm a lover...
...Several weeks ago The Scrapbook reported that Ambassador Lader, at a speech before a group of Americans in London over Christmas, launched into commentary on the Monica Lewinsky mess...
...Ambassador Lader, it seems, has been using the long deceased newspaperman's line all over town...
...Connerly ought to stay in California...
...This past Thanksgiving, former congressman Martin Hoke, a Republican from ohio, found himself in London and decided to take his daughter to a service at St...
...When Mike Webb, radio personality at KIRO in Seattle, found these entries in the America Online/Merriam-Webster online thesaurus, he went straight into activist mode...
...Among the featured speakers: Ambassador Phil Lader, who promptly shared with the audience of thousands his apparently purloined joke about the Puritans...
...related terms) fairy, nancy, pansy, swish, sapphist, sodomite, pederast...
...noun) faggot, fruit, homo...
...Send your stories to: The Weekly Standard, Phil Lader Department, 1150 17th Street, NW, Suite 505, Washington, DC 20036...
...John Thrasher, the leading Republican legislator wouldn't meet with him...
...But so long as any entry carries with it controversial synonyms and related terms, Webb says he won't be satisfied...
...The new governor claims to be dubious about Connerly's plan because he prefers legislative action to ballot initiatives...
...Indeed...
...James...
...But his remarks to reporters after meeting Connerly were condescending and shallow...
...I call on American men and women in families to give greater respect to one another...
...Connerly, he said, "wants a war...
...Perhaps the most significant contribution that we have made to America is the premium which our nation places on the civil rights of all Americans...
...Two days later, in the State of the Union address, the president made a special—and touching—point of honoring his wife...
...With unnerving consistency, he also objects to the the-saurus's entry for the adjective "Christian...
...WARDING OFF CONNERLY Ward Connerly, the California businessman who was responsible for the successful California Civil Rights Initiative two years ago, went to Florida last week to call on the new Republican governor Jeb Bush and other state politicians...
...This is a level of discourse to which serious governors should aspire...
...If you've been in London recently and would like to recount your experiences with Ambassador Lader, The Scrapbook wants to hear from you...
...But then Michael Medved, on his national radio talk show, pointed out a similar but even more stunning Clintonism from the 1996 address...
...Before I go on," he said, "I would like to take just a moment to thank my own family, and to thank the person who has taught me more than anyone else over 25 years about the importance of families and children—a wonderful wife, magnificent mother and a great first lady...
...Civil rights: Those personal rights which attach to each of us as American citizens, and which are guaranteed against encroachment by our government...
...I asked him why he doesn't ask me questions about myself, and . . . is this just about sex . . . or do you have some interest in trying to know me as a person...
...Here is an excerpt from an open letter to Colin powell he wrote two years ago, that was excerpted in The Weekly Standard: "We who have lived the black experience have changed American culture...
...THE LADER CHRONICLES Regular readers of The Scrapbook will be familiar with the saga of Renaissance Weekend honcho Phil Lader, longtime friend of the Clintons and current U.S...
...What was surprising was the reaction of Governor Bush...
...And if Lader is saying things like that in packed cathedrals, imagine what he's like at smaller gatherings...
...THESAURUS OF DENIAL The love that dare not speak its name, according to the Merriam-Webster thesaurus, has many names, including: (adj...
...They continued talking as they went to the hallway by the study and then, with Lewinsky in midsen-tence, "he just started kissing me...
...This merely extends Mer-riam-Webster's editorial policy concerning race, religion, and ethnicity to include sexual orientation...
...Connerly, a serious and brave public figure, alarms politicians...
...This tribute naturally provoked thunderous applause from the huge crowd in the chamber of the House...
Vol. 4 • February 1999 • No. 19
