SCRAPBOOK
scrapbook MONTCA SPEAKS! On Feb. 4, the deputy assistant to the president for ooze, Gregory Craig, begged the Senate not to include videotaped deposition testimony in the formal record of the...
...Cancel Lanny's table at Elaine's...
...And now the president has been acquitted...
...It means that Vernon Jordan continued to pursue an out-of-town job for Lewinsky—after he knew for sure she was under subpoena, after he knew for sure she was Bill Clinton's mistress, and after he knew for sure that the president had lied to him about that...
...This allusion of course casts the president as Jean Valjean, a poor man imprisoned and persecuted his entire life for stealing bread to feed his starving family—which, come to think of it, is pretty close to the official White House line...
...Sidney Blumenthal's now famous retelling of the conversation in which the president compared himself to Rubashov in Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon sounds typically self-serving, but otherwise off-key...
...Rep...
...he flattered only to ruin...
...Jim Jeffords of Vermont agreed: "It is my belief that President Clinton gave misleading statements" and that "president Clinton did obstruct justice...
...Somewhere a memo (cc: Nicole Seligman, Dale Bumpers) must recommend comparing Ken Starr to Inspector Javert...
...Pete Domenici did not acquit himself quite so nobly on Meet the Press: "Oh what a tangled web we have, when first we practice to deceive," quoth the senator...
...Harry Evans...
...Lewinsky was referring here to the "intent to gratify...
...Harold Evans," Breuer complained...
...Who is Mr...
...Evans at the New Yorker, so of course he knows the Queen's lesser half, Prince Harry...
...But Graham persisted...
...In any event, given Koestler's recent exposure as an abuser of women, it's doubtful we will be hearing any more references to him from this White House...
...Mission accomplished...
...White House partisans, as if through a central committee, leaned heavily on 19th-century novelists (Hugo, Dickens, Conan Doyle), the most often cited work being Hugo's Les Misérables...
...he won't be coming...
...While she was in the car with Jordan, Rep...
...Lawyers, lackeys, and cronies on all sides mined their liberal arts educations for a touch of eloquence in the closing speeches of the Clinton trial...
...Because there is a portion of that definition that says, you know, 'with intent,' and I don't feel comfortable characterizing what someone's intent was...
...This was rather like asking whether teenage girls know Leonardo DiCaprio...
...Such a man, the Democratic party concludes, is a worthy president...
...Shortly after this darkly comic exchange, the House managers proposed a break for lunch, and Lewinsky jumped at the chance: "I never object to food...
...JUST AN ALLUSION Last week may have been bad for conservatives, but it sure was good for the canon...
...If I were a juror in a standard criminal case," said Olympia Snowe of Maine, "I would vote to convict him" of obstruction of justice...
...Blumenthal is a major-league fixture of fashion-magazine intellectualism and used to work for Mrs...
...The only classicists, judging by the closing remarks, were Hyde and White House counsel Charles F C. Ruff...
...A man can and should remain president, they have determined, even after it's proved he is a felon...
...Turns out it's a city full of rubes...
...TERMS OF ENDEARMENT “Dishonorable,” “contemptible,” “shameful,” “boorish,” “inexcusable,” “sordid,” “deplorable,” “immoral,” “reckless,” “disgraceful,” “debased,” “reprehensible,” and “outrageous...
...Should "hour after hour" of Monica Lewinsky, Vernon Jordan, and—gasp!—Sidney Blumenthal be inserted "irreversibly" into "the living rooms and family rooms of the nation," he wondered...
...Worse, though, were the announcements last week of two Republican senators...
...Why did she do that...
...According to the fuller transcripts printed in the Congressional Record, for example, during her Feb...
...3 deposition...
...Snowe and Jeffords both voted to acquit...
...Finishing-school dean Richard Cohen of the Washington Post flogged House manager James Rogan for not having been a thorough enough prosecutor to read the Koestler book...
...True to form, the Senate, which is controlled by Republicans, and therefore cares nothing for children, went ahead and authorized partial release of these videotapes, anyway...
...But how much more fun the nation would have had if the entire depositions had been broadcast, instead of the snippets chosen sequentially by the House managers and Clinton's lawyers...
...Allan Bloom must be smiling somewhere...
...The Scrapbook is betting that Sidney rolled his beady little eyes with disgust when he said, "Yes, I do," in response to Graham's hopelessly out-of-it inquiry...
...Ruff was speaking of the Republicans in their search for a good witness but perhaps subconsciously describing the job of White House counsel under Bill Clinton...
...For one thing, it would cast Henry Hyde as Stalin, and would mean that the president was being pursued for . . . right-wing deviation-ism...
...But, making the generous assumption that Blumenthal was telling the truth, surely the president meant to tell his court intellectual that he felt like a character in Kafka's The Trial...
...It is a party, The Scrapbook sadly concludes, without true patriots...
...And neither, it seems, will Senators Arlen Specter and John Edwards, who supervised the Blumenthal deposition...
...And somehow the nation and its children survived...
...Harold Evans...
...1 deposition, Monica Lewinsky refused to say flat-out that the president is lying when he claims never to have touched her in ways that fall within the definition of "sexual relations" at issue in the Paula Jones civil suit...
...Oh, dear...
...Lindsey Graham suddenly asked Sidney Blumenthal at his Feb...
...No wonder so much of Washington hates Sidney Blumenthal...
...Yes," Lewinsky answered...
...WHO IS HAROLD EVANS?_ “Do you know Mr...
...Well, he was concerned about the nation's children, of course...
...When they were done eating, Jordan gave her a ride in his limousine...
...Crispin's speech from Henry V: "For he that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother...
...Henry Hyde, though, outdid them all with his closing remarks, which made good use of the St...
...Happy Washington and Lincoln's birthdays...
...and however he might occasionally bind himself by oaths and treaties, his conscience, obsequious to his interest, always released him from the inconvenient obligation...
...Ruff made a short nod to Diogenes, the Greek founder of cynicism who was said to carry a lamp around even in the daytime in search of one honest man...
...Republicans, in general, favored Shakespeare's moral vision...
...The Scrapbook can't say it blames her...
...4, the deputy assistant to the president for ooze, Gregory Craig, begged the Senate not to include videotaped deposition testimony in the formal record of the Clinton impeachment trial...
...And when the deposition reconvened, she finally said something genuinely important— which has somehow escaped the notice of America's superprofessional journalism school graduates...
...on Dec...
...Hyde, though, saw Ruff's Diogenes and raised him one, quoting a magnificent passage from Gibbon's Decline and Fall to describe the president: "Severus promised, only to betray...
...She hadn't ever testified to that before...
...On Breuer's objection, they both demanded an "offer of proof" from Lindsey Graham that this so-called "Harold Evans" might be an even remotely significant character...
...And just as Sid was getting warmed up to the subject, his White House colleague, Lanny Breuer, registered a strenuous objection to "this line of questioning"—as "well beyond" the appropriate scope of the deposition...
...Fair is foul and foul is fair," said William Bennett...
...There was also active trading in the anti-totalitarian classics...
...Ed Bryant asked Lewinsky at her deposition, "Did you tell him that you had had an affair with the president...
...It appears the young woman is no longer sure Bill Clinton had any interest in her pleasure whatsoever...
...he wanted to know...
...31, 1997, Lewinsky met Vernon Jordan for a breakfast he first denied ever attending—but now claims to remember in some detail...
...I have never heard of Mr...
...These are just a few of the words the Senate's Democrats used last week to describe the behavior of Bill Clinton—behavior every last one of them, voting to acquit, apparently believes perfectly consistent with the powers and prerogatives of the American presidency...
Vol. 4 • February 1999 • No. 22
