SCRAPBOOK
Scrapbook THE WORST PRO-CTTNTON TALKING POINT The Starr report is so devas-tatingly thorough in corroborating every damning detail of Monica Lewinsky's testimony that the possible defenses of the...
...Mel Watt of North Carolina argued that Bill Clinton should be receiving the same level of due-process protection as Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh received during his trial...
...If the issue is to be settled purely on the basis of scientific inquiry into when a new human being comes into existence," George observed, "then the pro-choice position simply collapses...
...The stench at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave...
...Of course, if hard work really is the root of the problem, there's an easy solution: early retirement...
...In fact, rather than deny Clinton's immorality and illegality, David Kendall was reduced last Friday to arguing that the punishment should fit the crime and that it's a disproportionate response to seek the president's removal from office...
...Maybe Starr's prosecutors are about to fry some bacon...
...THE NEW MCCURRY Let us recall now George Will's maxim that staffs, over time, take on the characteristics of their bosses...
...Scrapbook THE WORST PRO-CTTNTON TALKING POINT The Starr report is so devas-tatingly thorough in corroborating every damning detail of Monica Lewinsky's testimony that the possible defenses of the president's behavior have shrunk almost to the vanishing point...
...Additional events" are under investigation, including "possible perjury and obstruction of justice relating to former White House volunteer Kathleen Willey" as well as "the possible misuse of the personnel records of Pentagon employee Linda Tripp...
...Fish, whose advocacy of "deconstructionism" and other fashionable causes has earned him iconic status in much of the academy, made his rather unfashionable remarks in response to criticism of his earlier writings on the subject by Princeton political theorist and constitutional scholar Robert George...
...And amateurs didn't do nearly as well...
...In claiming that this statement was true, the President was apparently relying on the same tense-based distinction he made during the Jones deposition...
...Lewinsky, that is, asked me a question in the present tense, I would have said no...
...If it means there is none, that was a completely true statement...
...Deputy press secretary Joe Lockhart, after checking with Clinton's lawyers, denied this, asserting that no one connected to the president had "hired or authorized any private investigator to look into the background" of the couple...
...Fish went on to say that the pro-choice movement has decided to ignore the facts of life before birth now that science and technology make clear that the being killed by abortion is a human being...
...Last summer, the Pentagon inspector general's investigation on the illegal release of Tripp's confidential files to New Yorker reporter Jane Mayer by Defense spokesman Ken Bacon and his then-deputy Cliff Bernath was mysteriously side-tracked...
...Rather, he faults himself for not asking the lawyers enough questions...
...Explained Lockhart in a priceless interview with the Washington Post last week, "Everyone assumes the lawyers screwed me and hung me out to dry...
...That's not really the case...
...Before you skip to the dirty parts of the Starr report (THE SCRAPBOOK assumes that, thanks to Al Gore's "information superhighway," you have a personal copy by now), there is a fascinating bit in the introduction called "current status of the investigation...
...And it would have been completely true...
...THE BEST FOOTNOTE Suspicious White House reporters who have long parsed every jot and tittle of presidential speech have been utterly vindicated by the Starr report...
...This sudden mania for Marquis of Queensberry rules reached its unintentionally comic peak not when Rep...
...If the—if he—if 'is' means is and never has been, that is not— that is one thing...
...So as we remember George Will, let us also remember Michael Dukakis, who in 1988 introduced us to that most useful Greek proverb: The fish rots from the head down...
...I do not believe I intentionally misled reporters, but I take responsibility for the fact they were misled...
...Soon the White House was forced to issue another statement, this one acknowledging that Clinton snoops had indeed been digging for dirt on diGenova and Toensing—but only through clean, public channels...
...George took Fish to task for comments in a 1996 article in First Things asserting that the pro-life view depends on "religious conviction," while the pro-choice position appeals to "scientific facts...
...Now, if someone had asked me on that day, are you having any kind of sexual relations with Ms...
...The man whose name gave us the adjective "Clintonian," it turns out, is an expert parser of his own sentences...
...Hmmm...
...Here is the footnote in full: 1128...
...only gets worse...
...There is only one word for this kind of reasoning: Clintonian, to the marrow...
...See Clinton 8/17/98 GJ at 59-61 ("It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is...
...Duke University's Stanley Fish, the well-known left-wing social and literary critic, expressly disavowed support for "abortion rights" and chastised the "pro-choice" movement for refusing to acknowledge the fact that abortion takes the life of an innocent human being...
...Fish's response: "Professor George is right, and he is right to have corrected me...
...The Scrapbook bestows that distinction on the president himself for whining at a Coral Gables, Fla., fund-raiser: "I've tried to do a good job taking care of this country even when I haven't taken such good care of myself and my family" This is the hoary "I've been working too hard to behave" defense, not heard in public life since Marion Barry took off to a holistic spa in 1996 to dry out, blaming his personal woes on "unrelenting commitment, dedication and hard work" for the people of Washington, D.C...
...Jim "Phone-Tap" McDermott compared his colleagues to a lynch mob but when Rep...
...It makes clear that last week's report on possible impeachable offenses by the president is hardly the end of the independent counsel's work...
...This was the best the president's attorney could do...
...But that—no surprise—turned out to be untrue...
...The report's footnote 1128, The Scrapbook's personal favorite, provides a snapshot of the president, under oath, meditating on the meaning of the verb is...
...STANLEY FISH, PRO-LIFER An audience of 200 mostly liberal professors got a bit of a shock at the recent convention of the American Political Science Association in Boston...
...REMEMBER KEN BACON...
...Back in February, Republican prosecutor Joe diGenova charged that he and his wife, Victoria Toensing (another Republican prosecutor), were being investigated by private eyes tied to the Clinton White House...
...House Democrats who wanted to carry water for the president last week—and there still were a few dozen of them—all offered variations on the theme of "fairness"—i.e., that the president should get an early peek at the Starr report...
...But even Watt's rhetorical ineptitude wasn't the worst proClinton talking point of the week...
...The implicit comparison of the president to a terrorist murderer— by one of his own defenders!—was astonishing...
Vol. 4 • September 1998 • No. 2
