JOHN CONYERS'S CIRCUS
Carlson, Tucker
JOHN CONYERS’S CIRCUS by Tucker Carlson Detroit REP. JOHN CONYERS knows what it’s like to have a Monica in the workplace. Ten years ago, the Detroit congressman began a relationship with a...
...Obstruction...
...Mikva noted that Republicans are bad and Clinton is good...
...Although not before enduring a degree of public humiliation: Conyers’s new wife, more than one person pointed out, was born the year he was first elected to Congress...
...she asked...
...I didn’t argue, and within an hour, a fax arrived...
...The mostly black crowd hooted approval at Anthony’s remarks, as it did when he explained that a nation as racist as America—a country that imprisons black men solely because they are black—has no right to cast judgment on a president as committed to black causes as Bill Clinton, a president who “has spent more time in the nation of Africa than all the presidents heretofore put together...
...My bio...
...A white racist conspiracy...
...Sounds worth covering, I thought, and I called Conyers’s office for more information...
...I don’t want to be ashamed to be an American any longer...
...And that’s both a high crime and a misdemeanor...
...Actually, Miller explained once we got on the highway, “I can’t stand the guy...
...The panel was still taking questions from the audience, but it seemed a good time to leave...
...This is a low point in American constitutional history...
...A number of other panelists followed with statements making the same point, some more theatrically than others...
...That’s right, said Anthony...
...It’s always a losing proposition...
...No maybes about it, thundered former Chicago Sun-Times columnist Vernon Jarrett...
...That’s how he’d seemed then...
...The woman who answered the phone seemed strangely enthusiastic to hear from me...
...That way we can introduce you correctly...
...It didn’t take long to figure out why I’d been invited...
...Ten years ago, the Detroit congressman began a relationship with a 23-year-old aide named Monica Ann Esters...
...He seemed a lot different after three hours of pro-Clinton reeducation...
...What he did Indefensible...
...Maybe they’re going after Clinton because he stands up for black folks...
...On the topic of Clinton, it failed him...
...At about this point, a pounding sound echoed through the PA system...
...what he did was indefensible”) sounded a lot like her notes, which read a lot like most of her speeches...
...A sexual-harassment expert from the University of Wisconsin joined us, and as we walked to Miller’s minivan the two academics mulled over the symbolic meaning of the Lewinsky scandal...
...The Republican Congress, she had reminded herself in large ballpoint letters, is “Extremely Partisan...
...We were out of the loop, they said...
...Norris looked up, confused, but only momentarily...
...Congressman Conyers is delighted that you have accepted his invitation to participate as a panelist,” it began...
...Within a short time, Keenan was imploring the audience to “rise up...
...The Supreme Court...
...Not surprisingly, Ireland’s subsequent remarks (“I am not here to defend Bill Clinton...
...As nasty as [Republican representative] Linda Smith...
...Turns out there are hardly any minority clerks...
...Two weeks ago a press release crossed my desk announcing that Conyers planned to convene a panel of “experts on the law, the media and politics” to discuss the impeachment inquiry...
...So he made them again...
...Wendell Anthony, head of the NAACP’s Detroit office and a recent guest at the White House prayer breakfast, “it ought to start with the Supreme Court...
...That’s right...
...Though his office is relatively small, Conyers had managed to keep the affair secret, and when reporters called his other aides seeking comment on the marriage, no one on his staff admitted to knowing anything about it...
...This is a defamation of our rule of law . . .”) Patricia Ireland leaned over, grinning...
...He’s a pretty nasty old guy...
...In a sense, they’ve turned him into a woman,” the harassment expert said, “sexualized him so they can negate his leadership...
...For one thing, Conyers made an honest woman out of his Monica...
...There are differences, of course...
...After an hour of this, I was beginning to feel light-headed...
...By the time a retired law professor and self-described poet named Harold Norris rose to begin his harangue, I knew I couldn’t take much more...
...You can’t be mean to old people,” she said in a stage whisper...
...Miller is something of an expert on dislike (his study of repugnance, The Anatomy of Disgust, was published last year), and he has an enormous and precise vocabulary for describing distaste...
...Amen...
...True to the night’s theme (“The Clinton Impeachment Inquiry: Smokescreen for the Do-Nothing 105th Congress”), Conyers began by attacking Republicans for using impeachment as a smokescreen to hide the fact they haven’t done anything recently...
...Perjury...
...A week later I found myself on the 13th floor of a municipal building in downtown Detroit wearing a name tag and meeting my fellow panelists: a couple of ACLU lawyers, several oppression-studies professors from Midwestern universities, former White House counsel Abner Mikva, and NOW president Patricia Ireland...
...In the years since, Conyers, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, has said little about his courtship of his former employee, though recently he has had quite a bit to say about another, more famous office romance...
...Wonderful,” she said at the end of our brief conversation...
...I’d talked to Miller earlier in the night and pegged him as a conventional liberal, smarter than most, and witty, but socially progressive and distrustful of the Right—a garden-variety Clinton voter...
...Ireland is never far from her talking points, and since I was sitting next to her, I got to read them...
...Low misdemeanors, if they are anything at all,” scoffed Abner Mikva...
...Yes, we like to have biographical statements from all the panelists...
...The idea of voting for Clinton, Miller said, “makes me feel like I’m going to throw up...
...Desperate, I waited for him to pause for breath, then began applauding: Thank you, Professor Norris...
...If there’s going to be any impeachment,” said the Rev...
...Tucker Carlson is a staff writer for THEWEEKLY STANDARD...
...I am saturated with the consciousness of being African American,” Jarrett explained, and “much of this is a rightwing conspiracy...
...Which, in this setting, made her sound a lot like a moderate...
...Maybe...
...Maybe it’s payback...
...A couple of other panelists got the same idea, and we headed out...
...In other words, a white conspiracy...
...Norris’s points were simple enough—the Clinton investigation is a witch hunt, and anyone who thinks it isn’t is evil—but unfortunately he kept forgetting that he’d made them...
...cheered the crowd...
...It’s very problematic...
...Let me give you a fax number so you can send your bio...
...In June 1990, Conyers, then 61, married Esters, who was eight months pregnant...
...Ireland, in fact, was one of the few people in the room to suggest that Clinton might have done something wrong...
...On the other hand, Anthony implied, maybe there’s a connection...
...And again...
...I know, I said, but you don’t understand...
...He shuffled his notes and began again—as always, from the beginning...
...I guess you’re the token,” Ireland said as we took our seats...
...Don’t defend B.C.,” she had written at the top of a piece of hotel stationery...
...he shouted...
...Conyers’s two sons, ages two and eight, had crawled into his lap and were playing with the microphone...
...He was rude to me at the reception...
...Patrick Keenan, a professor at the University of Detroit, began by declaring himself “irate” and proceeded to become even more so...
...William Miller, a good-natured law professor who teaches at Michigan, offered me a ride to the airport...
Vol. 4 • November 1998 • No. 9
