Scrapbook
Scrapbook Fireworks for the Few In the spring of 1993, President Clinton stalled runway traffic at the Los Angeles airport so he could receive a $200 haircut aboard Air Force One at the hands of...
...This was a special treat, for special people...
...Our fight against Falun Gong is part of a worldwide struggle against destructive cults," you wrote in a cover letter...
...As Skinner put it two years ago, "Where can one find reflections of manliness, if everywhere you turn, the American male seems boyish, hairless, shorn of any sign that he is an adult...
...The "security" excuse is merely a ruse, of course, but the president's men should beware of constantly invoking it anyway...
...But the appalling reality is that the trade being regulated is no more than 3 percent of our total exports...
...Imagine poor Clint Eastwood or Alan Greenspan or Placido Domingo having to peer through the car window at hordes of Washingtonians...
...Now, capitalism is nothing if not a contact sport—"creative destruction" was Schumpeter's phrase—but your willingness to strongarm financial giants sends a signal that it's the destruction part of capitalism you like, not the creative part...
...It plays to the caricature of Republicans as royalists, sipping their brandy and savoring their cigars, surrounding a frightened king—not merely a monarch but a querulous one, refusing even to grant his subjects the meager consolations of bread and circuses, and fireworks...
...To explain all the secrecy, the White House invokes "security concerns"— the common excuse employed nowadays to justify the remoteness of the rulers from the ruled...
...Last week there were reports that firms such as Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch "backed away from helping Taiwan hold an investment promotional tour in the U.S...
...Scrapbook Fireworks for the Few In the spring of 1993, President Clinton stalled runway traffic at the Los Angeles airport so he could receive a $200 haircut aboard Air Force One at the hands of the gifted Christophe...
...The show began at 11 P.M., when most people are getting ready for bed but just as the president's favored guests were moving on to the White House balcony to savor the night air and digest their Fava Bean and Chanterelle Ragout...
...The pamphlet then compares Falun Gong to "the Branch Davidian cult in the U.S...
...The incongruity is that the Senate bill is fully supported by the White House and an administration which argues with a straight face that it is still serious about weapons proliferation...
...Shoot first and ask questions later...
...We refer here to the disgraceful propaganda pamphlet " 'Falun Gong' Is a Cult" that your embassy in Washington distributed to staffers on Capitol Hill last week...
...But it is a particularly pitiful excuse in the case of a fireworks display...
...As part of our ongoing campaign of supervision to help China prepare for the 2008 Olympic games, a couple of more helpful suggestions for Beijing: *Intimidation campaigns aren't sporting, even if successful...
...We refer here not to your own citizens but to American investment bankers...
...for fear of upsetting Beijing...
...Sincerely, THE SCRAPBOOK...
...At the first ka-boom, the president was already securely hunkered down in his compound...
...And last week, the Wall Street Journal quoted the editor of Men's Health magazine as saying that if a male model showed up on a cover shoot with hair on his chest, "we'd ask him to remove it...
...business were really high...
...Where the entertainment and fashion industries lead, the young men of America follow...
...of course, the real present was to the business interests who helped draft the bill, poured tons of cash into various coffers to gain support for it, and will soon be free to sell all kinds of dangerous, multi-use technologies to states like China...
...The tale of the $200 haircut became a kind of shorthand critique of the Clinton presidency...
...Gillette, according to the Journal, is considering devoting a section of its website to explaining how to shave one's chest...
...And We Won't Even Get Rich Doing It As a going away present to retiring Senate Banking chairman Phil Gramm of Texas, the Senate last week passed the 2001 version of the Gramm-sponsored Export Administration Act by a vote of 85-14...
...But the story was seized on by Republicans as expressive of larger truths about Bill Clinton: his towering vanity, his disdain for the convenience of ordinary people, his monarchical sense of entitlement, his insistence on personal gratification at the expense of all other considerations...
...A similar story may have been launched last Wednesday night, when, at the command of the White House, a massive fireworks display was uncorked from the Ellipse, adjacent to the Mall, following the State Dinner for President Fox of Mexico...
...We'll be back with more tips, as needed...
...The bill, ludicrously, gives the Commerce Department the preeminent role in stemming exports of technologies that would be detrimental to our national security, precludes the departments of State and Defense from having anything but the most minimal say in these matters, and radically curtails the president's discretion in stopping such exports by setting up standards that make it nearly impossible for him to act under the color of law...
...This is why, for example, President Clinton banned non-government vehicles from Pennsylvania Avenue, and why—just wait— President Bush will soon renege on his campaign promise to reopen the street to the traffic of average citizens...
...Or maybe he didn't—the facts of the case have never been established to THE Scrapbook's satisfaction...
...Our advice: Let it grow, let it grow, let it grow...
...We wonder what lesson you think you learned from that tragic massacre in Waco...
...The president's staff gave no public notice of the fireworks, which meant that no one else had a chance to enjoy them...
...Though it was done on public property, at public expense (the cost of a high-quality, 15-minute show could easily top $100,000), the fireworks were planned essentially as a private affair, put on for the benefit of those 100-plus guests who were lucky, or rich, or well connected enough to cadge an invitation to the dinner...
...Jesse Helms, Jon Kyl, John McCain, Richard Shelby, and Fred Thompson are to be particularly commended for putting up a rear-guard fight for effective export controls...
...For like the tale of Clinton's haircut, the fireworks story is expressive of many things, none of them flattering to the president...
...Keeping in Mind the Olympic Spirit (cont...
...Don't expect sympathy for your Falun Gong crackdown...
...The only "threat" would have been to guests leaving the White House in their Town Cars when the party was over...
...Among the 14 senators who opposed the bill, Sens...
...We believe we have a great deal to learn from the experience of other countries, the United States included...
...Apparently, this decision was influenced by the fact that Credit Suisse First Boston—after helping promote a similar tour for Taiwan in Europe—was punished by being removed from its underwriter role in the planned share offerings by two major state-owned Chinese companies...
...Recently the Hartford Advocate reported on one talent agency where 90 percent of the (adult) male models have no body hair...
...Given all the pressure applied to Congress and the administration by commercial interests, one would think that the stakes for U.S...
...The depilated man represented the logical endpoint of the mainstreaming of gay culture and popular disillusionment with traditional concepts of manliness...
...But what fun would that be...
...The Still-Hairless Man Men without chest hair," David Skinner noticed in our July 21, 1999, issue, have taken over the important male roles in movies and television...
...A public announcement might have brought thousands of people to the Mall...
...Alas, this turns out to be one of those trends, the noticing of which does not mark its high-water point...
...A security nightmare, clearly...
Vol. 7 • September 2001 • No. 1
