Clintoniana

Growing up as a child in the '80s, I had an extremely vague awareness of politics and current events. There was a show called "the news" and my parents would watch it from time to time, and typically very serious men were discussing something called "Iran Contra." I had no idea what this meant. I knew "contra" meant "against," so I figured Iran must be against something? But what? Us?

And if it just meant that Iran was against us, well, wasn't that kind of expected? I knew Libya was against us (from Back to the Future). I knew Russia was against us. And Iran was run by that insane-looking guy in the turban. Why not them, too?

Anyway, the point is, kids develop a kind of hazy understanding of what's going on in the world around them, but it's really up to parents or teachers or siblings or other adults to guide this understanding and form it into a worldview. I knew, for example, that Iran Contra was important, because it somehow meant that the President was a "bad guy," which is what my family clearly believed. Not a lot of big Gipper fans in my house growing up.

I found Reagan to be kind of a ridiculous character as a kid. This little old guy always going off about Star Wars and some Wall somewhere and claiming not to remember things. And when he was younger, he had co-starred in black and white movies with a chimp. But by the time his Vice President took over and I had started to think for myself, it was interesting to go back and take another look at those half-understood events of my childhood.

This is a roundabout way of getting to this fascinating conversation I had while tutoring yesterday. My student and I were going over SAT Essay prompts. These are always extremely vague because the emphasis is less about making strong arguments and more about having a well-written, organized impromptu essay. In fact, if a student can't come up with a really good example to back up his argument within the essay, we usually recommend that they just make stuff up.

Jonah Goldberg would do very well on the SAT essay section for this very reason. As lon gas you sound like you might know what you're talking about, you can get away with making any fool argument, regardless of the facts.

Anyway, this one prompt we went over asked the students (essentailly) this question:

Considering that others may model their own behavior on yours, is it important to always act in a proper manner?

So, anyway, the student then just has to determine whether or not they agree with the sentence, what a good thesis might be, and then a few examples that would really back up their thesis well. My student said he thought it was very important for adults to act as role models for the sake of children.

Okay...Sounds good so far. I asked him for an example.

"Well, President Clinton."

Um....

"He's supposed to be a leader and he's a role model for children, and he's showing everyone that adultery doesn't matter." (I'm paraphrasing here but that was the gist of it.)

Dear readers, this shocked me. I was shocked.

This guy is maybe 17 years old. He was a young child when the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal went down. So, clearly, someone has been filling his head with this stuff ever since then. His parents or teachers or someone has been railing about dirty old perverted Bill Clinton and the message has stuck.

Honestly, though, I can't believe that, out of all the people he could have chosen who poison the minds of our youth, he'd come up with Bill Clinton. Now, folks, I am not and was not a huge fan of Bill Clinton. He he seems like an intelligent, rational individual, so I think he was a better choice than Chimpface McRapture. But he was far too willing to sell out the people who supported him by moving to the right. I mean, NAFTA? Decimating the social safety net? Hillary's ridiculous heath care fiasco? Don't ask, don't tell? These are the acts of a Democratic liberal president?

But, I mean...the Oval Office blowjob? 10 years later, that's what still comes to this guy's mind when we talk about public disgraces and offensive behavior? And I don't want to get into this guy's life or anything, but his family is not wealthy. He goes to an LA public school, lives in a neighborhood of this city often associated with poverty and gang violence. He does not strike me as someone who hashad a lot of opportunities presented to him or has had a lot of help from anyone except his family. Yet this guy is smart. He's going to go to college. He's going to succeed.

It's amazing to me that he would be horrified and ashamed of the President getting some oral. I mean, if you want to hold a grudge against Bill Clinton (hey, maybe they're Republicans...), do it for the right reasons. "Bill Clinton was a bad role model for our youth because he pretended to care about the poor and then screwed them over when it was politically convenient." There you go. That's an essay I'd be proud to help out with.

But "Bill Clinton is a bad role model because he cheated on Hillary"? If every man who ever cheated on his wife ceased to be a good role model...well, there wouldn't very many good role models. There was a whole generation of kids that grew up worshipping John F. Kennedy...So, they're screwed.

It's like, Bill made some mistakes, he was weak, and now there's this massive American dogpile on top of him. Like that one sin revealed him as an inherently flawed character and now we can project all of our national shame and guilt on to this one figure.

Like that Disney-ABC 9/11 TV movie that's theoretically still coming on this weekend. Classic projection. "Bill Clinton let Osama bin Laden go!" Well, now, come on. There's only one President who really let Osama bin Laden go, and it wasn't Bill Clinton. Could his administration been smarter about finding terror cells? Possibly. But it wasn't Clinton's administration that ignored the "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the U.S." Presidential Daily Briefing. It wasn't Clinton who was already on the guy's trail in Afghanistan before turning around and blowing up Baghdad instead.

At least there's a specific political reason for this ABC docudrama. It's a big wet sloppy kiss to the party in power, in the hopes for more tax breaks and corporate handouts and deregulation strategies to come.

I can't understand why our citizenry continues to fret about a man cheating on his wife. I mean, it's unfortunate, but it happens. I can't believe it still makes Billy the least likable and respected man in America. I would have thought one name would spring to the mind of every American when asked..."should you watch how you behave in public"? Mel...Freakin'...Gibson...COME ON!

[UPDATE: It occurs to me that some of you may not know all the details about ABC's planned "Path to 9/11" movie, slated to run over two nights - September 10th and 11th. Part I deals with the Clinton Administration and its anti-terrorist activities (or lack thereof). Part II focuses on the Bush Administration.

I have not seen the film. But the word is that it distorts the truth about Clinton's pursuit of Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida, shifting the lion's share of the blame to his administration as opposed to Bush's. You can read more about it at any of the following excellent and CBI-approved links:

Think Progress: FBI Agent Who Consulted On Path to 9/11 Quit Halfway Through Because ‘They Were Making Things Up’

Editor & Publisher: Controversy Over 9/11 Film Hits Press

Here's the key quote from their story -

Mr. [Richard] Clarke, an on-air consultant to ABC News, said he was particularly shocked by a scene in which it seemed Clinton officials simply hung up the phone on an agent awaiting orders in the field. 'It's 180 degrees from what happened,' he said. 'So, yeah, I think you would have to describe that as deeply flawed.'"

ABC responded Tuesday with a statement saying that the miniseries was 'a dramatization, not a documentary, drawn from a variety of sources, including the 9/11 commission report, other published materials and from personal interviews.'"

Just like Godfrey Jones' popular show "Rock Bottom," ABC's miniseries should carry, as a public service, a brief spoken message: "Dramatization! May Not Have Happened!"

CQ.com: ABC Docudrama Sparks 9/11 Spat

That complaint came to the fore at a National Press Club screening of the show late last month, when Richard Ben-Veniste — one of the 10 members of the independent Sept. 11 commission, whose final report producer Marc Platt credits with supplying much of the mini-series’ detail and narrative structure — rose to denounce the veracity of a key scene involving Clinton national security adviser Samuel R. Berger.

Berger, portrayed as a pasty-faced time-server by Kevin Dunn (Col. Hicks in “Godzilla”) freezes in dithering apprehension when a manly and virtuous CIA agent played by Donnie Wahlberg radios in from the wilds of Afghanistan to say that he and his noble band of local tribesmen have Osama bin Laden within sight and begs for the green light to terminate him with extreme prejudice. In the film, the line goes dead before Berger offers any reply.

The moment is clearly intended to encapsulate the notion of American inattentiveness to the terror threat in the 1990s — a point driven home when the camera pans back to show Berger surrounded by a supporting cast of fellow Clinton administration nervous Nellies, including Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright and Defense Secretary William S. Cohen.

So when the post-screening question-and-answer session began, Ben-Veniste stood to say that the Berger-bashing scene didn’t square with the research he and the other commissioners conducted. “There was no incident like that in the film that we came across. I am disturbed by that aspect of it,” Ben-Veniste, a loyal Democrat, told the panel, which included both the producer and the commission’s GOP chairman, former Gov. Thomas H. Kean of New Jersey.

Also, please bear in mind that Scholastic is printing up study guides to be sent to high schools for free, encouraging teachers to use this "dramatization" as an educational tool.

You can tell this is one of those situations that Disney's PR Department didn't really anticipate. They're unprepared for this shitstorm and that's why it's going over so poorly. (Might there still be time to edit out the offensive scenes?) Some crisis management team is working around the clock trying to placate everybody, but this has just been a sloppy roll-out since day one. I mean, they sent copies to Rush Limbaugh for his examination, but not Bill Clinton and Madeline Albright? It's about them! Besides, Limbaugh only watches movies if they have "spank," "cumstain" or "Scary Movie" in the title...]