Big Dog bites Man

by Kieran Healy on June 23, 2004

You should watch David Dimbleby’s “interview with Bill Clinton”:http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsa/n5ctrl/progs/panorama/latest.ram. After a bunch of Monica questions, Clinton ticks Dimbleby off for being just like every other journalist who were — how to put it? — so obsessed with Lewinsky’s blowjobs that they didn’t realize how they were helping Ken Starr to screw people. (Jump to 28:25 or so in the interview to see this). Dimbo looks a bit shocked:

*Clinton*: Let me just say this. One of the reasons he [Kenneth Starr] got away with it is because people like you only ask me the questions. You gave him a complete free ride. Any abuse they wanted to do. They indicted all these little people from Arkansas, what did you care about them, they’re not famous, who cares that their life was trampled. Who cares that their children are humiliated … Nobody in your line of work cared a rip about that at the time. Why, because he was helping their story… Now that doesn’t justify any mistake I made. But look how much time you spent asking me these questions, in this time you’ve had. That’s because it’s what you care about, because that’s what you think helps you and helps this interview… And that’s why people like you always help the far-right, because you like to hurt people, and you like to talk about how bad people are and all their personal failings.

*Dimbleby*: I don’t —

*Clinton*: Look, you made a decision to allocate your time in a certain way, you should take responsibility for that, you should say ‘Yes, I care much more about this than whether the Bosnian people were saved, and whether he brought a million home from Kosovo … [or] than whether we moved a hundred times as many people out of poverty as Reagan and Bush’.

The “BBC’s own write-up”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3829799.stm write up of the interview quotes some of the best bits, but they try rather too hard to frame it as Bill Goes Ballistic:

bq. Wagging his finger and getting visibly agitated, Mr Clinton expressed anger at the media’s behaviour. … But despite the shaky start, Mr Clinton quickly recovered his composure and was questioned for a further 30 minutes by Mr Dimbleby.

“Watch the interview for yourself”:http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsa/n5ctrl/progs/panorama/latest.ram (starts about 12:00 in) and decide whether Clinton loses his composure, looks shaky or is noticeably agitated. As far as I can see, Clinton hardly raises his voice and does little more than sit up in his chair. It’s also noticeable that he hardly drops a syllable, hems, haws, or mangles a word as he speaks. Say what you like about the guy and his legacy, he knows how to fight his corner. I don’t see the current incumbent being subjected to that kind of persistent questioning in six or seven years — or even right now, come to think of it.

{ 45 comments }

1

reuben 06.23.04 at 9:42 am

Oh crikey, I’m gonna have to go all OxBlog: the BBC’s write-up is a bit wonky. The criticisms Clinton dishes out to Dimbleby are well-deserved and right on the mark, and were delivered fairly calmly. It wasn’t a “shaky start”, as the write-up claims. It was something that the media need to be told far more often: get your frickin’ priorities straight.

2

bad Jim 06.23.04 at 10:50 am

There’s nothing more Clintonian than agonizing over the effect on the little guys in Arkansas, and nothing Bushier than an unnecessary war in a distant country, just for the sake of an advantage in an interim election.

I don’t see the current incumbent being subjected to that kind of persistent questioning in six or seven years – or even right now, come to think of it

Our previous president is capable of talking for hours off the top of his head. Our present president is congratulated when he doesn’t mangle the words he’s fed. As with Reagan, no one wonders what he really thinks.

3

Matthew McGrattan 06.23.04 at 11:13 am

Clinton is a strikingly clear and articulate speaker by any standard and he says a lot of things in that interview that are so full of good sense and intelligence.

The fact that Bush is such a failure in almost every respect is made even more obvious by the contrast with Clinton.

It’s really a very good interview and, if widely seen, can only enhance his reputation.

4

RD 06.23.04 at 11:57 am

“I don’t see the current incumbent being subjected to that kind of persistent questioning in six or seven years — or even right now, come to think of it.”

The fact remains, regardless of how soothing Clinton’s presentation is to you and his googoo-eyed admirers, if I took advantage of the power of my position at work to seduce a young employee of my company, I would be fired. I would be fired whether I lied about it or fessed up. I would be fired regardless of any wonderful work I had performed previously. Fired! Plain and simple. Maybe, just maybe, I might be given the opportunity to resign. And that’s exactly what Clinton should have done. Instead, he continues to subject “our country’s life” to this kind of “persistent questioning”. The future will tell whether our “current incumbent” will suffer a similar fate over far more noble matters.

5

raj 06.23.04 at 12:15 pm

On the one hand, Clinton’s relationship with Lewinsky did not rise to the level of a state issue like the Profumo affair. (Maybe a few of you are old enough to remember that.) Profumo was having sex with a spy, after all.

On the other hand, it should be clear that the BBC is making a lot of money off of selling crap to the US, via their relationship with the US’s “public” television and “public” radio (actually, they are corporate sponsored, so there isn’t any “public” about it), and via the BBC America cable channel. To be viable, they are going to have to conform to the sensibilities, such as they are, of Americans: all sex, all the time, whether or not the sex is with spies.

We (we’re in the US) don’t get BBC America, and we give BBC radio about the same level of credibility as a US news (read “gossip”) outlet. Virtually none.

Yes, the sun has truly set on the British Empire.

6

Kieran Healy 06.23.04 at 12:16 pm

you and his googoo-eyed admirers … whether our “current incumbent” will suffer a similar fate over far more noble matters.

Just to be clear, by “far more noble matters” you mean deliberately misleading the country in order to launch a war; implementing policies that deprive by fiat selected U.S. citizens of their rights to due process; and initiating an internal review with the goal of manufacturing a legal justification for the torture of prisoners by agents of the state.

Right?

I think you need to remove the googoo from your own eye.

7

james 06.23.04 at 12:28 pm

The incredible thing was that immediately after “because you like to hurt people” Clinton was back laughing and smiling, all pally-pally – and not in any transparently compensatory way.

Really though, a politician having an affair and lying about it? Give us a break. The most relevent question is how on earth this was the dominant question on the US political scene.

Still, Clinton really is extraordinary. I swear at the end when he made some joke about Hillary he morphed into John Travolta in Primary Colors.

8

dave heasman 06.23.04 at 12:35 pm

Raj says : “Profumo was having sex with a spy, after all.”

Unless he knows something I don’t, and Profumo was shagging, or being shagged by, Ivanov, then he wasn’t having sex with a spy. Christine Keeler, as would be obvious to anyone who met her,and lots did, was transparently not a spy.

9

Giles 06.23.04 at 1:11 pm

I thought Dimby was pretty embarrasing – he went on for half an hour about lewinsky untill rightly ticked off by Bill.

The most interesting revelation of the night – that Bill thought kerry would make “quite” a good president – was I thought the revelation of the night. The parocial BBC pr department seems to have missed it entirely.

10

RD 06.23.04 at 1:31 pm

“Just to be clear, by “far more noble matters” you mean deliberately misleading the country in order to launch a war; implementing policies that deprive by fiat selected U.S. citizens of their rights to due process; and initiating an internal review with the goal of manufacturing a legal justification for the torture of prisoners by agents of the state.”

If you’re the one conducting the interview and history supports your concoction I guess it’s whatever trips your little hair trigger.

11

Zizka 06.23.04 at 2:20 pm

I just came by to observe your family of trolls. They must be asleep or something. RD doesn’t come close to meeting the thorley standard.

“Ticked off” in American idiom is not transitive — Clinton was ticked off, not the BBC guy.

12

paul 06.23.04 at 2:40 pm

Clinton’s ability to think on his feet (or at all, for that matter) as opposed to other occupants of the presidency make me long for the equivalent of Question Time. The proxy fighting used now makes a mockery of democracy.

In future, I think I’ll adapt Godwin’s Law to any mention of Monica Lewinsky: if that’s the only thing an interlocutor can find to discuss in a two-term presidency, it’s time to move on.

Apropos of having a leader we can all “feel good about”, someone who doesn’t do anything that might embarrass us (like display human weakness), I’m more convinced than ever that a lot of Americans really want a King or some kind of non-threatening head of state whose pictures they can venerate and who can make them fell all warm and tucked in, maybe with his image on that mug of warm milk at bedtime. It’s obvious we don’t want someone who is comfortable with, even knowledgeable about, knotty policy issues, initiating social transformation, or brokering peace agreements. A King who’s willing to wage war for his family’s honor, who has no more sense than a deer in some oncoming headlights when a crisis arises, who can’t be expected to relate to the majority of his subjects, I mean citizens, due to the benevolence of Providence . . . . for this, the Founders risked their lives and many of the Continental Army laid down theirs?

13

TomD 06.23.04 at 2:58 pm

Just on a point of principle: having a brief affair with (not, by any stretch of the imagination, ‘seducing’ – unless the seduction was mutual) a young employee may be grounds for dismissal from an influential post in a generic institution; but *not in a President*.

The post of commander-in-chief is seen, rightly so in my opinion, as immune from anything other than the popular vote and “high crimes and misdemeanors”: its destiny is not to be decided by whether or not a certain set of lewd but consensual acts were or were not performed.

Of course, once the President ceases to be so, let him be sued, prosecuted, or otherwise brought to justice for any petty or trivial matter. But not while.

14

Xavier 06.23.04 at 3:19 pm

The Monica story got huge ratings. That’s why the media covered it so extensively. If you want to blame someone for that, blame the American people. The real issue here is whether the media has some moral obligation to report on stories that it deems to be “important” even if the viewers are more interested in another story. You guys are assuming that there is such an obligation. I disagree. The news media is no different from any other business. It gives the viewers what they want to see. There’s nothing wrong with that.

I’m not suggesting that the Monica scandal is actually important in any political or historical sense, but I don’t see why that should matter. Lots of former presidents write books, and none of them attract this kind of attention. If this book didn’t address the Monica scandal, no one would buy it and there would be very little media coverage of it.

15

sandriana 06.23.04 at 3:57 pm

To be honest I rather liked Dimbleby looking all outraged – he does the ”shocked Queen Mother” look better than anyone on UK TV, IMSHO.

16

charlene 06.23.04 at 4:12 pm

“Ticked off” in American idiom is not transitive — Clinton was ticked off, not the BBC guy.
– Ziska, are you refering to Giles’ comment? If you are I think you’ve got the wrong end of the stick – ticked off in Breng here means that Bill brought Dimby to book, not that Bill was pissed off by Dimby.

17

charlene 06.23.04 at 4:14 pm

“Ticked off” in American idiom is not transitive — Clinton was ticked off, not the BBC guy.
– Ziska, are you refering to Giles’ comment? If you are I think you’ve got the wrong end of the stick – ticked off in Breng here means that Bill brought Dimby to book, not that Bill was pissed off by Dimby.

18

paul 06.23.04 at 4:47 pm

Xavier:
<quote> The real issue here is whether the media has some moral obligation to report on stories that it deems to be “important” even if the viewers are more interested in another story. You guys are assuming that there is such an obligation. I disagree. The news media is no different from any other business. It gives the viewers what they want to see. There’s nothing wrong with that.</quote>

I disagree with your disagreement: I think there is a difference between sensation-based reporting and more substantive journalism. While l’affaire Lewinsky shouldn’t have been ignored, I would rather have seen some responsible journalists or publications put it in perspective: as noted in another comment, the commander-in-chief is subjec to different rules than a CEO, say, though not as different as the present incumbent would like to think.

19

Xavier 06.23.04 at 5:06 pm

Paul: There will always be high-brow news services to cater to people like you who are more interested in Kosovo than the sordid details of Monica. As long as there is a market for that sort of news, it will continue to exist. I think you’re suggesting that the entire news media should cater to that higher standard. That seems a little condescending. If the vast majority of the population really is far more interested in Monica (and it’s hard to deny that they are) why should a minority of the public be able to dictate what everyone else can see? You may not like the public interest in Clinton’s sex life, but at least it’s better than an interest in Jennifer Lopez’s sex life, right?

20

raj 06.23.04 at 5:23 pm

>Christine Keeler, as would be obvious to anyone who met her,and lots did, was transparently not a spy.

According to the BBC web site “Keeler has since written her autobiography, ‘The Truth At Last’, where she alleges she was used as a cover for an Anglo-Soviet spy ring.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/crime/caseclosed/profumo.shtml

Merely a cover? Pardon my skepticism. To believe that, one would almost have to believe that nobody in American prisons is guilty of a crime.

21

Walt Pohl 06.23.04 at 5:43 pm

Before anyone launches into any generalizations about the American people, remember that we elected Clinton twice, and we’re well on our way for booting Bush out.

Xavier: Something tells me you are a callow youth.

22

des von bladet 06.23.04 at 5:52 pm

Xavier, he say: There will always be high-brow news services to cater to people like you who are more interested in Kosovo than the sordid details of Monica.

But this was Dame David Dimbleford, the BBCs correspondent for State Occasions and High Seriousness, a man so imbued with Lofty Moral Purposes that even contemplating his worthiness gives me vertigo. He’s a red carpet in human form, a heavy hitting 21-gun salute of solubriousness and unimpeachable propriety. Brows, it is fair to say, come no higher.

And what he wanted to talk about Ms Lewinsky’s dry cleaning issues, at extraordinary length.

Game, set and match to Slick Willy, before you even opened your inane troll snout, isn’t it?

23

dave heasman 06.23.04 at 5:57 pm

“According to the BBC web site “Keeler has since written her autobiography, ‘The Truth At Last’, where she alleges she was used as a cover for an Anglo-Soviet spy ring.””

Keeler has written nothing but Social Security applications. She told a tale to a ghost-writer who jazzed it up a lot, because it was an old cold story, and there was noone left who would sue. She’s had a hard life and needs money. But there’s no external evidence – nothing from Gordievsky. The closest I got from Google was this from a CNN program : –

http://edition.cnn.com/SPECIALS/cold.war/episodes/21/script.html

Interview: Col. Mikhail Luibimov, KGB Foreign Intelligence

“Spy mania in London started about the time I arrived. In 1961, we used to be asked everywhere — we were very popular. We would be invited to private parties, and the attitude towards us was good. But as the Sixties went on, there were those big disasters: with Blake and the other KGB spies. And you had the Profumo scandal, with the prostitute Christine Keeler. That shook Britain up a bit. After that, when I turned up somewhere, people would ask, ‘Are you a spy?’ So I’d say, ‘Of course I’m a spy!'”

If Keeler was a spy, he’d have said so & put it in his memoirs. It’s a nonsense.

24

rea 06.23.04 at 5:58 pm

“[I]f I took advantage of the power of my position at work to seduce a young employee of my company, I would be fired.”

Your employer is unusual, then. What the law requires of an employer is that it not allow employees to use their position to COERCE subordinates into unwanted sex. Lewinski was a willing participant with Clinton, therefore nothing illegal occurred.

Now, of course, not everything legal is moral, but I would submit to you that a complete ban on realtionships arising out of the workplace is not particularly reasonable, or in accord with the moral sensibilities of most of the population.

Just as a hypothetical, what would your reaction be to a relationship between the Senate Majority Leader and the Secretary of Transportation? Would the senator’s greater power and authority over the Dept. of Transportation render the relationship inherently coercive?

25

Xavier 06.23.04 at 6:42 pm

“Game, set and match to Slick Willy, before you even opened your inane troll snout, isn’t it?”

I wasn’t attacking Clinton. I like Clinton. I have no objection to what he did, but I don’t have any objection to media coverage of it either. The majority of the American public likes Bill Clinton, and the majority of the American public has a substantial interest in his relationship with Monica. They are not mutually exclusive. Monica coverage may be personally unpleasant to Clinton, but I don’t think it damages his political ideals or helps his opposition much.

The interview was about Clinton’s book, right? Monica is the only reason the book is getting substantial media coverage and the only reason so many people are buying it. If the interview was about the book and the book’s only significance is that talks about Monica, it seems pretty reasonable that the interview would focus on Monica. Dimbelby also covers serious stories, right? If so, I don’t see how this one interview has deprived anyone of access to high-brow news.

26

Thomas 06.23.04 at 7:21 pm

That’s just like Bill. Always worried about the little guy–the Web Hubbells and Jim Guy Tuckers of the world. Who will speak for them, if Bill doesn’t?

Little people–you know, Associate Attorney Generals, Governors, etc.

27

Lance Boyle 06.23.04 at 8:18 pm

“The fact remains…if I took advantage of the power of my position at work to seduce a young employee of my company…”

Yet if you take advantage of your position in the economy, which is virtually synonymous with your position at work, to “seduce” a young employee of a different company, you won’t be fired. The same power dynamic, the same taking advantage of, every aspect identical except the in-house part. With the President of course it gets complex, because in a very real sense the whole country’s his bailiwick. What’s never addressed is the Puritan hypocrisy at the center of the moral question. If she had made him a gourmet meal every day at 1:30 pm for seven months there would be no outcry whatsoever.
This was not a public issue, it was manufactured into one for political, not moral, ends.

“If the vast majority of the population really is far more interested in Monica…why should a minority of the public be able to dictate what everyone else can see?”

That is the most wonderful rhetorical question I’ve seen this year. That is a perfect question. I salute it.
What the public is interested in is already being dictated by a minority. The nonsensical assertion that public appetite for news or entertainment is independently-occurring is too specious for rebuttal.

“The Monica story got huge ratings. That’s why the media covered it so extensively. If you want to blame someone for that, blame the American people.”

More speciosity. This same logic will soon begin to surface around “global warming”. The bogus affixing of blame on people whose mode of transportation was as choiceless as breath, the subliminal indoctrination to the idea that somehow the human race blundered its way into calamity. Rather than being gulled into it.
As though, because slaves constitute the majority of the residents, they’re responsible for the condition of the plantation.
The American people were told that they cared about Lewinsky, so they did. The same coercive processes can now be used to make them care about anyone or anything.
Smoking is now taboo, where it once was pandemic, for precisely this reason; not because the public erred in judgement then corrected itself.
Brainwash in, brainwash out.
The illusion that the television itself provides information, that it’s a benevolent intelligent machine that talks about the world and tells us stories, is what makes that coercion possible.

28

Xavier 06.23.04 at 9:09 pm

“The nonsensical assertion that public appetite for news or entertainment is independently-occurring is too specious for rebuttal.”

The media tries to push a lot of news stories and a lot of entertainment. Most of it fails to interest the viewers. If the public has no taste independent of what it’s told, why are there so many failed TV shows and flop movies? There is substantial variance in news ratings depending on how interesting the news is on a particular day. If the media were really capable of creating public interest in any story it chose, don’t you think news ratings would be pretty stable? No one had to manufacture the public’s interest in sex and violence. It’s simply human nature. Calling an argument “too specious for rebuttal” is no argument at all, especially when you have absolutely no evidence to support your claim.

29

Amardeep 06.23.04 at 9:24 pm

Isn’t there a middle ground possible? It seems to me that the media’s tilt and popularity feed off of each other, and are both responsible for the current centrality of scuttlebutt in television news. Also culpable are political spin-masters and the whole Republican Whitewater PAC.

Asking the media to suddenly sober up and be serious is a little like asking dogs to stop sniffing people’s crotches. It would require major reconditioning, an operation of Moreau-esque magnitude.

30

Jimmy Doyle 06.23.04 at 10:01 pm

Raj:

You wrote:

“We (we’re in the US)… give BBC radio about the same level of credibility as a US news (read “gossip”) outlet. Virtually none.”

That’s hard to square with the fact that the US audience for the BBC World Service has *trebled* in the last three years.

31

Nate Oman 06.23.04 at 10:11 pm

It seems to me that at least one premise of Clinton’s argument is rather demonstrabely false, namely the notion that the media treated Ken Starr with kid gloves. It seems to me that he was rather persistently attacked, and his reputation (remember he was getting praise in the NYT as a “reasonable” judicial conservative prior to his stint as independent counsel) outside of right-wing circles was completely destroyed.

32

Matt Weiner 06.23.04 at 10:46 pm

Nate,
I think that’s consistent with the possibility that Starr was treated more gently than Clinton and that his behavior was in fact much much worse than Clinton’s, which I also think is in fact the case. That is, I think Starr deserves his destroyed reputation; by the end he lost his own ethics counsel.

The important thing here is the role of straight journalists rather than op-ed types. Did straight journalists gin up stories about Starr or uncritically report falsehoods from the anti-Starr forces? It seems to me that they did with respect to Clinton–in some circles Susan Schmidt is called “Steno Sue” for her alleged uncritical transcription of leaks from the OIC. But I haven’t done any in-depth investigation of the reporting here, so my views may be unduly shaped by the echo chamber.

33

Alaska Jack 06.23.04 at 10:51 pm

Bill Clinton has one person — one single individual — to blame with respect to the troubles he experienced in office.

Here’s a few hints:

It’s not Ken Starr
It’s not Linda Tripp
It’s not Monica Lewinsky
It’s not Hillary Clinton
It’s not Newt Gingrich
It’s not Jerry Falwell
It’s not the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy
It’s not Al Gore
It’s not Sister Souljah
It’s not Lucianne Goldberg
It’s not his alcholic father
It’s not Matt Drudge
It’s not Bob Dole
It’s not Paula Jones
It’s not Betty Curry
It’s not Vernon Jordan
It’s not Dick Morris
It’s not Webb Hubbell
It’s not Michael Isikoff
It’s not Vince Foster
It’s not Gennifer Flowers
It’s not Kathleen Willey
It’s not Juanita Broaddrick
It’s not Christy Zercher
It’s not Dolly Kyle Browning
It’s not Elizabeth Ward Gracen
It’s not Susan McDougal
It’s not Sally Purdue
etc. …

34

Brett Bellmore 06.23.04 at 11:56 pm

I guess it’s going to have to be repeated on into infinity, every time the Democratic lie comes up:

Bill Clinton was not impeached for having an affair.

He was impeached for perjury, subornation of perjury, and obstruction of justice. Something we have every reason to believe he committed on many occasions, concerning far more grave matters, for all that it could only be [i]proven[/i] in a relatively trivial case.

And if said offenses had something to do with his affair, we must remember that he, himself, signed the bill which made questioning him on those matters legal. Typical Clinton, signing a law, then refusing to abide by it… If there was anyone on the face of the Earth with an absolute moral obligation to answer those questions truthfully, it was William Jefferson Clinton. He gets no sympathy from me.

35

Tom T. 06.24.04 at 12:54 am

At the risk of ticking Zizka off, I think the idiom can indeed be used transitively. I agree that giles’ usage seems odd, though; perhaps he meant to say “told off.”

36

Lance Boyle 06.24.04 at 1:00 am

Xavier-
A calm reasoned rebuttal, I’m somewhat abashed; though I believe the truth still remains preponderantly on my side, for all the hyperbolic excess it sits beneath.
“If the public has no taste independent of what it’s told, why are there so many failed TV shows and flop movies? “
Anyone who’s ever worked with large herbivores will tell you that, depending on their degree of domesticity, getting them to do what you want them to do is an art, compounded of cunning, praise, guile, and brute force, and anything else that comes to hand or mind that works.
The subject in question, the mediated American populace, is so recently domesticated, or still in process, that it’s unpredictable, and far bigger in relation to its masters, pound for pound, than the ox or mule of our agrarian heritage.
Shorter answer: Because it’s tastes are not wholly predictable, because there are competing interests for its attention on trivial matters like entertainment, and because I was exaggerating to make my point more forceful – a sin in academia, but a valuable tool in the profession under discussion.

“If the media were really capable of creating public interest in any story it chose, don’t you think news ratings would be pretty stable?”
This is not equal to the incisive logic of your other questions. Obviously news ratings are going to rise and fall with the glamour and tease of particular stories, on particular days. Just as mood and interest rise and fall concerning most things human.
And not so obviously, I’m not saying we have a monolithic enterprise here, though it seems more so with each passing day. There is intense competition for position among journalists and editorial bureaucracies, though there’s an agreement in overall editorial voice that isn’t explained by that competition alone.

“No one had to manufacture the public’s interest in sex and violence. It’s simply human nature. “
No one had to manufacture the public’s interest in fried foods, either. Or large ill-designed vehicles whose cost/benefit ratios are skewed entirely toward their manufacturers. And toward the industry that supplies their fuel. (380 million gallons a day in the US)
I do think a case could easily be made there’s been more than a little manipulation behind the public’s demand for these things.
Human nature is more flexible even than human anatomy, we survive because we adapt, that’s also our nature, and it’s why we’ve been so successful in the short term as a species.

The essential unadorned position I’m taking is that the “Monica Lewinsky” case was an assassination by degrees, it was intended so, and it was carried out so, by all but its most unwitting accomplice, the American public.
The converse, which I still think beneath the dignity of reasoned argument, that the “Monica Lewinsky case” entered the public arena in a naturally-occurring manner and sustained itself there independently for the duration of its cycle as an “interesting” news story, isn’t being overtly put forth in this thread, but it is underpinning much of the rightwing position.
And it is, as I said, and say again, specious nonsense.

37

paul 06.24.04 at 4:28 am

<sigh> No one disputes that Clinton’s problems were of his own making, not even the man himself. What seems to be at issue is the amount of attention paid to his personal behavior during what seemed to an open-ended investigation into a real estate deal and became so much more. And none of the real state stuff or FileGate or TrooperGate or TravelGate amounted to anything: given $70 million and a few years, I suspect Ken Starr could find something unsavory on damn near anyone.

I don’t understand the basis for the enmity Clinton seems to attract. It’s not like he’s the first political figure to engage in unseemly behavior or the last, if you are following the headlines. Henry Hyde, head of the Judiciary Committee during the Starr Inquisition was found to have had a five-year affair with another man’s wife — hardly a quickie in the cloakroom — and we have the current Jack Ryan story (what is it with Illinois Republicans? Is that lake water contaminated?). Others have done the same as Clinton, some even more egregiously, but for some reason he gets raked over the coals for it.

But as noted in the post that started all this, he seems quite capable of defending himself: would that his detractors were as willing to take the heat as he seems to be.

And as for the argument that the news organizations should give the people what they want: in the business of publishing, they have no choice if they are to survive. But it would be a far better world if we didn’t insist on making everything a race to the bottom. The old ideal of a free press that competes to bring out the facts and compete on quality seems to have completely disappeared: I’m not sure democracy is well served by an emphasis on peccadillos rather than probity.

38

JamesW 06.24.04 at 8:45 am

Far and away Clinton’s most serious failure was in not stopping the genocide in Rwanda. The comments on this blog confirm the truth of Clinton’s accusation of a trivial and prurient mindset. How do a few blowjobs weigh against three-quarters of a milion people hacked to death with machetes?

39

JamesW 06.24.04 at 8:47 am

Far and away Clinton’s most serious failure was in not stopping the genocide in Rwanda. The comments on this blog confirm the truth of Clinton’s accusation of a trivial and prurient mindset. How do a few blowjobs weigh against three-quarters of a milion people hacked to death with machetes?

40

Brett Bellmore 06.24.04 at 11:05 am

Yup, Hyde was “found to have” had an affair; Pure coinicidence that dirt turned up on him and other Republican leaders just as they were going after an administration which had illegaly collected it’s opponents’ FBI files in Filegate. No connection at all… LOL

I actually blame the Republican leadership for the failure to successfully remove Clinton from office; He couldn’t have blackmailed them, if they weren’t such scum to begin with.

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raj 06.24.04 at 1:21 pm

Jimmy Doyle · June 23, 2004 10:01

>That’s hard to square with the fact that the US audience for the BBC World Service has trebled in the last three years

It’s called marketing, dear. If BBC American even existed on American cable TV three years ago, it was miniscule. And their push into providing programming for American “public radio” stations in the last few years has been astounding. One of Boston’s “public radio” stations, WBUR, is virtually “all BBC, all the time.” Julian Marshall (I believe his name is) and Judy Swallow are heard more often on that station than anyone else. (I may be exaggerating, but not by much.)

On the other hand, it should be noted that the BBC probably provides relatively low-cost programming for “public radio” stations. The success in the US of syndicated talk radio can be explained by the fact that it is relatively high profit: profit equals advertising revenue minus cost, and if the cost is distributed among a number of outlets, as it is with syndicated radio programs, the profit for each station can be relatively high–certainly higher than if they had to pay local “talent.”

BTW, the “we” I was referring to were those of us within our household. Sorry for the confusion. But I had believed that the parenthetical phrase would not suggest that I was referring to all those residing in the US.

dave heasman · June 23, 2004 05:57 PM

>Keeler has written nothing but Social Security applications. She told a tale to a ghost-writer who jazzed it up a lot, because it was an old cold story, and there was noone left who would sue.

Ah, so Keeler was recorded as haveing said what she said to sell a few books.

One might wonder how far that extends.

I suppose, according to you, that nobody should believe much of anything that comes out of books that are labeled “autobiographies.”

BTW, CNN, to which you linked, is even less reliable than the BBC. As should be obvious from their having to suck up to the American government.

BTW, I find Brett’s comments interesting. From a formal standpoint, of course, he is correct: the impeachment articles that the House approved against Clinton related to giving false and misleading testimony before a grand jury and influencing the testimony of another witness. But no sentient being who was paying attention at the time could fail to recognize that the case in which he was embroiled at the time involved a private sexual relationship. Impeachment is a political act, generally directed to issues of state, not private issues, even if the private issues are matters that have been brought before a court. So I differ from Brett: the private “indiscretions” of Hyde, the chief accusator in the House, as well as Burton, Gingrich, Livingston, Chenowyth, Ryan (governor), Ryan (senator), Packwood (no longer in the Senate, but his indiscretions still hanging over them), yada, yada, yada, are very much relevant.

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raj 06.24.04 at 1:23 pm

JamesW · June 24, 2004 08:47 AM

>Far and away Clinton’s most serious failure was in not stopping the genocide in Rwanda.

Perhaps.

I’ve seen the (US) public television programs regarding the 10th anniversary of the Rwandan civil war. I suppose you may be correct that Clinton should have said something in 1994. The Rwanda civil war in 1994 was less than one year after the debacle of the Clinton administration in Somalia (1993), the latter of which was an extension of Bush I’s idiotic incursion there in 1992. Given that experience, is it really any surprise that the Clinton administration didn’t venture into Rwanda?

I hate to tell you, but the fact is that nobody much gives a tinker’s damn what goes on in sub-saharan Africa. Apparently, not even Africans. I need only cite the reaction of the “world community” in the Congo (or whatever they’re calling it now) for evidence of that.

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dave heasman 06.24.04 at 4:58 pm

Sorry to flog a dying horse, but raj rejoins : –
” Ah, so Keeler was recorded as haveing said what she said to sell a few books.

One might wonder how far that extends.”

Well it extends everywhere of course. Including campaign bios.
That’s why unlikely claims are checked against external documentation. All other considerations – like she hadn’t a brain cell in her head – aside, it’s impossible for Keeler to have been any sort of spy without Gordievsky knowing and recording it. And if she were, it’d be a titillating item he would put in to help sell his book. But he didn’t. So the balance of probability is massively on the “she wasn’t a spy” side. Fin.

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Matt Weiner 06.24.04 at 8:03 pm

Tom T–As I think comes up on the other thread, in UKian “ticked off” seems to mean “told off” (I think you mention that on the other thread too, so this post is redundant).
Nate–Sorry, looks like a reasonable discussion of that issue won’t be happening, will it? Certainly not your fault.

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raj 06.25.04 at 3:22 pm

dave heasman · June 24, 2004 04:58 PM

You might have a point, but given Britain’s libel laws, which are more draconian than those in the US (there is no “public figure” exception in the UK, for example), neither you nor I have any idea why Gordievsky’s book might not have had suggestion that Keeler might have been a spy. Perhaps the publisher’s lawyers counselled otherwise.

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