All
these years later, with Clinton supposedly the front-runner (as opposed to Vice
President Joe Biden) for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016, it
seems like we’re going to have to relive the nonsense of ’98 regardless.
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| Do we also want to dance the Macarena? |
THERE
HAVE BEEN many other people who felt compelled to comment on the fact that
Monica Lewinsky wrote an essay published in the current issue of Vanity Fair
magazine. She seems to believe she’s been unfairly singled out for abuse.
She
might be right. It’s a shame that too many people in our society seem to be
stuck with the mentality of a 13-year-old.
Because
the tawdriness of that whole affair between a president and a flirtatious (and
busty) intern isn’t something that is good for the nation to linger over.
Presidential
kneepads. Thongs. Blue dresses with certain DNA-laced stains.
ANYBODY
WHO THINKS back hard enough will come up with a tacky memory from each of those
phrases. I could get even more garish if I chose to.
What
amuses me the most about Lewinsky’s essay (it’s not that she can actually write
readable copy) is that it is in an issue of Vanity Fair that seems loaded with
copy meant to remind us of the 1990s.
A
story about JFK, Jr. (remember “George” magazine?), and a piece trying to tell
us the long-term significance of O.J. Simpson’s first criminal trial (the
year-long affair that offended so many of the same people who were bothered by
Bill Clinton’s election in 1992 and ’96).
All
things that we’d be better off keeping in the past, if we knew what was good
for us.
IF
THERE’S ANYTHING significant that came out of the whole Clinton affair, it was
the fact that it showed us how meaningless the “impeachment” label truly is.
Remember
that Bill Clinton was impeached. I have no doubt that if the Senate does shift
Republican following the Nov. 4 elections, they will try the same thing with
the Barack Obama presidency.
They
couldn’t beat him in 2008 or ’12, but are desperate to have something to hang
on him so they can claim he was a complete and utter failure.
Real
people won’t believe it. But then again, the ideologues have never cared what
real people think. They want us to live in their world, and mind our lesser
place in it.
I’VE
BEEN HAVING these thoughts lately in part to brace myself for the possibility
of impeachment proceedings (just as I spent my time right before Barack Obama
actually became president in January 2009 re-reading as much as I could of the “Council
Wars” days of old to brace myself for the likelihood of a Congress prepared to
do nothing to deny the president any accomplishments).
I
have no doubt that a Republican-controlled Congress would think nothing of
applying the impeachment label again. I also doubt they could get the
two-thirds of the Senate to go along with it (because there’s no way they’ll
get a 67-percent GOP majority of Senate members).
All
they succeeded in the former part, but wound up merely showing us just how
meaningless the “impeachment” label truly is. Particularly if it seems the
ideologues amongst us are going to want to use it against every single Democrat
who has the nerve to get elected as president.
It
seems the only way we can avoid the whole affair is to only elect presidents
and government officials who appease the social conservative mentality of those
people.
WHICH
IS JUST something the real majority of our society just isn’t going to do. No
more than we’d all start dancing the Macarena all over again.
Although
the 1990s weren’t totally awful – unless you were a self-absorbed Los Angeles
Lakers fan who had to see your team continually lose out to the Michael Jordan-era
Bulls. That part of the decade would be worth reliving.
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