Then they roasted marshmallows over it--fruit flavored marshmallows.
They did that respectfully too.
Anyway, that was as close to an uplifting story as you can expect to
find on this site. From there it all goes downhill. That's because the
topic for today is red, hot, flaming--
Well, maybe not that hot or that flaming. You probably know what I'm referring to and hopefully you are bored to death with it, but somehow just interested enough (despite your better judgement) to read just one more thing on Monica Lewinsky and the rest of Zippergate.
At bottom (legally speaking) the main point of the case is whether or
not Clinton coerced Monica Lewinsky into lying. That's what the lawyers
are ultimately trying to prove. That's all. Amusingly, this
is not the question the public or the press seems most interested in.
Legal definitions are hard for non-lawyers to understand (that's why we
have lawyers) and so people focus on the aspect of the situation everyone
can understand.
You know what I mean?
Bearing that in mind I plan to keep the subject in the gutter where it belongs. This is not to say that I favor having sex in a gutter, but rather that I deeply suspect that speculations about who had sex with who are not particularly useful for the country.
Amusingly, many people seem to share this opinion. Clinton's polls
have actually gone up since the news broke, leading one to imagine that
the American people are not so much upset as approving ("Clinton screwed
some college student? Yesss!"). As long as Clinton appears
to be doing a good job as president ("It's the economy, stupid..."), no
one wants to impeach him.
And that's okay. When you think about it, we really don't
know a whole lot. Mainly we have tape recorded talks in which Monica
Lewinsky claims to have had oral sex and steamy phone calls with Clinton.
We also have her denial on those very same charges as taken for the Paula
Jones case.
And oh yeah, we have a tape recording of her talking with Linda Tripp
and discussing about whether to lie in the deposition. That and the Secret
Service guy who said Monica went into the Oval Office for 40 minutes.
What we don't have are witnesses to Clinton and Lewinsky doing anything.
And that's exactly the kind of thing we need. Because if they didn't have
then no one had any need to do anything wrong at all. Which why it's worth finding out and why it's worth withholding judgement for the moment.
Personally I'm not terribly freaked out by the idea of the president doing the nasty with someone other than his wife. Leaders do it a lot. I imagine that being extremely powerful tends to make people extremely attractive. You can probably make a list as large as I can of leaders who may have schtupped someone other than their wives--Kennedy, Eisenhower, Martin Luther King, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Jefferson, and so on.
I'm not saying it's right, but whom would you prefer in office--Roosevelt or Jimmy Carter? Carter was moral and Roosevelt was phenomenally competent. That's the problem. Morality and ability are not necessarily combined in one package. I wish I could say they were.
As I see it, we should be concentrating on who we are as a nation and
what we want to become. Maybe we want to become a nation in which
no politicians have sex outside of marriage, but I suspect that even impeaching
Clinton wouldn't affect that very much.