[PEN-L:257] Re: Saving public Clinton

[Rob Schaap <rws@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

G'day Valis,

Just crawled back from a flu that's hanging on like a granny's tooth.  You
write:

>The First Penis has already won this culture war, anyway, thanks to
>the law of unintended consequences.  These GOP crazies are able to focus
>on only one (1) obsession at a time, which somehow serves to expose
>their scariest profile to public gaze.  Do you know _anyone_ who could
>fail to imagine him/herself twisting in Clinton's hot seat after beholding
>that inquisitorial tape with the headless prosecutorial voice?
>They have a "mirror image" problem: they assume that the average naked ape
>on this planet perceives and reacts as they do.

He may yet lose the system war, of course, but, yeah, the culture war is his.

I did identify when I watched him confront the headless one, and I did try
to come up with the best damage-control answers I could as the questions
came - only it transpired I wasn't half the man slick Willy was ('course,
he digs himself into far more holes than most, so he's had more experience
at digging himself out - but the bloke is very clever, no doubt about
that).  I also get the impression His Semenship actually likes the people
he shags - and I suspect that impression does him a lot of good we're it's
most needed, among those 'soccer-moms' American pollsters are always on
about.  Frank Sinatra and our own Bob Hawke seemed to benefit from just
such a perception.  Y'know, the sort who hang around for the afterglow
cuddle ...

There's a few known skirt merchants about who definitely don't give this
impression - and mebbe one or two salient ones are perceived to be on the
GOP side ...

The new morality (ie. that of the ascendant baby-boomer, as opposed to the
one that hung around long enough to destroy the relatively moderate Gary
Hart only a decade ago) is softer on adultery, and even tolerant of serial
adultery.  Perhaps the new crime is how your attitude to the woman (and,
tenuously, implicitly - womankind) comes across.  The boojey 'lip-stick
feminism' of latter day women's magazines glorifies sex, and exhorts its
readers to appear as sexy and be as sexual as possible.  Mebbe that's had
its effects, eh?  Men may shag lots of women because lots of 'new women'
may (or is it 'must'?) shag.

But she must enjoy the (problematic) status that befits the 'new woman',
ie. not that of the sperm spittoon of yore.

Which, but for the fact politicians are professionally skilled at faking
respect and affection, constitutes some small silver lining around the
black cloud that is American civilisation du juour, I s'pose.

Cheers,
Rob.