[PEN-L:270] Re: Saving public Clinton II

[valis <valis@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Quoth Rob Schaap, in part:
>
> >The First Penis has already won this culture war, anyway, thanks to
> >the law of unintended consequences.   ..........................
>
> 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 where 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 ...                               ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  ^^^^^^
Notwithstanding just how that transpires in the business hours Oval Office
and on the vertical, you're probably onto something there.  The Beast With
Four Legs brooks no embarrassment or regret in either of its personae
after two decades of articles in mags like Cosmopolitan and Self: "How to
make sure your Big Lug doesn't monopolize the fun in bed," etc.

> 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 ...

....and given the culturally approved craze for Bravely Coming Forward,
every sexual hypocrite in the GOP could be confronted tomorrow by someone
first and last met at a beer-soaked frat house gangbang 25 years ago:
"I held onto that stained Homecoming t-shirt all these years without
knowing why, but _God_ knew that DNA testing would be invented someday."
Watch out, guys, we may not be a mature society by European standards
but history is pressing in everywhere just the same!

> 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.

Yes, agreed, but this is also to be seen as the De-sublimation of the
Sublimated (Marcuse), a process with its own perils once disappointed
Republican wives are trading their paramours for ideological lesbianism;
the moral/cultural Via Dolorosa of this vast land is longer than Route 66,
y'know, so wait a while yet before even starting your book.
             ........................................

> 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 jour, I s'pose.

Yeah, and since in the TV Age seduction is half the political craft,
why should we be surprised when the requisite talent spills over
during the achieved incumbency?
                                                                   valis