(from 1999's No One Left To Lie To; The Values of the Worst Family by Christopher Hitchens where he is quoting his contribution to the Los Angeles Times in January of 1998)
Montesquieu remarked that if a great city or a great state should fall as the result of a apparent "accident," then there would be a general reason why it required only an accident to make it fall. This may appear to be a tautology, but it actually holds up very well as a means of analyzing what we lazily refer to as a "sex scandal."
If a rust-free zipper were enough on its own to cripple a politician, then quite clearly Bill Clinton would be remembered, if at all, as a mediocre Governor of the Great State of Arkansas. It is therefore silly to describe the present unseemly furor as a prurient outburst over one man's apparently self-destructive sexual compulsions.
Until recently, this same man was fairly successfully fighting a delaying action against two long-standing complaints. The first was that he had imported unsavory practitioners like the disgraced Webster Hubbell. The second was that he viewed stray women employees as spoils along the trail. . .
. . . Had Clinton begun by saying: "Yes, I did love Gennifer, but that's my business," many of us would have rejoiced and defended him. Instead, he disowned and insulted her and said he'd been innocent of that adultery, and treated the voters as if they were saps. Having apparently put Ms. Lewinsky into the quick-fix world of Jordan and Morris, he is in no position to claim that it's a private emotional matter, and has no right to confuse his business with that of the country's. Which is why he has a scandal on "his" hands, and is also why we need feel no pang when he falsely claims that the press and public are wasting his valuable time, when the truth is exactly the other way about."
What do you think?
Tell me at
http://www.rayjozwiak.com/guestbook.html
My latest release, Black & White Then Back,
can be downloaded digitally at:
(or you can copy-and-paste this URL directly to
your browser: http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/rayjozwiak3)
Also, be sure to visit:
http://www.rayjozwiak.com
Tweet
