Upstaged, clinton Recycles Tired Canard, Tries New Revisionist Tack
- by Mia T, 11-03-03
-
- Biography lends to death a new terror.--Oscar Wilde
Hypocrisy abounds in this Age of Clinton, a Postmodern Oz rife with constitutional deconstruction and semantic subversion, a virtual surreality polymarked by presidential alleles peccantly misplaced or, in the case of Jefferson posthumously misappropriated...
-
Mia T, THE OTHER NIXON
Yesterday, Daniel Patrick Moynihan died. Today, the clintons are arrogating his soul. Hardly surprising. In 1999, the clintons were not at all shy about seizing his still-warm senate seat.
One has merely to recall the Jefferson double-helix hoax to understand that posthumous misappropriation is, for the obvious reason, the clintons' preferred method of legacy inflation….
Standard-Issue clintonism
If misappropriation of Jefferson's alleles hinged on a broken line of descent, misappropriation of Moynihan's endorsement depends on a broken line of dissent. Like Sally Hemmings' progeny, Moynihan's later acquiescence is of dubious lineage
-
Mia T, Moynihan Myths
-
hat is surprising about the clinton-Dole C-SPAN pas de deux is not that clinton demagoguery had gotten so old. What is surprising is that the tautological, specious, gasbag sort of banality that had always been the hallmark of clintonspeak was ever considered interesting or credible in the first place.
The 60-minute C-SPAN reprise of the 60-second 60 Minutes clinton-Dole flop confirmed what the 60 Minutes separate-stages format had plainly suggested: that bill clinton would be wise never to share the stage with Bob Dole.
Bob Dole displayed an easy wit; clinton served up faux-folksy bromides laced with underlying rage with stale carnard-cum-corollary for good measure.
The canard: If a crook doesn't make a profit, then it's not a crime.
The corollary: The government should pursue a crook if, and only if, the crook's take exceeds the government's cost to nail him.
(viewing movie requires Flash Player 6, available HERE)
Casuistry in the service of clinton revisionism....
Posthumous misappropriation is, for the obvious reason, the clintons' preferred method of legacy inflation. While downward revision ("defining deviancy down") is the classic clinton m.o., (see Jefferson double-helix hoax), clinton, exposed, is now arguing the obverse; the double negative offers the illusion of a higher ground.
If the purpose of the canard and corollary is to nullify Whitewater, the purpose of the claim that Ulysses S. Grant was unfairly maligned is to point the clinton hagiographers in the direction of the nonjudgmental... and the non sequitur.
That is, if Grant was unfairly maligned as a drunk, then, according to clinton deconstructionist logic, it follows that clinton was unfairly maligned as a rapist, traitor, perjurer, suborner of perjury, cheat, obstructor of justice, abuser of power, psychopath, corruptor of children, murderer, incompetent, utter failure, proximate cause of 911... take your choice.
