> Clinton, we know, technically did not have > sex with [whateverhernamewas], because the definition > of sexual relations is male-female.......
BECAUSE this has been brought up and BECAUSE it reminds me of a time when the whole USA was so annoyed by the Republicans - *especially* the right wing freaks - that it seemed they would be lucky to survive the 2000 election in one piece!! ... er, what happened, anyway?? ... and BECAUSE we may take strength of purpose from this wonderful essay from an earlier time, and take particularly to heart its ultimate *warning* ... I pass this along for your reading pleasure ----> Gore Vidal, "Birds & Bees & Clinton," *The Nation* (1998) [no URL available] How time flies! Seven fairly long years have now passed since I explained the Birds and the Bees to *Nation* readers, thus putting the finis to the cold war and, may I boast, more than one case of nervous *tic douloureux*, which ticked no more ["A Few Words About Sex: The Birds and the Bees," October 28, 1991]. But since that long-ago October day when I explained the mysteries of sex and scales fell from readers' eyes, new hordes have grown up in darkness, among them Kenneth Starr, as well as his numerous investigators and co-conspirators on the House Judiciary Committee, as well as in Pittsburgh's Mellon Patch and Marietta, Georgia, where the nation's Renaissance Man awaits rebirth as commander of the armies of a sinless America, troops whose powder is kept dry as, nervously, they closely shave hairy palms while their minds slowly rattle into madness from abuse of self and others. It was not until Mr. Starr published his dirty book at public expense that I realized how far off-track I have allowed these sad dummies to get. Simple truths about the birds and the bees have been so distorted by partisanship that blowjobs and hand jobs are now confused with The Real Thing, which can only be classic in-and-out as Anthony Burgess so snappily put it in *A Clockwork Orange*. I take full responsibility for not providing a booster shot of Sex Ed. So, as the old impeachment train leaves the station, let me demonstrate how the President did not commit perjury when he said he did not have sexual relations with ... surely not Abigail Thernstrom ... I seem to have mislaid my notes. Anyway, you know who I mean. First, let us quickly - or "briefly" as every question on CNN now begins - review the bidding from our last symposium. "Men and women are not alike." That was the first shocker I had for you in 1991. "They have different sexual roles to perform." At this point Andrea Dworkin, with a secret smile, began to load her bazooka. "Despite the best efforts of theologians and philosophers to disguise our condition, there is no point to us, or to any species, except proliferation and survival. This is hardly glamorous, and so to give Meaning to Life, we have invented some of the most bizarre religions that ... alas, we have nothing to compare ourselves to. We are biped mammals filled with red sea water (reminder of our oceanic origin), and we exist to reproduce until we are eventually done in by the planet's changing weather or a stray meteor." Thus, I wrapped up the Big Picture. Next: Lubricious Details. "The male's function is to shoot semen as often as possible into as many women (or attractive surrogates) as possible, while the female's function is to be shot briefly" by Wolf Blitzer ... no, no, by a male, any male, "in order to fertilize an egg, which she will lay nine months later." Seven years ago, apropos same-sex versus other-sex, or homosexuality versus heterosexuality, two really dumb American sports invented by the spiritual heirs of Gen. Abner Doubleday, who gave us baseball, I wrote, "In the prewar Southern town of Washington, DC, it was common for boys to have sex with one another. It was called 'messing around' and it was no big deal." I went into no more detail because I assumed most readers would get the point. Recently, the sexologist George Plimpton, a James Moran Institute professor emeritus, explained in *The New Yorker* how boys in his youth would go through mating stages with girls, using, significantly, baseball terminology like "getting to first base," which meant ... and so on. "Going all the way," however, was used instead of "home run" for full intercourse, the old in-and-out or mature penis-vagina intercourse. Arguably, Southerners are somewhat different from other residents of that shining city on a hill that has brought so much light and joy to all the world in the past two centuries. In balmy climes, human beings mature early. They also have a lot of chiggery outdoors to play baseball and other games in. When I was a boy, Fairfax County, Virginia, where I lived, was Li'l Abner country. No glamorous houses. No CIA lords hidden away in Georgian mansions on the Potomac Heights. There was just a Baptist church. A Methodist church. And a lot of Sunday. Also, a whole hierarchy of do's and don'ts when it came to boy-girl sex. What is now harshly called groping was the universal sentimental approach (put down that bazooka, Andrea). All players understood touching. Even without a thong. Endless kissing. First, second, third bases to be got to. Then a boy shootist was allowed, more soon than late, to shoot. Otherwise he might die, of dreaded blueballs. Girls tended to be understanding. Even so, all-the-way intercourse was not on offer unless he was "serious." Now add to these age-old rituals of mating cold war Pentagon-CIA terminology, the concept of "plausible deniability," and one starts to understand the truth of the President's denial under oath that he had sexual relations with Miss Monica. From the Testimony: "The President maintained that there can be no sexual relationship without sexual intercourse, regardless of what other sexual activities may transpire. He stated that 'most ordinary Americans' would embrace this distinction." Certainly most lads and lassies in Arkansas or the Fairfax County of sixty years ago would agree. It is true that in the age of Freud, now drawing to a close, it used to be argued by those who preached the good news in his name that everything was sexual. Two men shaking hands. The embrace between baseball players on the diamond. Two women friends weeping in each other's arms, and so on. One can argue that, yes, there is a sexual element to everything if one wants to go digging but even the most avid Freudian detective would have to admit that what might be construed as sexuality by other means falls literally short of plain old in-and-out, which is the name of the game that takes precedence even over General Doubleday's contribution to the boredom of nations. In reference to Miss Monica's first sworn denial of sexual relations with the President, which Clinton had originally confirmed, he later said, "I believe at the time she filled out this affidavit, if she believed that the definition of sexual relationship was two people having intercourse, then this is accurate." To support Clinton's reading of the matter, one has only to overhear Miss Monica and her false friend/fiend Linda Tripp bemoaning the fact that the President will not perform the absolute, complete, all-the-way act of becoming as one with her in mature heterosexual land forever glimmering somewhere over the rainbow. Without sexual intercourse there can be no sexual relationship. If this sounds like quibbling, it is. But that is the way we have been speaking in lawyerland for quite some time. The honor system at West Point regarded quibbling as worse than lying. So the officer corps became adept at quibbling, even in the ruins of the city of Ben Tre which "we destroyed in order to save it." A nation not of men but of laws, intoned John Adams as he, among other lawyers, launched what has easily become the most demented society ever consciously devised by intelligent men. We are now enslaved by laws. We are governed by lawyers. We create little but litigate much. Our monuments are the ever-expanding prisons, where millions languish for having committed victimless crimes or for simply not playing the game of plausible deniability (a k a lying) with a sufficiently good legal team. What began as a sort of Restoration comedy, The Impeachment of the President, on a frivolous, irrelevant matter, is suddenly turning very black indeed, and all our political arrangements are at risk as superstitious Christian fundamentalists and their corporate manipulators seem intent on overthrowing two presidential elections in a Senate trial. This is no longer comedy. This is usurpation. With that warning, I invite the Senate to contemplate Vice President Aaron Burr's farewell to the body over which he himself had so ably presided: "This house is a sanctuary, a citadel of law, of order, and of liberty; and it is here in this exalted refuge; here, if anywhere, will resistance be made to the storm of political frenzy and the silent arts of corruption; and if the Constitution be destined ever to perish by the sacrilegious hands of the demagogue or the usurper, which God avert, its expiring agonies will be witnessed on this floor." Do no harm to this state, Conscript Fathers. _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
