Don’t bother buying
If you’re interested in the truth about the
A
prominent member of his own party, former United States Senator Bob Kerrey, once
remarked that Slick Willie is “an unusually good
liar.”
R.
Emmett Tyrell, Jr. elaborated on this thesis in his 1996 book, “Boy Clinton: The
Political Biography.”
“
Since Americans have short memories (to match their attention spans), and
1) To secure a draft exemption, he lied to the
commander of the ROTC unit at the
2) During the 1992 presidential campaign, he lied
to voters about his affair with Gennifer Flowers, as her recordings of their
telephone conversations demonstrate.
3) He lied about growing up with blacks in the
rural South during the era of segregation.
(He probably would have claimed he was born “a poor, black child,” had
not comedian Steve Martin beaten him to the punch.)
4) He lied about trying pot only once, but not
inhaling. Flowers and his brother, Roger, both declared that he used marijuana
and cocaine regularly.
5) He lied for the better part of 8 years about
his Whitewater dealings and his knowledge of his partners’
fraud.
6) He lied when he claimed he did not sexually
harass Paula Jones – as the $700,000 she received to settle the case
suggests.
7) He lied about his sexual relationship with
Monica Lewinsky. He lied to his family, his cabinet, his aides and the American
people. He lied under oath. He perjured himself, in violation not only of the
laws of the land but also of his oath of office. Here, his lying caused a
constitutional crisis that distracted the nation at a crucial time when it
should have been concentrating on the growing threat of international
terrorism.
During eight years in office, he made Dick Nixon at his worst look like
Abraham Lincoln at his best. I wouldn’t trust the Great Pretender if he told me
that hot-fudge sundaes are fattening, Charlize Theron is attractive and Osama
bin Laden is a very bad man indeed.
The
promotion campaign for “My Life” should be called “The
The
Times’ review reminds me of David Brinkley’s comment during Election Night ’96.
After complaining that
Beyond even the pleas for sympathy based on his trailer-park childhood,
and the back-patting over his many imagined accomplishments, the book is
blatantly dishonest where candor is called for
most.
He
was “immoral and foolish” in his affair with Monica,
There’s no hint of remorse over the sexual harassment of Paula Jones and
Kathleen Willey, the alleged rape of Juanita Broaddrick or the legion of bimbos
his state-trooper bodyguards say he slept with as governor of
After the usual perfunctory apology for Monica,
The
forces involved in this illegitimate crusade to drive him from office – Starr,
the Republican Congress, Rush Limbaugh and conservative activists – weren’t just
wrongheaded or opportunistic political opponents, they were evil incarnate,
Clinton implies in his book.
The
impeachment fight was, the liberal Pinocchio writes, “my last great showdown
with the forces I had opposed all of my life,” including those who supported
segregation in the South and opposed equal rights for women, as well as
politicians who believed that government should benefit shadowy and sinister
special interests.
Here is megalomania peppered with paranoia. I’m only surprised that the
blubbery Walter Mitty didn’t fantasize that, in struggling to stay in office, he
was also fighting resurgent Nazism and attempting to find a cure for cancer.
Yes, most Clinton-haters (a fraternity in which I am proud to claim
membership) hated everything about the man – his politics, his policies, his
smarmy rhetoric, his lies, his smirks, even his Deputy Dog
accent.
That
doesn’t alter the reality that the 42nd president of the
Lying under oath is a felony. When the president of the
In
way, it was all so exquisitely fitting: A man whose life was built on lies,
whose political creed was based on lies, was finally undone by a lie – a lie he
told in a sworn affidavit, a lie that was obvious (once investigators had the
dress with the presidential stain), a lie that couldn’t be rationalized or
explained away.
That
Besides the standard sobbing about being victimized by an attempted
“right-wing coup” (successor to the “vast right-wing conspiracy”), the rest of
the book is equally predictable.
The architect of the Nude World Order is only slightly less gratified
with his first great foreign-policy coup – “returning democracy to
The ex-president also tries to demonstrate that he really did care about
defense– that it wasn’t just an afterthought between bouts of oral sex
(although, according to the Starr Report, the then head of state once was
serviced by Monica while he was on the phone discussing troop deployments to
Bosnia). The Clinton White House was “Animal House” and “9 ½ Weeks” meets “Liar,
Liar.”
I was deeply, passionately concerned about terrorism, Clinton now maintains, notwithstanding his refusal to accept custody of bin Laden (the Sudanese wanted to give him to us in 1996, in exchange for better relations), or his missile strikes on aspirin factories in retaliation for embassy bombings –- all of which persuaded Islamic terrorists that we were the Great Paper-mache Satan.
The 957-page tome (
