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Once a politician’s private life was a
private matter. Those days are gone for
ever, and all politicians from now on can
expect to be vilified for whatever their
private behavior, since nobody’s private
life can please everybody. By traditional
standards, it was unfair to bedevil Bill
Clinton about bimbos and Newt Gingrich
with the unseemly facts about the divorce
case in which he traded his cancer-ridden
wife for a younger woman. But thanks to
the politics of Newtism, unfairness is an
established and indispensable political
weapon. The only possible fairness lies in
treating Gingrich as unfairly as other poli
ticians are treated.
Consequently, just as Bill Clinton’s Sur
geon General, Joycelyn Elders, must be
sacrificed because she seemed to endorse
adding masturbation lessons to school
curricula, Newt Gingrich’s new House
Historian Cristina Jeffrey must be sacri
ficed because she seemed to endorse add
ing Nazi Party political indoctrination to
the same curricula. Needless to say, those
who have been gunning for Elders for two
years are no more really after her than
those who were prepared to expose
Jeffrey’s desire to be “fair” to Naziism
were really after her. The real targets are
Clinton and Gingrich, as anybody with an
ounce of political sense can see. But once
again, Republicans can’t use such tactics
against Clinton without expecting the
same thing in return.
For three years Republicans wasted no
opportunity to “define” Clinton, stirring
up unprecedented hatred against the presi
dent and the first lady. GOP-oriented talk
shows are full of it, as are GOP-inspired
products like bumper stickers calling for
the first couple’s impeachment—or death.
Halloween masks of Bill and Hillary with
bullet wounds in their heads were popular
sellers last year, and one suspects not
many who bought them were Democrats.
Religious Right prayer groups in Wash
ington have been praying in relays for
Clinton to be assassinated, and their
prayers seem already to have been par
tially answered. The danger they face is
thatwhatone party can do, the other party
can copy.
It’s hard to believe, but at the end of
December, 57 percent of the American
people had still not yet heard of Newt
Gingrich. Democrats, taking a leaf from
the Republicans’ book, determined that
Gay candidates
and gay issues were
more successful
in 1994
than Democrats
in general.
☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
when the voting public does make his
acquaintance, they’ll associate him with
snatching people’s children and putting
them into orphanages and trading in his
older wife on a newer model.
It’s working. Now that our embattled
president has a highly visible speaker
with whom he can be contrasted on a
day-by-day basis, Clinton’s popularity
has begun to edge upwards, while Newt’s
slips. Some charge Clinton’s character is
deficient, but one important measure of
character is, the ability to endure criti
cism and even abuse with equanimity.
In all the three years most of us have
known him, we have not heard from Bill
Clinton so much whining about how
badly people are treating him as we have
heard from Newt Gingrich during his
first month as Speaker.
Gingrich complains that the Democrats
are out to destroy him personally, just as
he destroyed Speaker Jim Wright with the
same tactics. And why shouldn’t they?
Hasn’t he shown that’s how the game is
played?
Scandal has become a permanent con
dition for politicians. Just as the Republi
cans will continue to “investigate” White-
water forever, Gingrich’s many ethics prob
lems—overdrafts in the defunct House
bank, the failed book royalty deal, GOPAC,
and that TV course Gingrich used to mas
termind last year’s Republican victories.
And, of course, that Nazi-loving House
historian that Gingrich fired as soon as the
word got out, denying he knew about the
matter before The New York Times.
Life in These Disunited States
Once it was said that “politics stops at
the water’s edge.” Today the very idea of
national unity, even before the greatest
perils, has the ring of theatre from by
gone age. Could it be just four years ago
that most Democrats supported Bush
during the Gulf War? They did so even
though we now know many Kuwaiti
atrocity stories were pure fiction, some
thing certain Democrats knew all along.
But those Democrats had the quaint
notion that any president deserved a
certain minimal degree of patriotic sup
port.
Once upon a time, politicians sought
high office to, fight for specific legisla
tion or ideas they hoped might ulti
mately result in legislation. They might
compromise with other legislators and
accept a bill not exactly to their taste,
but they worked to get a bill a majority
of Americans could support. Now mem
bers of Congress endorse and even co
sponsor, specific legislation and then
work to defeat it—as so many Republi
cans did with various health care pro
posals. When it became clear they could
actually sabotage the idea of health care
reform instead of just the Clinton plan,
they killed the very bills they had pre
tended to support.
Once upon a time, voters at least tried
to comprehend positions taken by can
didates. Today, surveys indicate that
even that minority of people that both
ers to vote is largely indifferent about
such trivial details, preferring instead to
vote with their spleens rather than with
their brains.
And why shouldn’t they? In this age of
negative campaigning, candidates do not
really “win” elections; they merely sur
vive longer than their opponents. Un
fortunately, those who survive dirty cam
paigns are not necessarily the fittest
when it comes to governing.
Even if they have the ability and vision
Exploring Lesbian/Gay Concerns for Over a Decade
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