But Mrs. Clinton can’t be stupid. Can she? She has a big long résumé. She’s been to college, several times. Very important intellectuals like Garry Wills consider her to be a very important intellectual, like Garry Wills. Surely the imbecility of It Takes a Village was a calculated, cynical attempt to soften the First Lady’s image with ordinary Americans. Mrs. Clinton chose a thesis that can hardly be refuted: Kids—Aren’t They Great? Then she patronized her audience, talked down to them, lowered the level of discourse to a point where it could be understood by the average—let’s be frank—Democrat. This was an interesting public relations gambit, repositioning the dragon lady to show how much she cares about all the little dragon eggs. But if the purpose of It Takes a Village was to get in good with the masses, then explain this sentence on chapter 9, “I had never before known people who lived in trailers.”
Is the First Lady a dunce? Let us marshal the evidence:
STUPIDITY
ARGUMENTS CONTRA
ARGUMENTS PRO
President of her class at
It was the sixties, a decade
Wellesley
without quality control
Involved in Watergate
So was Martha Mitchell
investigation
Examine phrase “most
Partner in most prestigious
prestigious law firm in
law firm in Arkansas
Arkansas”
Went to Yale
Went to Yale
Married Bill
Married Bill
Won the New York Senate race
Won the New York Senate race
aThere are times in It Takes a Village when Mrs. Clinton seems to play at being a horse’s ass, when she makes statements such as “Some of the best theologians I have ever met were five-year-olds.” Mommy, did they put Jesus on the cross before or after he came down the chimney and brought all the children toys?
But some kinds of stupidity cannot be faked. Says Mrs. Clinton, “less developed nations will be our best models for…home doctoring.” And she tells us that in Bangladesh she met a Louisiana doctor “who was there to learn about low-cost techniques he could use back home to treat some of his state’s more than 240,000 uninsured children.” A poultice of buffalo dung is helpful in many cases.
Mrs. Clinton seems to possess the highly developed, finely attuned stupidity usually found in the upper reaches of academia. Hear her on the subject of nurseries and preschools: “From what experts tell us, there is a link between the cost and the quality of care.” And then there is Mrs. Clinton’s introduction to the chapter titled “Children Don’t Come with Instructions”:
There I was, lying in my hospital bed, trying desperately to figure out how to breast-feed…. As I looked on in horror, Chelsea started to foam at the nose. I thought she was strangling or having convulsions. Frantically, I pushed every buzzer there was to push.
A nurse appeared promptly. She assessed the situation calmly, then, suppressing a smile, said, “It would help if you held her head up a bit, like this.” Chelsea was taking in my milk, but because of the awkward way I held her, she was breathing it out of her nose!
The woman was holding her baby upside down.
But let’s not confuse stupid with feeble or pointless. Stupidity is an excellent medium for vigorous conveyance of certain political ideas. Mrs. Clinton is, for instance, doggedly antilibertarian. She says the “extreme case against government, often including intense personal attacks on government officials and political leaders [emphasis added by an extremist, me], is designed not just to restrain government but to advance narrow religious, political, and economic agendas.” That crabbed, restrictive screed the Bill of Rights comes to mind.
There is no form of social spending that Mrs. Clinton won’t buy into—with my money. “I can’t understand the political opposition to programs like ‘midnight’ basketball,” she says. And no doubt the Swiss and Japanese, who owe their low crime rates to keeping their kids awake until all hours shooting hoops, agree.
And Mrs. Clinton is oblivious to the idea that the government programs she advocates may have caused the problems the government programs she advocates are supposed to solve. “Whatever the reasons for the apparent increase in physical and sexual abuse of children, it demands our intervention,” she says. But what if the reason is our intervention?
Only the lamest arguments are summoned to support Mrs. Clinton’s call for expansion of state power. She uses a few statistics of the kind that come in smuggy faxes from minor Naderite organizations, like “135,000 children bring guns to school each day.” She recollects past do-goodery:
In Arkansas we enlisted the services of local merchants to create a book of coupons that could be distributed to pregnant women….After every month’s pre-or postnatal exam, the attending health care provider validates a coupon, which can be redeemed for free or reduced-price goods such as milk or diapers.
In 1980, Arkansas had an infant mortality rate of 12.7 per 1,000 live births, almost identical to the national average of 12.6. As of 1992 the Arkansas rate was 10.3 versus a national average of 8.5.
Mrs. Clinton talks long and often about “the harsh consequences of a more open economy.” So unlike the lovely time people are having in North Korea. Mrs. Clinton thinks that “one of the conditions of the consumer culture is that it relies upon human insecurities to create aspirations that can be satisfied only by the purchase of some product or service.” A private-school education for our kids, maybe. And she quotes approvingly from the book The Lost City by Alan Ehrenhalt, a doofus: “The unfettered free market has been the most radically disruptive force in American life in the last generation.”
Yet, at bottom, Mrs. Clinton cannot really be called a leftist. Mrs. Clinton doesn’t dislike business, as long as business is done her way. She gives examples of corporate activities that statists can cozy up to. For instance, “A number of our most powerful telecommunications and computer companies have joined forces with the government in a project to connect every classroom in America to the Internet.”
If you want to put a name to these stupid politics, you can consult the Columbia Encyclopedia, the article that begins “totalitarian philosophy of government that glorifies state and nation and assigns to the state control over every aspect of national life.” Admittedly, the totalitarianism in It Takes a Village is of a namby-pamby, eat-your-vegetables kind that doesn’t so much glorify the state and nation as pester the dickens out of them. Ethnic minorities do not suffer persecution except insofar as a positive self-image is required among women, blacks, and Hispanics at all times. And there are no brownshirt uniforms other than comfortable, durable clothes on girls—in earth tones—and no concentration camps, just lots and lots of day care. Nonetheless, the similitude to a certain ideology exists. The encyclopedia article points out that this ideology “is obliged to be antitheoretical and frankly opportunistic in order to appeal to many diverse groups.” “Elitism” is noted as is “rejection of reason and intelligence and emphasis on vision.” Featured prominently is “an authoritarian leader who embodies in his [or her!] person the highest ideals of the nation.” The only element missing from It Takes a Village is “social Darwinism.” It’s been replaced by “Social Creationism,” expressed in such Mrs. Clinton statements as “I have never met a stupid child.”
It Takes a Village is what I call a good read, said the Political Nut who lives around here. Neville Chamberlain made a famous mistake by not bringing a copy of Mein Kampf with him on the plane ride to Munich.
The Political Nut flipped through It Takes a Village. Hillary says, he quoted, “Children have many lessons to share with us.” And on chapter 7, there’s a swell lesson some children taught Hillary:
When my family moved to Park Ridge, I was four years old and eager to make new friends. Every time I walked out the door, with a bow in my hair and a hopeful look on my face, the neighborhood kids would torment me, pushing me, knocking me do
wn, and teasing me until I burst into tears and ran back in the house.
Or the Senate, said the Political Nut.
The Political Nut was back a few days later, carrying a stack of bumper stickers, PRO-CHOICE—ON LAND MINES, that he’d ordered from a classified ad in the back of Waco Digest. I know, said the Political Nut, how to fix this presidential election stalemate. My wife escaped upstairs, as she often does when the Political Nut is around. There are, he continued, a number of Americans who shouldn’t be voting. The number is 48 percent, to judge by the total Al Gore popular vote. Or maybe the number is 65 percent, that being the ABC News poll tally of Americans who supported the forced removal of Elián González from Miami. We need a method to prevent these people from ever going to the polls again. Such an idea is not, I assert, antidemocratic. At this moment our democracy is filled with enthusiasm for minority culture, minority rights, and minority political expression—anti-Castro Cubans always excepted. So who will gainsay a pronouncement that the majority sucks? Speaking of which, there was once talk among conservatives and Republicans—back when the terms weren’t mutually exclusive—about building a “New Majority.” I was skeptical.
Lord Acton said, “At all times sincere friends of freedom have been rare, and its triumphs have been due to minorities that have prevailed by associating themselves with auxiliaries whose objects often differed from their own; and this association, which is always dangerous, has sometimes been disastrous, such as, for instance, when the GOP gave free Confederate flags to all $50-plus George W. Bush donors.” Although I believe Lord A. implied rather than actually stated that last part. Also, I’m from East Yoohoo, Ohio, went to a state college, and rarely make it past the level of “Who’s buried in Grant’s Tomb?” when Regis Philbin is on the air. Therefore, I am closer to the national median than most of my right-wing pals and realize, better than they, that—do what we will with school vouchers, merit pay, core curricula, and killing the leaders of the teachers’ unions—half of America’s population will be below median intelligence. The trick answer, by the way, is Ulysses S. Grant and his wife, Julia.
But how to go about limiting suffrage? Literacy tests are in bad odor due to misuse by the white-trash illiterates of the South—all of them Democrats, let it be noted. Numeracy tests would be more to the point anyway, since, according to a May 14, 2000, New York Times clipping I have here, one quarter of America thinks that buying lottery tickets is a better retirement plan than saving or investing. But the trouble with math is that people like Hillary Clinton always got the good grades in it.
Poll taxes in federal elections are banned by the Twenty-fourth Amendment. Repealing a constitutional amendment is time-consuming. It took fourteen years to repeal the prohibition amendment, and repeal might not have happened even then except the country got a good look at Eleanor Roosevelt and then everybody needed a drink. Anyway, if we’re going to repeal amendments, the Nineteenth, giving the vote to women, would be a better choice. The girls went 60 percent for Hillary Clinton and 54 percent for Al Gore.
There was an ominous thumping on the ceiling.
However, the Nineteenth Amendment is sacred and inviolable and stay-at-home mothers voted heavily for George W. Bush, said the Political Nut, loudly enough to be heard in the bedroom above.
Besides, we sincere friends of freedom, he continued, should be ashamed of ourselves, proposing to improve the land of freedom by restricting ditto. If a better electorate is wanted, we lovers of laissez-faire should do the right thing and buy one. American votes have always been sold on a wholesale basis, from the Homestead Act of 1865 to present proposals to give free AndroGel testosterone rubs to horny Medicare geezers. Let us open the business to the retail trade.
Votes, vote options, vote futures, vote derivatives, and shares in vote mutual funds will be purchased through NASDAQ, auctioned on eBay, or bought off the shelf at Sam’s Club. You may sell your vote on the street corner or—during a recount in Florida—at Sotheby’s. We’ll each get one vote per political contest in our district, same as ever. But now we will be truly free to use that vote as we see fit and won’t be forced to waste it with a Charlton Heston write-in for Ann Arbor city council.
The advantage to the poor is obvious. Come the second Tuesday in November, instead of Maxine Waters, they get food—or something, and anything would be easier to stomach than Maxine. The rich benefit as well. You RNC maximum contributors will receive real and actual power and not just an autographed photo of Tom Delay shaking your hand while his eyes work the room.
When the vote is deregulated and electoral majorities can be bought and sold without bureaucratic interference, the result will be governance on the corporate shareholder model. Will this be an improvement? Let us compare Congress to the Justice Department’s case against Microsoft. No one is trying to break up the House of Representatives because it’s been too successful.
Of course, there are potential drawbacks to an open market at the polls. Rich liberals might spend all their money gaining control of America. But look around. They control it already. What’s the dif? And if rich liberals spend all their money, they won’t be rich enough to be liberals anymore.
Vote vending would be good for the economy. Here is an enormous new business enterprise with a customer base of almost 200 million people and practically zero start-up costs. More than 130 million potential customers are already “registered”—signed up for their slice of the American dream. Referendum buying would also force American politicians to learn at least something about economics—knowledge they have resisted acquiring for 224 years. Furthermore, plebiscite marketing gives the nation’s campaign fund-raisers an incentive to enter rehabilitation programs, get well, and find honest jobs.
Most importantly, having a wide variety of useful and attractive ballots readily available at our local mall is the best way for us ordinary middle-American voters to enter the political arena and put our two cents in—two cents being about what our votes were worth this fall, everywhere except Florida.
4
DECEMBER 2000
How was your trip?” my wife asked. [I was returning from Las Vegas, where I had given an address to the National Association of People Without Enough to Do (NAPWETD).]
“I like it when Daddy goes away,” said Muffin, clutching the martini-shaker plush toy I bought her at the airport gift shop.
Something is going on in Las Vegas that I don’t understand, I said.
“Something besides blackjack and whether to draw on sixteen when the dealer is showing a face card?” asked my wife, who is of a mathematical turn of mind.
Las Vegas is one of the most peculiar cities in the world, I said, but apparently that’s not enough. Las Vegas has decided to become all the world’s other peculiar cities, too.
The gambling capital already has Paris Las Vegas and New York New York. In the Nevada version of the City of Lights, waiters never mock you for ordering in the local lingo. If something smells like a smoldering Doberman, you can safely call the fire department; it’s not an existentialist smoking a Gauloise. And at New York New York you experience a wonderful, heartwarming phenomenon that the native Gothamite will never know: parking.
So far so good with the urban impersonators on the Strip, I said. Although one might prefer that the cities chosen were cities that really needed replacing, not to mention roulette and girlie shows. I suggest Dayton Ohio Las Vegas and Tehran Tehran.
But now there’s something much more ambitious in the middle of the desert—Venice. A fellow named Sheldon Adelson has built The Venetian resort and casino. And according to its brochure, when Adelson announced his plans for The Venetian, he said, “We’re not going to build a ‘faux’ Venice. We’re going to build what is essentially the real Venice.” This has given me a great idea for a magazine article: “Venice vs. The Venetian.”
Anyone who can make a bagel and a lot of noise can create a convincing New York. And Paris as we know it today is mostly a recent fabrication. It’s the p
roduct of urban renewal in the 1870s when the French government undertook an innovative program of slum clearance by killing all the members of the Paris Commune. But Venice is another matter—heir to Byzantium, progenitor of Marco Polo, patron of Titian, and inspiration to Lord Byron, who
Look’d to the wingèd Lion’s marble piles,
Where Venice sate in state, throned on her hundred isles!
And they should get that wingèd lion treated, because marble piles sound very painful.
Anyway, there is a mystery to Venice, a soul, an essence—quite a strong essence on a hot August day when the tide is low in the Adriatic. Phew!
I actually met Sheldon Adelson when I visited The Venetian. I told him, “You didn’t get the smell right.”
“Can’t do everything,” he said. Although he certainly has tried. Pulling into the Ducal Palace’s driveway, you can see St. Mark’s Square, the clock tower with its clockwork Moors, the twin columns topped by St. Theodore and the winged lion of St. Mark that needs Preparation H, the Campanile, the Sansoviniana Library, the Ca’ d’Oro palace, the Bridge of Sighs, and the Rialto. This is a lot more than you can see from the original Ducal Palace’s driveway, especially since it doesn’t have one.
Considering the desiccated landscape around Las Vegas, a city with an average rainfall of 4.2 inches a year, I would have thought Sheldon Adelson faced a major obstacle to building “the real Venice.” After all, what was the main physical feature causing Venice to be Venice? Barbarians, as it turns out. Venice is built on a mudbank in the middle of a lagoon and is up to its Venetian blinds in water because of barbarians. Attila the Hun chased the Italians out there in A.D. 453. So Sheldon Adelson was in luck. Las Vegas is filled with barbarians, particularly the kind who wear black socks and sandals and T-shirts and shorts to restaurants at night and leave their baseball caps on during dinner.
The CEO of the Sofa (O'Rourke, P. J.) Page 8
