Clinton & Me

by Michael Graham

  But I don’t see a connection between the Age and the end. Indeed, I’ve known people who have hit the Age as old as sixty and as young as sixteen. It’s not death we fear—it’s inconsequence. The bad year is the year when you believe you should have arrived but didn’t.

  See, I have a notion in the cramped closets of my psyche that by the age of thirty-three, a young man (or woman) should have done something significant: climbed a mountain, made a million, died on a cross for the sins of the world.

  Nothing major, just something to solidify one’s career track.

  For me, it’s thirty-three. But I’ve heard college students sit at a bar and berate themselves: “I’m twenty-one, and what have I done with my life?” Telling them the answer (they drank beer, partied and learned all the lyrics to the Brady Bunch theme song) doesn’t seem to help. Get out the Geritol; it’s already too late.

  As the dreaded day drifts closer, so do my own questions. What have I accomplished? Have I finally grown up? How did I turn out this way, and whom can I sue?

  In fact, I’ve actually done one of the things I swore I would do before thirty-three: I wrote a book. Interestingly, it didn’t happen until late last year, just under the wire. I’ve wondered if the pressure of my self-programmed deadline helped me to finally cut through the psychobabble and get it done. If so, then perhaps this Day of Doom isn’t such a bad thing.

  But I still dread it. This is the first time since I got rid of my fake ID from high school that I’ve been an age that I didn’t want other people to know. I’m old enough now for my age to begin morphing in my mind from a specific numeral to a euphemistic range—the early thirties, or thirty-something. It is the beginning of self-deception. It is the beginning of the end.

  My best friend in high school once told me that the saddest day of his life was graduation. We went to a small rural school where he was a big fish in the small redneck pond. The supply of non-chew-consuming males was unusually small, which artificially inflated his market price among his female peers. All through high school, my friend was popular, admired and as close to the top of the social food chain as he was likely to get. And he knew it.

  And, he now admits, his life has never crested as high since. He’s not miserable; in fact, he’s got a nice life—good job, an attractive wife, some kids. He’s doing fine, really.

  Just don’t play Springsteen’s “Glory Days” around him unless you’ve got a box of Kleenex and a six-pack.

  As for my own encounter with the Age, well, I can’t imagine sitting around next week going, “Oh, if only I were thirty-two again.” I assume I’ll swim through this silly, emotional eddy and get on with life. Okay, so I haven’t composed an opera or been found in flagrante delicto with the Swedish bikini team. Chances are my birthday will never be a recognized state holiday. But hey—I can handle it. I’m a big boy.

  Now, where did I put that Springsteen tape?

  Justice Under the Dashboard Lights

  * * *

  March 1996

  From the news wires: A sharply divided Supreme Court ruled Monday against a woman who protested when local authorities seized a car owned by her and her husband after he had sex in it with a prostitute.

  Tina Bennis argued that confiscation of the 1977 Pontiac under a Michigan nuisance abatement law violated her constitutional right to due process and represented an unconstitutional taking of her property. But the high court, in a 5–4 opinion by Chief Justice William Rehnquist, upheld the forfeiture as constitutional.

  * * *

  It must have been the phone call from hell.

  “Tina? Tina, honey, it’s me. . . . Yeah, I’m down at the police station—no, no, I’m okay, uh, well . . . I’m kind of under arrest. . . . What for? Um, well, for soliciting a hooker . . . Honey! Honey, calm down.

  “It’s all just a misunderstanding, I swear. I pulled over to give a young lady some directions and she got in our car to look at a map and, um, her contact lens popped out and landed on my zipper and, well, naturally she didn’t want it to get all dried out, so she picked it up with her tongue. . . .

  “Honey, please stop screaming. We can talk about this later. Just come pick me up. Whaddaya mean, I have the car? Oh, yeah. Our car. Honey, you’re not going to believe this. . . .”

  Tina Bennis has the dubious distinction of going down in history (unlike her husband’s new friend, who did so in a Pontiac) with her name on a Supreme Court case that I believe will long be referenced in American law schools. Like Roe, Plessy and Dred Scott, Bennis’ name will be forever linked to a really stupid Supreme Court decision.

  Now, stupid conclusions by the U.S. Supreme Court are nothing new. These are the same bozos who declared the death penalty unconstitutional despite the fact that capital punishment is specifically mentioned in the Constitution itself.

  The Supreme Court is in the habit of making up the law as it goes along, and most of its off-the-cuff lawmaking you should, as a good American, feel free to ignore. But this time you need to pay attention.

  You should pay particular attention if you are a casual drug user, occasional overdrinker or a client of your neighborhood “sex professionals” (as they are known in federally funded research studies). More and more law enforcement agencies want to take away your stuff if you are caught being naughty in any of the aforementioned manners, and the Supreme Court of the United States says it’s fine with them.

  Indeed, you don’t even have to be a crook. You just have to let someone naughty use your car or crash on your couch, and you, too, could soon see your home auctioned off to the local sheriff.

  That’s what happened to Bennis. She and her husband bought a car together for $600. He later used that car without her knowledge to cruise for “pretty women”—the cash-in-advance kind. She didn’t participate in the crime, but she lost her only means of transportation because she recklessly allowed her husband to drive under the influence of testosterone.

  Knowing she would likely never get her car back, all Bennis asked for was her share of the confiscated value: $300. Sounds reasonable. After all, what did she do wrong, other than marry a loser?

  Sorry, Tina, says the Supreme Court. Tough luck. Hasta la vista, baby. Tina’s psychic powers should have revealed that her husband had something burning a hole in his pocket besides that twenty bucks, and she should have stopped him. Because she didn’t, Tina Bennis is taking the bus.

  What does this mean for you, dear reader? Let’s say an old high school buddy comes through town and spends the night at your house. He’s upstairs smokin’ a doobie, and the cops kick in the door. Find a warm grate, pal; you’re on the street.

  I’m deadly serious. The Supreme Court has ruled that the state can confiscate your property anytime—without due process—if your stuff is used in a crime. If drugs are involved, they don’t even have to prove an actual crime! They can seize property suspected of being used in a drug crime, then force you to come to court and prove that it wasn’t.

  I have no personal experience with illicit drugs whatsoever (I snorted some Midol once; not much of a buzz, but once a month I have a flashback) and have no sympathy for the hemp crowd. But if I have to choose between a society overrun by horny, stoned street cruisers or nine jack-booted justices ready to seize my property if I eat a poppy seed bagel, I’ll take the passionate potheads. They are less of a risk to my liberty.

  And if I’m ever driving through Detroit, Tina Bennis can always get a lift from me. She tried to do us all a favor by taking this case to the Supreme Court to protect us from dumb cops and dumber laws. Unfortunately, as Lenny Bruce observed, “in the Halls of Justice, the only justice is in the halls.”

  Believe It or Not

  * * *

  April 1996

  I don’t care to belong to a club that accepts people like me as members.

  —Groucho Marx

  As a hot-blooded evangelical teenager in the South, I grew up hating Catholics.

  Interestingly, now that I am an inf
idel condemned to eternal damnation, I find that I hold the Catholic Church in high regard. Being the preferred faith of a practicing social Darwinist may not spin the Pope’s beanie, but it is true nevertheless.

  Of the many elements of Catholicism I admire (a clergy that can drink me under the table being but one), I am particularly enamored with its advocacy of discrimination.

  I realize that in the Age of Clinton, the only remaining evil is the sin of calling one’s neighbor a sinner. I further acknowledge that the Catholic Church is hardly alone among organized religions in condemning heretics such as myself to an eternity in Satan’s crockpot.

  But it is only Catholicism that is under siege by sinners demanding to be let in.

  Hardly a week goes by without some homosexual group flinging condoms at the neighborhood cathedral because the Church won’t let Larry, Darryl and Darryl get married. Then there is the annual media hoohaw when some loose-cannon former bishop ordains a married priest, or a female priest, or even priests married to fellow priests—all of whom insist that they are, in fact, good Catholics.

  The most recent action is in Italy, where the Vatican is actively opposing gay rights legislation in upcoming elections.

  “It’s anti-gay racism pure and simple,” said Franco Grillini, an Italian homosexual activist and my nominee for this year’s Dan Quayle Word Master Award. What’s next—anti-vegetarian sexism?

  The papists, much to their credit, are unmoved. Despite public pressure, they maintain that homosexuality is a sin. Amid whining from Shannon Faulkner wanna-bes, they forbid female priests and continue their single-gender policies. In short, with the raging winds of egalitarianism and political correctness buffeting it from all sides, the Catholic Church calmly states that it is right and we are wrong. Period.

  Now, that’s what I call a religion.

  Are they right? Who knows. The point is that they truly believe what they preach and, to their credit, act like it. Who wants some weaselly religion where the rules are made up from week to week based on public opinion polls, where people sit around deciding what’s right and wrong based on what feels good?

  That’s not a church. That’s the Democratic National Committee.

  The entire theory of metaphysics is that there is knowledge beyond our physical senses. If you truly believe this, then no amount of science or reasoning can (or should) sway you in the least. True believers look down upon the protesting heathens and laugh.

  Laughing aside, that’s what’s happening right now in Nebraska. A Roman Catholic bishop there is giving his members until May 15 to drop their memberships in groups such as Planned Parenthood, which openly promotes abortion, and the Hemlock Society, a proponent of euthanasia.

  Folks, we’re not talking about sneaking a sloppy joe on Good Friday—these are pretty big issues. Action by the Church seems hardly a surprise.

  But it is, especially to Randy Moody, a Catholic who serves on the board of Planned Parenthood of Lincoln, Nebraska. “I challenge them to excommunicate me,” he said. “This may end up in some court if they would proceed to do that.”

  Yeah! What right does the church have to tell you how to live your life? Who does the Pope think he is, anyway?

  To which court Moody might petition remains unknown. Indeed, the question illuminates the core issue that Catholic protesters seem unable to grasp. There is no court. It’s God. It’s the Bible. That’s the deal. There is no ambiguity in the Holy Scriptures on cheatin,’ stealin’ or two-man interior decoratin.’ If you don’t like the Catholic deal, then try another one, Hindu or Mormon or Amway.

  Trust me, no matter how bizarre your thinking or irrational your beliefs, there is someone out there with an offering plate and a cable TV show who will welcome you with open arms.

  The whole notion of protesting, suing and assaulting your own religion is inherently nonsensical. If you don’t agree with massive chunks of Catholic doctrine, why would you want to be Catholic? If you are pro-abortion and pro-suicide, if you want women clergy and think homosexuality is just fine with the Big Man (Person) upstairs, if you don’t think the Bible is true and don’t like the Pope’s new album, then why not just leave? Just turn Methodist or join the National Organization for Women and get on with your life!

  One day the lawyers will figure out some way to force the Catholic Church to abide by the same admissions standards currently used at public universities. When that day comes, the pews will be awash in barely literate (but nonjudgmental) parishioners all hoping St. Peter grades on the curve. But until then, this southern boy is cheering for the Whore of Babylon all the way.

  Teacher’s Pet

  * * *

  January 1996

  Robert “Bubba” Walenski has long been one of the most popular teachers at Dennis-Yarmouth (Massachusetts) Regional High School.

  Bubba is “a freewheeling teacher who let students call him by his first name and taught poetry with rock music,” according to the Associated Press. Locals describe him as “a typical sixties prodigy” and “a nice guy that all the kids liked.” Indeed, students literally line up for his Musical Poetry class to study lyrics by rock stars such as Jim Morrison.

  Oh, yeah, I almost forgot: Bubba Walenski makes dirty movies, too.

  About a hundred of them in his career as a pornographer, according to the Boston Globe. Then again, what do you expect from the one guy in the state of Massachusetts whose nickname is “Bubba”?

  I used the word career, but porn was merely an avocation. Bubba’s true life’s work is the twenty years he’s spent as a high school English teacher.

  The skin flicks, well, they’re just to pump up his income. Teachers often work second jobs in the summer, and as an instructor of literature, it makes perfect sense for Bubba to be drawn to the arts. That his films appear on video store shelves next to Nancy and Her Naughty Nurses or On Golden Blonde is merely a sign of our society’s puritan and parochial attitude toward the avant-garde.

  If you could only see things from Bubba’s angle—that angle being (in one video, at least) from the vantage point of a woman’s buttocks as Walenski sucked her toes and commented wryly, “Boys will be boys!” Bubba would know. He hangs out with them at a public school every day.

  As you might expect, Bubba—the literary pioneer that he is—has suffered for his art. When a local reporter sniffed out his cinematic sideline, Bubba was promptly suspended from his teaching job by the school superintendent.

  This punitive action sparked an equal and opposite reaction from the usual suspects. The teachers’ union (which would demand Charles Manson’s release if he had tenure) called Walenski “a very well-respected member of our profession.” A former student told the local papers, “I don’t think they should fire him. . . . I don’t think he was a pervert.”

  What the minimum pervert requirements might be in Massachusetts, I can’t say, but producing a hundred porno videos in your spare time is going to raise a few eyebrows, even in Barney Frank country. The school administration thinks teachers ought to set some kind of example and claims that educators should uphold some vague set of standards. Even a few parents were less than enthusiastic about their daughters spending an hour a day in close quarters with “butt-rubbin’ Bubba.”

  However muddled the community reaction, the students of Dennis-Yarmouth High spoke clearly, loudly and with one voice: “Bring back Bubba!” Signs to this effect hung from trees and school buildings as students protested his dismissal. Young people packed a news conference to show their support and bemoan the small-minded notion that Bubba displayed “conduct unbecoming a teacher.”

  “We love Bubba!” the students shouted. One high school girl told reporters: “It’s all crazy. It’s really hard for kids to find teachers they like.”

  She has a point. I’ve never met Bubba Walenski, but I bet he is the most popular educator in the entire state of Massachusetts. And why wouldn’t he be? A hippie high school teacher who goes by “Bubba,” plays rock music in class and makes por
no movies? This guy is a sophomore’s dream come true!

  It’s always been this way. There are those teachers who “make learning fun,” who leave their Shakespeare texts unread and rent the Kenneth Branagh video instead. They eschew lectures, turning their classes into rap sessions à la Oprah Winfrey or, if possible, Jerry Springer. These are the teachers students love.

  Then there are those instructors who insist that their students actually learn. These are the teachers who leave the television off, who refuse to spend any class time at all on the lyric development of Snoop Doggy Dogg.

  They regularly find rotten eggs in their desk drawers.

  Firing Bubba from his teaching job because of how he spends his weekends may be unconstitutional, but he should be fired nonetheless. There is no doubt that he is guilty of conduct unbecoming a teacher.

  In a nation where high-schoolers think logarithms are used in reggae music and believe the Vietnam War was ended by protestors led by Tom Cruise, any teacher who wastes class time on the nuances of “Light My Fire” should be summarily dismissed. Any teacher who is popular with his students should be thoroughly investigated.

  If they are male, over forty and have a ponytail, they should be shot on sight.

  No one in America wants to admit this, but learning is hard. It is boring. It is tedious. Being competent is the reward, and learning is the investment. Teachers who make teaching fun are as useful as preachers who make hell happy or surgeons who make stitches loose.

  Feminist sociologists claim that pornography is inherently damaging to society. But if Bubba Walenski must be loved by someone, I would prefer it be by paid professionals on camera, not public-school kids in the classroom. He’ll do less damage to society that way.