Clinton & Me

by Michael Graham

  What? He lied on TV Monday night? ’Fraid so.

  About what? It’s kind of complicated. When the president was accused of sexual harassment by Paula Jones, he was ordered by the Supreme Court to testify under oath. In this testimony, he was asked if he had had sex with Monica Lewinsky. The court was using a definition of “sexual relations” that was explicit—the stimulation of the genitalia, buttocks, inner thigh, et cetera. Using that definition, the president said no. He claimed he had never had sexual relations with Monica. On TV Monday night, he said that while this testimony was “legally accurate, I did not volunteer information.”

  How could his sworn statement be accurate when he has supposedly acknowledged that she was “hailing the little chief”? Only if you believe his argument that while she may have been having sex with him, he wasn’t having sex with her. You know, “eatin’ ain’t cheatin.’” Unless you agree with this statement, then the president is still lying.

  So what does that mean? What it means is that the Farrelly brothers’ presidency is still in trouble. Ken Starr is almost certain to recommend impeachment, there will be hearings, Monica will have to testify before Congress exactly how she got the Executive Emollient on her dress, and so on. In other words, the speech didn’t do any good at all.

  Wasn’t there any good news? Sure—ABC went right back to Monday Night Football. At least somebody is keeping a sense of perspective.

  Vice and Its Victims

  * * *

  July 1998

  The Republicans aren’t serious about [teen smoking]. They don’t propose real children’s smoking reduction targets backed by strong penalties. And there are no significant restrictions on the ability of tobacco companies to market their deadly wares to kids.

  —Democratic House leader Dick Gephardt,

  June 23, 1998

  All 10 committee Democrats opposed a bill making it a federal crime for anyone other than a girl’s parent or guardian to evade laws in her home state that require parental consent or notification for an abortion by escorting the girl to a state that doesn’t impose those requirements.

  —Associated Press, June 24, 1998

  Larry was a loser. A twenty-one-year-old dropout who drifted between jobs, he hung out with the few high-schoolers he could find still listening to Metallica. One of those outcast kids was Nancy, a fifteen-year-old whose strict parents would not let her listen to rock music at home. Nancy discovered Black Sabbath from her worldly friend Larry; then he taught her to smoke. Eventually, he taught her the secrets of amore.

  “Oh, God, Larry—I’m pregnant!” Nancy screamed at him one day. “You told me it couldn’t happen if I was on top!”

  “And you believed me? . . . Anyway, you’ll just have to have an abortion. Uh, you got any money, baby?”

  “An abortion? Oh, no, Larry—I’ve always been taught that was wrong. I mean, my mom would kill me . . . and besides, Allison told me you have to have your parents’ permission.”

  When Larry finally got the nerve to call Planned Parenthood (from a pay phone in case they traced the call), he was told, “This is a parental consent state,” and was asked if he would like to write a letter of protest to his congressman. Eventually he found the number for an abortion clinic in a neighboring state. He shoved a handful of quarters in the pay phone and made the long-distance call.

  “No problem,” he was told. Amazingly, Larry discovered that all Nancy had to do was show up with the money early one morning, and by that afternoon she would be done—no questions asked.

  “Is this a great country or what?” Larry said to himself as he took a hopeful poke into the change slot on the pay phone.

  Between some day work Larry picked up at a warehouse loading dock and a little money Nancy had tucked away, it only took a week to raise the few hundred dollars for the procedure. He and Nancy didn’t talk much during that week. Once Nancy tried to talk to him about how he felt, whether he thought abortion was wrong or not, but he just mumbled something about how “women ought to have rights” and then refused to talk about it.

  One morning before her classes started, Larry’s beat-up Firebird pulled up outside Nancy’s high school and she jumped in. They drove a couple of hours, mostly in silence. Though it was interstate most of the way, Larry compulsively referred to a map he had carefully marked using directions he had been given by the clinic. When they reached the squat gray building, Larry circled a few times, scanning the parking lot for trouble. Inwardly, he was terrified that there would be some kind of protest, with police and TV cameras on the scene. He was afraid that if a bunch of Christians started screaming, “Baby killer,” Nancy might back out and he would be in big trouble. Fortunately, the parking lot was quiet.

  He pulled up to the building, but at the opposite end from the clinic door. “I’ll be back to pick you up around four o’clock, okay?”

  Nancy stared at him dumbly. “You mean . . . you mean you aren’t even going to go in? You’re just going to drop me off and drive away?” She burst into tears.

  Larry looked around nervously. He thought he saw a face peer out of a nearby window. He reached for a cigarette, but he was out.

  “Look, uh, I’m out of smokes. Let’s get a pack and talk about it—really. Uh, it’ll be okay. Really.”

  Larry found a convenience store. He left the car running and went in while Nancy sat in the front seat, her head leaning out of the open window. He bought a pack of Marlboros and walked outside. He tore open the pack and lit one, letting the soothing smoke fill his pounding chest.

  Larry walked around the car and stood next to Nancy. She looked up, and suddenly he noticed how young she was. He did something he had seen in a movie. He put another cigarette in his mouth and lit it. Then he took it out and handed it to Nancy. She smiled weakly. Maybe everything would be okay.

  “Freeze!” someone shouted, and Larry felt his cheek smash against the windshield. Nancy screamed.

  “Don’t move! Police!” came another shout. Suddenly they were surrounded by blue lights and uniforms.

  “Oh my God, oh my God,” Nancy cried. She looked at Larry, whose face had been dragged off the windshield and was now being pressed against the hood of the car by a hefty policewoman.

  “Would you look at this?” the officer growled. “This scumbag is twenty-one, and that girl . . . well . . .” She glanced pityingly at Nancy. “What is she, fourteen or fifteen? It’s disgusting.”

  “How did you know?” Larry gasped through clenched teeth.

  “We’ve had this place staked out for weeks,” another officer told him. “We knew you punks were sneaking across state lines trying to evade the law. Don’t you know what you’re doing to this girl? Don’t you have any morals at all?”

  “But the woman at the clinic said the abortion was legal,” Larry moaned.

  “Abortion? Who said anything about abortion? We’re talking about these!” The officer waved the pack of Marlboros dramatically in front of Nancy’s face.

  “Be careful!” the policewoman snapped. “That’s evidence.”

  “Oh, you’re right.” The officer glared at Larry. “You disgust me. Driving an underage girl across state lines—and without her parents’ knowledge, I bet—then buying her cigarettes. I hope they throw the book at you, you repulsive child-killer.”

  As they loaded Larry into a squad car and watched the tow truck drag away the Firebird (“We confiscate cars from tobacco dealers in this state”), the policewoman shook her head sadly. There sat Nancy, sobbing on the curb outside the convenience store. “Hey, Sarge—what about her? Didn’t he say she was going over to the clinic?”

  The officer in charge thought for a moment. “Give her a ride over there and put her on a bus afterward. After all, she’s really the victim here.”

  If It’s Broke, Don’t Fix It

  * * *

  May 1998

  Authorities originally wanted to pursue Jackson’s case as a felony. The charges were downgraded because the paper clip did
not inflict serious harm.

  —From an Associated Press story on seventeen-year-old Clint Jackson, who was arrested and jailed after using a rubber band to shoot a paper clip at a schoolmate

  One of the most difficult notions for Americans to grasp is the idea of the irremediable, the unfixable: those unpleasant conditions faced each day that are not solvable problems but rather eternal facts of life, such as stupidity, apathy, and professional wrestling. Americans are the ever-hopeful offspring of Theodore Roosevelt and Thomas Edison. We are confident that if we just put our shoulders to the wheel, we can roll over any problems in our way.

  This uniquely American trait showed itself last week when a renegade student shot up the school cafeteria in Springfield, Oregon. Kipland Kinkel’s irrational violence at Springfield High inspired yet another round of hand-wringing and calls to action in our public schools. As the mayor of Springfield put it at a funeral for one of the victims, “For Ben’s memory, and for his family, we simply must do something.”

  What that something is has not been determined. There have been a few calls from the usual suspects for more gun control, nicer videos, et cetera, et cetera, but nothing has engendered significant support. One personal observation: A sure way to reduce the amount of youth violence is to stop giving children names like “Kip Kinkel.” Stick some unlucky teenager with a moniker like that and you might as well hand him a rifle and point him toward the nearest clock tower.

  Beyond that minor suggestion, I have nothing else to offer as a solution to the problem of teen violence other than swift prosecution and eternal vigilance. But this is unacceptable to many of my fellow Americans, because neither of these actions will guarantee that other children won’t be shot in the future. In fact, I would bet that they almost certainly will. But that is no reason to “do something.”

  When concerned Americans attempt to eliminate the eternal problem of children behaving badly, it is their custom to find solutions that stop children from behaving at all. A few examples:

  We all want schools to be free of drugs, right? Well, in pursuing this laudable goal, schools have recently taken to suspending students for

  a. Giving a classmate a Midol

  b. Giving a classmate a lemon drop

  c. Refusing to take a drug test as a condition for attending a public school

  And we certainly want our children to spend their school day free from the fear of violence. But as a result,

  a. A fifth-grader who accidentally brought her mother’s lunchbox to school instead of her own was expelled when her mom’s small paring knife was found inside.

  b. A middle-school student who offered to use a small penknife to cut a cake for his teacher was arrested and held by authorities.

  Schools fighting “hate crimes” have

  a. Had a group of honor students arrested and jailed for hand-producing a booklet with jokes insulting the high school principal, who is black

  b. Expelled an honors student from a Concorde, North Carolina, high school for having a small Confederate flag (along with a hundred other stickers) on her book bag

  c. Suspended a thirteen-year-old in Kansas for three days when he drew a copy of the Confederate flag on a sheet of paper at the request of a classmate

  And, finally, schools are fighting “troubled youths” by having our friend Clint Jackson arrested and jailed for shooting a paper clip with a rubber band, and by having an Ohio boy serve thirty days in the slammer for letting the air out of the bus tires at his school.

  In each one of these incidents, the punishments are perversely excessive compared to the so-called crimes. I can understand a school wanting to teach that drawing booklets with racially offensive jokes is a bad thing to do, but so is trashing the First Amendment. And while every mother in America may be genetically predisposed to assume that a flying paper clip will eventually put somebody’s eye out, until it does, should the shooter be thrown in the slammer?

  C’mon, people, this is America. We didn’t even make O.J. go to jail, for cryin’ out loud. But we’re sending little Johnny to the joint for having a slingshot?

  I will concede that one way to keep children from saying things we don’t like is to censor them. One way to prevent shootings would be to confiscate all guns. One way to prevent kids from disrupting class is to force them to wear uniforms and not allow them to express their opinions, even on a book bag. And I have no doubt that capital punishment for practical jokes will make April 1 a less disruptive day in our public schools.

  Such actions would make America a tidier, quieter and more orderly place. But who would want to live there?

  There is no benefit in ridiculously restrictive rules or in their mindless obedience. We certainly should be distressed by the youth violence we’ve seen, but we must not heighten these tragedies further with a tragic reduction in our freedom from which we might never recover.

  What I suggest is a healthy dose of anger aimed at the sick children who have fired the shots, an insistence that they be punished severely, and the acknowledgment that, no matter how hard we try, sometimes people do bad things.

  Talkin’ the Talk

  * * *

  July 1998

  If you had told the old gang back in Pelion, South Carolina, that Horace King had an idea worth $15 million, we would have laughed ourselves silly. And yet that’s exactly what a jury just decided.

  I speak from personal experience when I mention Horace “Exalted Cyclops” King, state leader of the Ku Klux Klan and a resident of the rural South Carolina community where I grew up. Two of his sons, Vernon and Alan, went to school with me, to little noticeable effect. We didn’t pal around (they seemed uncomfortable with people who conjugated their own verbs), and I wouldn’t recall them at all if it weren’t for their family’s extracurricular activity—promoting Klan rallies.

  Every so often, a white van with a loudspeaker on top and a Confederate flag on the side would cruise up and down our road inviting us to a “big pro-America rally, tonight! All white public invited.” Later that evening, as my family headed to Wednesday-night Bible study, we would spot the motley bunch in the woods, huddled around some tattered, burning totem while Horace King yelled at them. It looked like a ragged remnant from the Lost Tribe of the Great White Trash, or a cast of extras from a Kevin Costner flick.

  There is a perverse irony in the notion of an anti-intellectual buffoon such as Horace King being prosecuted for his (for lack of a better word) philosophy. It’s as though President Clinton were indicted for excessive modesty. But that’s exactly what happened.

  King’s $15 million idea is that white people are superior to black people, that black people are evil and that white people who associate with black people are (don’t try the spell-checker on this one) “wiggers.” In a civil trial brought against the Klan by a black church that had been set ablaze, the arsonists claimed they were driven to crime by the persuasive powers of Horace King and these racist ideas.

  We can argue as to whether these ideas are persuasive, but we can all agree that, pathetic attempts at vocabulary building aside, King’s ideas are not original. No, they have been heard all too often before.

  Indeed, is there any southerner, white or black, who hasn’t been exposed to the bizarre rationalizations of the Exalted Cyclops and his ilk?

  Trust me: Horace King has never had a thought—original or otherwise—in that thick redneck skull of his. So why does he owe $15 million to the thought police? What is his crime other than, perhaps, plagiarism?

  Shouldn’t we prosecute the person who originally taught Horace King the secret Klan handshake? Isn’t whoever put the Klan philosophy in King’s head the real culprit?

  One problem: The person stupid enough to believe in the Klan is probably too stupid to think up his own ideas. He probably got it from someone else, who learned it from his daddy, et cetera, et cetera. If we follow the trail long enough, we’ll end up prosecuting Nathan Bedford Forrest, who is very dead (and, we can only hope, very
warm).

  This is the problem with prosecuting ideas. They are so hard to pin down. The Clintonistas may view this as a personal failing of mine, but I’d be a lot more comfortable if we just prosecuted people for their actions and left their ideas alone.

  Does that mean words can never be prosecuted? Of course not. Defamation and libel are still actionable, and it’s still a crime to yell “Library card!” in a crowded Klan meeting. But is Horace King directly responsible for the behavior of others who are stupid enough to believe his uninformed rantings? It’s one thing if he drove the two boys to the church and loaned them money for the gasoline. But if he just announced his hatred of black churches and his desire to see them burn, is that enough?

  If you answer, “Yes, fry the racist bum!” then you must also prosecute preachers who speak out against abortion clinics, black congressmen who label their Republican counterparts Nazis, and, of course, Al Gore, whose hate-filled tome Earth in the Balance graced the bookshelf of the deadly Unabomber. To fail to do so is to fail your own principles.

  I am far less principled than the fine members of the jury in this church-burning case, who have declared thoughts to be deeds and words to be actions. I would have taken the coward’s way out by only holding people responsible for their own actions. I would have sided with those weak-willed “wiggers” who see the freedom to speak as more important than the ability to shut up morons like Horace King.

  No, I do not have the courage of those jurors who feel confident in their ability to determine which ideas are good and which are bad and to use the power of the courts to punish people whose ideas are just too unpopular to be allowed. I also don’t share their confidence that they will be able to defend themselves should their ideas become unpopular one day.