Clinton & Me

by Michael Graham

  The price of their courageous attempt at thought control is $15 million, give or take a constitutional amendment or two. Personally, when it comes to judging the mental efforts of Horace King, I wouldn’t give you, or his prosecutors, 15 cents.

  The Yankees Are Coming!

  * * *

  June 1998

  My wife, whose bloodline runs a deep South Carolina blue, owns a T-shirt that reads WE DON’T CARE HOW THE HELL YOU DO IT UP NORTH. This fashion choice from an otherwise demure flower of Dixie is but one more bit of evidence that, as northerners have long suspected, southern gentility ends at the Mason-Dixon line.

  Interestingly, while we southerners may deny any interest in how Yankees get things done, we spend an awful lot of time and money to mimic them. Take bagels—please.

  Take them back up North or out West or wherever you brought them from. The one thing we do not need in the South is another white, flavorless breakfast starch. If I wanted to spend my mornings choking down lumps of tough, indigestible dough, I would ask my wife to make biscuits again.

  Bagels are an example of distinctly northern dining, like a bowl of clam chowder in New England or a bullet in the skull in New York’s Little Italy. But though they are about as southern as a subway token, travel around our state and in every strip mall and every grocery store—even in the hallowed southern aisles of the Winn-Dixie—you will find bagels.

  And not just any bagels, either. Spreading like kudzu across South Carolina are shops such as New York Bagel and its competitor, Big Apple Bagel—which is likely to be around the corner from Manhattan Bagel.

  I know that South Carolina is a popular retirement destination for you disillusioned Yankees fleeing the wrecked Rust Belt cities you helped destroy, but my God, people—didn’t you leave anything behind? The New York state of mind is seizing control of our entire economy, and I’m not just talking delis.

  Here in South Carolina we’ve got New York City Pizza, New York Life Insurance (don’t they need a lot more of this than we do?) and, of course, New York Carpet World. Without leaving our borders, I can buy a suit at New Yorker Men’s Fashions, pick up a hot new frock for my favorite gal at the New York Boutique, get my hair done at New York Stylists and while away the evening at Manhattan’s Nite Life.

  And if that’s not enough, Charlestonians can go to something called New York Moods, where, I assume from the name, cheerful southerners can get an attitudinal adjustment. I have even written them a new motto: “Turn your Jethro into a jerk!”

  I am more sensitive than most to this new War of Northern Aggression because I just spent a year in Westchester County, New York. I can tell you firsthand that there is still plenty of northern aggression to go around. Ask a waitress in a New York restaurant if they have grits, and you might as well take out your teeth, strap on your banjo and start squealing like a pig.

  “Grits?” one particularly parochial hash slinger barked at me last summer. “Wazzamattawitchoo? Weahdoyootinkyouare, anyway? Weahyoofum? Hey, Joey! Dis guy wants ta know if we got grits!”

  Well, I showed her. I hitched up my overalls, stuck my John Deere hat on my head and stomped my bare feet outta there.

  Having lived on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line, I have noticed a strange double standard. When we southerners travel to the North and ask the locals to accommodate our cultural tastes—grits, barbecue, inbreeding—they react with indignation. “Wazzamattawitchoo? You people are weird!”

  Conversely, when northerners traveling in the South find their ethnic needs occasionally unmet, their response is: “Wazzamattawitchoo? You people are weird.” No matter which direction you take, the blame winds up here in the South. And I believe we southerners, beneath the weight of our regional inferiority complex, tacitly accept the blame.

  Southerners are the ultimate Upper West Side wanna-bes. We’re closet carpetbaggers who believe in our hearts that we should emulate our big-city betters, with no expectation that they will return the compliment.

  Consider the list of self-described “New York” businesses here in the bosom of Beauregard country. We southerners would drive past a sign down here reading New York Style Sex Club (Visit the Marv Albert Room) and not blink an eye. But the entire time I lived in New York, I never saw a sign for Carolina Carpet World or Dixie Hair Styles. No Palmetto Boutiques or South Carolina Moods, either.

  And what’s more, I didn’t expect them. It seemed perfectly natural to me that New York tastes would be accommodated down South but that southern tastes would disappear in northern climes.

  Southern scholars such as C. Vann Woodward and John Shelton Reed place the blame on our native obsequiousness, which, they claim, is a result of our losing the War. (If you have to ask which war, please move back up North now.) Having lost our nation’s only military intramural scrimmage, a southerner’s tendency is to defer to our northern neighbors.

  Maybe. Another, more pragmatic view was best expressed by my uncle Teenyboy: “Damn, there’s a lot of Yankees! And them Catholic ones breed like rabbits.” In other words, the North’s demographic advantage means that, over time, our unique southern culture is doomed.

  Whatever the cause, I believe it is time for defenders of southern heritage to respond in kind. Southerners must be legally recognized as a minority group and extended special protections. The federal government should implement a quota system setting aside road construction funds to build mustard-based barbecue joints along New York expressways.

  National Endowment of the Arts funds could be used to foist Charlie Daniels on unsuspecting New Yorkers. We could even ask the World Trade Organization to impose a swap: For every bagel we eat, a Yankee has to eat a chitlin.

  That’ll show ’em.

  My wife and I were decrying the decline of the South over drinks just the other day. She was drinking a Manhattan, and I had ordered a Long Island iced tea. The name of the restaurant: Broadway at the Beach.

  “Bartender!” I yelped. “Two mint juleps—before it’s too late!”

  Don’t Mess with My Toot-Toot

  * * *

  February 1999

  Hey, reader! Come here for a minute. You look like a reasonable, liberal-minded person. Let me ask you this: Don’t you agree that the state government should have “broad discretion in passing laws to protect the public”? We all want to be safe, right?

  So you probably also agree it should be within “the power of the Legislature to prohibit the sale and manufacture of products it deems harmful.” Sure it should.

  And despite what the libertarian wackos might think, there is no “fundamental right to own an item” that threatens your neighbors. The government needs to protect us from people who might own something that could harm our community, don’t you agree?

  Then, congratulations! You’ve just been elected . . . sex toy czar of the state of Alabama!

  All of the quotes above came not from anti-gun activists or the Drug Enforcement Agency, but from state officials battling to ban all battery-operated pleasures from the belles of Alabama. The legislature of the Cotton State recently proposed a law banning the sale of “any device designed or marketed as useful primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs.”

  Apparently, in Alabama it is a crime to own Monica Lewinsky’s head.

  Personal entertainment appliances, marital aids, provocatively shaped vegetables—it may soon be a crime to sell any of these items in Alabama. The state, which argues such products are obscene, contends there is no fundamental right “to purchase a product to use in pursuit of having an orgasm.” The sale or distribution of such items within the borders of the Bubba State would be a misdemeanor punishable by a $10,000 fine and up to one year in jail, where such devices are unnecessary thanks to the earnest attentions of your cellmates.

  Not surprisingly, the law is being challenged by the American Civil Liberties Union, whose ranks have been swelling since the story broke. Unofficial estimates are that more than five thousand women have joined just during dee
r season alone.

  Actually, the ACLU is representing several businesswomen, including B. J. Bailey, who sells sexual aids and novelties at parties, and Sherri Williams, who owns Loving Enterprises, Inc., a chain of “romance boutiques.”

  “[The legislature] set out to eliminate strip clubs, but along the way they snuck in sex toys,” Williams said. “Not only did they take away your entertainment, but when they were done they also took away your right to entertain yourself.”

  Yep, and if People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals succeeds in banning cow-tipping, Friday nights in Alabama are gonna get pretty slow.

  Now, we as southerners are hardly surprised when our fellow Confederates do something really, really stupid like this. But we usually have the good sense to be humiliated.

  Not in Alabama. The government is enthusiastically defending its law prohibiting unauthorized vibrations. The attorney general’s office points out that Georgia and Texas have similar laws on the books, but apparently the men of those two states are attending to their husbandly duties with sufficient zeal that there has not been a need for widespread legal action.

  “This is really a case about the power of the Legislature to prohibit the sale and manufacture of products it deems harmful,” says state assistant attorney general Courtney Tarver. Harmful? To whom? Who is harmed by the proper use of a vibrator? Are intimidated husbands, threatened by their wives’ self-fulfillment, risking Viagra overdoses attempting to rise to this unfair bedroom challenge?

  I ask you, which society is more at risk: one where women pass their days with a happy smile on their faces and a faint buzzing in their bloomers, or a community of tense, frustrated hausfraus snapping at their husbands and leering at the paperboy?

  But on the core issue—the state’s power to control the sale and ownership of legal products—Tarver is absolutely correct. If the state has the right to prevent the sale of guns or cigarettes or pork chops or malt liquor—all of which are unpopular with somebody—why can’t the state try to prevent mechanical naughtiness by forlorn housewives?

  Once you give the state the right to stop your neighbors from buying things that you don’t like, the state can use that right any way it chooses. Remember that the next time you growl at some poor smoker or grimace at an unapologetic gun owner.

  Meanwhile, I have a plan for our lovers of libido liberty in Alabama. I think I know how you can escape the reach of the puritan police.

  First, remember that the statute does not prohibit the use of sexual devices or prohibit the acquisition of them as gifts from other states. Perhaps those of us in neighboring states should break the embargo and airlift a few thousand “magic fingers” to Alabama. Imagine the joy on women’s faces as the devices float down on parachutes from the sky.

  But the solution isn’t a legal challenge or civil disobedience. It’s marketing.

  Ladies, can’t ever find a D-cell battery when you need one? And when you find them, are the batteries already dead? Not any more! Now you’ve got Michael Graham’s Guaranteed Home Battery Tester and Carrying Case. The cylindrical, rubberized carrying case (in sizes from five inches to “oh my God”) keeps all your D cells together and easy to find. And when you flick the switch of this handy device, the quiet vibrations of your Battery Tester tell you they’re all fired up and ready to go!

  Coming to Alabama’s finest hardware stores! Batteries not included.

  The Envelope, Please

  * * *

  January 1999

  From the Academy of Political Arts and Sciences come this year’s nominations for the Rascals, the Academy’s highest honor for individual performances in America’s national comedy of errors:

  Best Actress: Hillary Rodham Clinton, Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy. Once typecast as a tough-minded Thelma and Louise feminist icon, the Artist Formerly Known as Ms. Rodham re-created herself as the Tammy Wynette of the White House in this televised tour de farce. Though the script for Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy, by Sydney Blumenthal (Liar, Liar), is about as thin as an intern’s thong, Mrs. Clinton performed brilliantly, helped by Matt Lauer’s (NBC’s Today) solid work as a gullible media dupe.

  Best Special Effects: Jim Carville, Ken Starr: Mad-Dog Republican. Jim Carville made his reputation as a legendary storyteller in 1992 with his production of It’s the Economy, Stupid, using his spin to morph the once-invincible George Bush into a hapless political has-been. Carville returned this year with another astonishing feat of bayou magic, using his wizardry to mutate the rabbitlike Ken Starr into a grand-jury Godzilla who filled audiences with terror. It’s the greatest special effects feat since Michael Jackson had himself turned into a white guy!

  Best Sound Recording: Linda Tripp, Sister Act. The technique was primitive and a Maryland grand jury is reviewing its legality, but no doubt about it: Linda Tripp is the Edison of scandalous sound recordings. No edits, no expletives deleted—just the painful sounds of puppy love and doggy style.

  Best Editing: White House Defense Counsel, Enumerated Body Parts. During their command performance in the toughest hundred-seat hall in the business (the U.S. Senate), President Clinton’s attorneys displayed an oversized copy of the definition of sexual relations used in the long-running show Just Kiss It, starring Paula Jones. Jones’ fans will recall that this definition listed in detail the specific body parts in “sexual relations” and all appropriate stage directions. In a brilliant editing move, however, the president’s lawyers deleted that discomfiting sentence and replaced it with the innocuous phrase “enumerated body parts.” Now you know why they made more money this year than Arnold Schwarzenegger.

  Best Costume: The Gap, One Blue Dress. Accents by Bill Clinton. One stain. Well placed. It’s a winner!

  Best Original Script: William Ginsberg, Dumb and Dumber. Intellectually speaking, William Ginsberg and Monica Lewinsky may be the Shaggy and Scooby-Doo of the Clinton scandals, but for memorable, original dialogue, no one can touch the bumbling attorney from Beverly Hills. Even if he hadn’t screamed obscenities at TV cameras or fumbled the biggest case of his life, he would still have staked his claim to greatness with one brilliant line: “Forget the law, forget the facts. The will of the people.” Look for those words on the marquee of a presidential library near you!

  Best Script Based on Previously Published Material: William Jefferson Clinton, Perjury II: The Wrath of Ken. “It depends on what the meaning of the word is is.” “It depends on what you mean by alone.” It may be weak logic, but it’s boffo box office, Bill! Clinton has always had a fine hand for fiction, but his astonishingly elastic vocabulary and imaginative view of the facts were at their hair-splitting best during this appearance before a federal grand jury. Despite numerous direct statements of untruth, the president crafted a script that friendly reviewers have even labeled perjury-free!

  Best Actor: Alan Dershowitz, I Saved Hitler’s Brain. A seemingly tireless performer, Dershowitz used his ubiquitous appearances on the cable news circuit to defend President Clinton from the “evil, evil, genuine evil” of monsters such as Representative Bob Barr and Senator Trent Lott. More recently, Dershowitz told a crowd at Yale that if given the chance, not only would he represent Adolf Hitler, “I would win!” So much for the battle against genuine evil. Clearly, Dershowitz’s attacks on the president’s enemies are an act. And what acting it is!

  Best Stunts: William Jefferson Clinton, How Bad Do You Need a Job, Mrs. Willey? Though best known for his thoughtful, emotive performances, Bill Clinton showcased his physical abilities in his role opposite Kathleen Willey. His strong, physical presence—as well as his aggressive handwork—also added to his performance with Monica Lewinsky in the year’s biggest box office smash, Titanic II: Monica Goes Down. Another of Clinton’s strongly physical performances, the previously unreleased Jane Doe #5, is still in the can at NBC News and not yet available for screening.

  Best Supporting Actors/Actresses: You! Once dismissed as puritanical, judgmental and unsophisticated, you, the people of America
, have stunned pundits and pollsters in your role as President Clinton’s most valuable supporters. Without your complex (some would say contradictory) supporting work, the president would have been trapped in a two-dimensional role made up of the facts and the law—neither of which are complimentary to Clinton. The ensemble supporting cast created a fanciful environment in which the characters who lied under oath were sympathetic (Clinton, Jordan, Blumenthal), while those who upheld the rule of law were villains (Starr, Tripp, Christopher Hitchens).

  No doubt about it: Without your leaps of twisted logic, ladies and gentlemen, this comedy would have closed as a tragedy last summer. Instead, your support has ensured that America’s most popular farce will continue with only minor rewrites until January 2001.

  See you next year!

  CHAPTER SIX

  * * *

  “A Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy”

  What’d I Say?

  * * *

  April 1999

  Charlotte, N.C. (AP)—A radio talk show host was fired for making an on-air joke about the Littleton, Colo., school shootings. Just hours after the shootings, host Michael Graham related witness descriptions of the incident. He said:

  “They [the assailants] were targeting minorities and athletes—which, the athletes part, [is] one minor benefit to this otherwise horrible story.” He immediately followed with “No, I’m kidding.”

  WBT general manager Rick Jackson apologized April 21 for Graham’s joke, which he said was the most reprehensible on-air comment he had heard in his seven years at the station.