Clinton & Me

by Michael Graham

  Games of kickball and tag that excluded female classmates

  False claims against female classmates that they were contaminated with a deadly contagious virus (“cooties”) allegedly spread by casual contact

  Declaring the area within and immediately surrounding the monkey bars as a boys-only clubhouse, and prohibiting female classmates from entering, a clear violation of the U.S. Constitution (see U.S. v. Rotary)

  In short, we find repeated incidents of harassment and discrimination by the Defendant that are actionable under the recent rulings by the Supreme Court. On behalf of our plaintiff, it is our duty to find those responsible for these actions so that they may suffer the consequences.

  We pursue this duty in defense not just of the Constitution but also of the principles of individual freedom and our right to a one-third contingency fee. We are absolutely confident that the negligible fiscal damage done to the school system by this lawsuit will be far outweighed by the benefit to students such as Ms. Johnson, who are struggling each day in a environment that denies them the ability to learn.

  It is our hope that you will comply with the spirit and letter of this order.

  Sincerely,

  Cochran, Dershowitz and Hyatt

  P.S. We have also received reports that Defendant might know the identity of the student(s) who publicly accused you and Ms. Johnson of “sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G.” You are therefore notified that you may be called as a witness in this case as well. Because you are white and Ms. Johnson is African American, we are urging the federal judge to classify this case as a hate crime under appropriate state statutes.

  Thank you for your prompt attention.

  Curse of the Kennedys

  * * *

  July 1999

  The sudden, tragic death of John F. Kennedy Jr. is a true mathematical anomaly: Of all the Kennedys out there whose deaths would be a net plus for our republic, how did the grim reaper manage to snag the one decent apple in the barrel?

  When I heard about JFK Jr.’s death, my first thought was “And that bastard uncle of his has a liver the size of a portable ice chest, but he’s gonna live to be a hundred!” John-John’s death added yet another piece to the growing evidence that Billy Joel was right: Only the good die young.

  I am genuinely sorry that JFK Jr. is dead. I was never a Kennedy groupie, but I was a George subscriber, and I had a casual admiration for a man who, though he could have turned his name and legacy of family tragedy into an easy ride for himself, instead chose to work as a prosecutor and publisher.

  JFK Jr. hardly seemed aware that he was a Kennedy, and for that reason I was willing to forgive him for being one.

  And it is an act of forgiveness. For despite all the talk about haunted families and frequent tragedy, it is not merely a curse to be a Kennedy. It is a genuine shame.

  If there ever was a Kennedy curse, it was on the previous generation—JFK, RFK and Joe junior. When these three brothers, each endowed with great potential and ambition, died in service to their country (one at war, two by assassination), the generation of Americans who grew up with them was right to wonder why their best and brightest fell.

  But not my generation.

  JFK was killed before my first birthday. I have no recollection of his brother Bobby. In fact, the first time I can recall hearing the word Kennedy was as a young boy watching the first moon landing on my grandmother’s black-and-white TV in Conway, South Carolina. There was another news story that day about some guy named Teddy who had drowned his girlfriend while driving back from a party. The grown-ups watching the news with me were quick to point out that this Teddy guy was both drunk and married at the time.

  For the rest of my lifetime, it seemed, when they weren’t killing themselves by shooting up heroin or slamming into trees playing ski-slope football, the Kennedys spent their spare time hitting on waitresses and playing Spin the Bottle with underage baby-sitters.

  The current generation of Kennedys aren’t our nation’s princes. They are our punch lines.

  This is hard for geezers such as Dan Rather to understand. For people over fifty, those who experienced Camelot, the Kennedy name still has some allure, some magic. The initials JFK conjure images of glamour, of grace, of America’s greatness.

  But the Kennedys I grew up with aren’t the Kennedys of Camelot. They’re the Kennedys of Chappaquiddick. For my generation, the primary television image of a Kennedy isn’t John-John saluting his father’s coffin but the hilarious Saturday Night Live sketches mocking “America’s royalty” in all their drunken, skirt-chasing, airheaded glory.

  These are the Kennedys of today. Their politics are so out of date they seem lifted from one of the Back to the Future sequels. Their behavior is so self-destructive, every Kennedy male ought to be born with a warning label. Unlike the tragedies of the previous generation, these Kennedys are comic victims of their own weakness, irresponsibility and stupidity.

  The sad victims in these Kennedy tragedies aren’t great men brought low, but forgotten women undone: wives whose entire lives have been nullified by the Catholic Church, baby-sitters whose families are reluctant to bring charges, a young woman at the bottom of a lake whose death was not reported to authorities until after the politics were worked out.

  And yet out of this generation rose John junior. Handsome, bright, ambitious—we’d seen that before. But also relaxed, modest, untouched by the notion that America owed him its worship, dismissive of the idea that his family greatness overrode personal responsibility.

  The talking heads (led, I am sorry to say, by my fellow conservatives) are pounding away at the “recklessness” of this inexperienced pilot flying into a dark and stormy night. They may be right, though I’ve talked to several pilots who agree that it was a close judgment call, one they had made before.

  Regardless, I don’t see any arrogance or outrageous behavior in Kennedy’s decision to fly. No, the arrogance and outrageousness are coming from the media, as Rather, Brokaw et alia struggle to revive the Kennedy family’s hard-lost mystique using the loss of the son who had worked so hard to rise above his own name.

  And talk about piling on: The media coverage of JFK Jr.’s death is filled with stories comparing him to Princess Di—the People’s Princess meets the American Prince. What an absolute insult to everything young JFK Jr. accomplished in his adult life.

  To the tabloid American, John-John and Lady Di were two peas in a pod: attractive, wealthy and famous. How each of them got there is meaningless to the great unwashed who tuck them under their arm at the Food Lion counter each week and carry them back to their respective trailer parks.

  But to lump JFK Jr. with Diana is as unfair as lumping him in with his own family.

  Princess Di was a nobody who did nothing, a woman who found fame between the sheets of the men she slept with and who used her fame to slip into the next awaiting bed. She was all fame and no glory.

  Meanwhile, John junior spent years working to achieve something of his own, something greater than the easy accomplishments that came from his unearned fame. He didn’t hide from his father’s name, but it wasn’t his entire resume, either. He largely avoided the frivolous trappings of his fame, laughed at the undeserved acclaim and tried to build a real, resonant, grown-up life of his own.

  But he could not escape his legacy, not even in death. Thanks to our celebrity culture and People magazine mores, JFK Jr.’s accomplished life will soon be forgotten. Instead, John F. Kennedy Jr. will forever be linked to a horse-faced floozy from Buckingham Palace.

  Now that’s what I call a curse.

  Discriminatory Practices

  * * *

  May 1999

  We’re not racists. We’re snobs.

  —Theresa Shackelford, lineal descendant of Thomas Jefferson and member of the Monticello Association

  When Theresa Shackelford publicly opposed allowing the unconfirmed descendants of Thomas Jefferson to join the elite Monticello Association, she reminded us all o
f the joy of discrimination.

  As a tireless advocate of discrimination, I find myself constantly defending both the right and the need to discriminate, to discern differences, to sort people by their abilities and traits.

  Note I said “sort people” and not “sort peoples.” This group sorting, advocated by both David Duke and the Democratic Party, is what people generally confuse with discrimination. The two are not related in the least.

  Racism is snobbery for stupid people. Trailer-park residents need someone to look down on, too, and racism allows those at the bottom of the social ladder to tell themselves, “I may be fat, stupid and poor, but at least I ain’t no darkie!”

  Unlike racism, which is anti-intellectual and involves self-delusion (i.e., the delusion that by demeaning others, you are somehow less of a loser), discrimination is dependent upon reason and self-knowledge. Discrimination is the ability to discern the differences between two people who look the same but whose behavior or abilities make them very different.

  This is the style of discrimination practiced by Mother Nature herself.

  After all, what is natural selection other than discrimination at the biological level? Was it fair that nature discriminated in favor of longer-necked giraffes or against pea-brained simians? And while leopards don’t chase gazelles out of any anti-gazelle bigotry, the food chain does discriminate mightily against the slow of hoof. We can have all the plant-eater encounter groups we want, we can try our best to build gazelle self-esteem, but the truth of the matter will never change: The slow ones get eaten and the fast ones don’t.

  This immutable truth of nature is currently creating a headache for Habitat for Humanity up in Charlotte, North Carolina. Habitat for Humanity is in the business of giving people homes, virtually for free. But in Charlotte, Habitat clients are in the process of losing their homes and returning to the streets. How, you may ask, do you get your home taken from you when it cost next to nothing and you are paying 0 percent interest?

  By going down to the local bank and taking out two, three or four mortgages on your new digs and then blowing the cash on liquor and high living. One charity case, Julia Ann Addison, nearly lost her home after refinancing her $32,400 mortgage three times in eight months, sending her payments from $180 to $660 a month.

  “This is not what I envisioned,” said Addison, a single mother of three who openly admits her irresponsibility. Don’t worry, Julia Ann. Neither did the liberals who bought you your house.

  It’s not easy staying poor amid the current economic boom rocking America. You have to work at it. The job market is so hot right now that there are anecdotal reports of American high school graduates getting jobs that don’t involve a drive-through window.

  The dedicated poor, therefore, must repeatedly make stupid decisions in order to avoid prosperity. Otherwise, the trillions of dollars we’ve spent on social programs, combined with the red-hot economy lifting all boats, will drag these unfortunates into the mainstream against their will.

  In 1995, there were 50,035 South Carolina families receiving cash assistance. As of April 1999, that number was 17,152. By definition, this remaining group is largely made up of incompetent clods actively clinging to poverty in the midst of plenty.

  Well, what do you think happens when you indiscriminately give one of these morons a house? Do you think their lifetime of stupidity and irresponsibility is suddenly overcome by Ozzie and Harriet sensibilities?

  Of course not! Instead, these geniuses start asking, “How many lottery tickets will you trade me for this three-bedroom ranch?”

  Ah, but this is America, and so the rash of high-interest-rate refinancing among the Habitat dwellers is being blamed not on the hapless homeowners, but on the evil mortgage companies. Local liberals are complaining that these businesses “take advantage of desperate or naive homeowners.” These lenders are essentially making immoral loans, they argue, and they should stop.

  Only one problem: Anti-discrimination (note that word) laws prevent banks from denying loans to anyone who qualifies for them. If a poor person living in a Habitat-built home were ever denied a mortgage for which he or she qualified, the bank would be prosecuted for violating equal-lending laws—prosecuted by the same lefty activists complaining about these loans.

  Because we refuse to discriminate between the able and the incompetent, we’ve now made it possible for said incompetents to screw up their lives at a whole new level. I have no doubt that a few months from now, when these Habitat clients are both homeless and bankrupt, they’ll thank us.

  It is the inherent promise of Clintonism that more egalitarianism is on the way. One wonders if America’s victims of nondiscrimination will be able to survive it.

  Who’s for Jesus?

  * * *

  September 1999

  They want to make sure that there are no more Jews!

  —Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League

  I cannot recall the exact chapter and verse, but I would urge my Southern Baptist friends to heed this bit of gospel truth: No good deed goes unpunished.

  The Southern Baptist International Mission Board has published and distributed a prayer guide for the month of September directing the faithful to pray for Jews. The guide goes on to explain the Jewish high holy days and give flattering portrayals of Jewish life around the world.

  It sounds like the kind of innocuous Weekly Reader religiosity typical of our multicultural climate and which normally would pass unnoticed. The problem: The Christians are praying for the Jews to convert.

  And that ain’t kosher.

  At least not according to Mark Briskman, Southwest regional director for the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith: “We find this offensive. It shows an element of arrogance because they are specifically targeting Jews during this holy season.”

  Setting aside the propriety of Christians praying for Jewish salvation on the eve of Yom Kippur, I am still trying to figure out why Jews would be insulted by having someone pray that they go to heaven . . . which is, after all, the purpose of the Baptists’ exercise.

  I don’t want to shock any non-Gentile readers, but Christian theology condemns you (along with every Hindu, Muslim and liberal Democrat) to burn forever in a lake of fire. From this viewpoint, Jesus’ admonition that “no one comes to the Father but by me” left little room for negotiation. President Clinton himself would be hard pressed to wiggle his way out of this one.

  So I was taken aback when Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, appeared on CBS This Morning shaking with righteous anger about the anti-Semitism he saw hidden in the Southern Baptists’ agenda.

  “They want to wipe us out through conversion,” he railed. “They want to make sure there are no more Jews!”

  Well, duh. Setting aside the oddball Jews for Jesus organization (next: Hindus for Hamburgers), the central tenet of Christianity is that everyone ought to become a Christian, just as Islam preaches the conversion of all infidels to the true religion of Mohammed.

  Does this mean that Muslims want to destroy the Jewish race? Wait, let me rephrase the question.

  Does evangelism equal anti-Semitism? I think not, and Foxman’s own words revealed it. Part of his anti-Baptist ravings included reference to the fact that in the past, “Christians viewed Jews as not worthy of salvation.”

  Exactly, Mr. Foxman. If a Baptist missionary was knocking on doors in your neighborhood but decided to skip your house when he heard the strains of “Hava Nagila” wafting from the music room, that would be anti-Semitic. But attempting to share with you the gift of salvation—which Baptists and other evangelicals consider a duty—is the most embracing action a Christian can take.

  Some Jews have complained that Christian theology itself is intolerant, that a religion teaching that everyone else is eternally damned is inherently hateful. Indeed, George W. Bush got clobbered with this not long ago, when a reporter asked him about his belief that “heaven is open only to
those who accept Jesus Christ.”

  George W., being a politician of at least middling talents, backed away. “It is not the governor’s role to decide who goes to heaven. I believe that God decides who goes to heaven, not George W. Bush.”

  But as Michael Kinsley of Slate magazine has pointed out, this is nonsense. If salvation is not mandatory, then George W.’s theology is meaningless. If Christ truly is the answer, then everyone who misses that question on the Big Final will spend eternity in a very warm detention hall, and George W. knows it.

  So is it intolerant for a Christian to believe in Christianity? That is the question angry Jews are really pressing. Many Jews believe in God but do not believe in heaven. A few believe in a heaven and a hell, and some hard-line Jews believe that Gentiles have no soul at all.

  According to at least a billion people of faith on this planet, every Christian is doomed. And there are about a billion Christians who feel the same way about their fellow earthlings. Would this world be a better place if these two groups stopped praying for each other’s immortal souls?

  Perhaps it offends you to have people of other faiths keeping you in their prayers. But as my Jewish mother (deep down, aren’t all mothers Jewish?) might say, “What can it hurt?”

  Reverend Jesse Jackson, Where Are You?

  * * *

  November 1999

  It’s his home state, he’ll have to come.

  —Charleston, South Carolina’s Elder James Johnson, on the Reverend Jesse Jackson