Clinton & Me
Page 20
I should point out that I purchased none of these clothes for myself. Every item of clothing I have purchased in my lifetime could fit in a single dresser drawer at a Motel 6, with room left over for the Gideon Bible. Like almost every man, I own only clothes that women have bought for me. I wear them without question, the same way a prisoner wears his bright orange jumpsuit. Does it look stupid? Sure, but what am I supposed to do about it?
So when ABC called, the last thing on my mind was my wardrobe. But instead of winning praise for my insightful comments or clever repartee, I flunked the fashion test.
And my conservative friend’s critique was only the beginning. Not only did I get more snide comments about my wardrobe on Politically Incorrect, but the same thing happened after every subsequent television appearance, too. Every guest shot on C-SPAN or MSNBC would be followed by a steady stream of criticisms from friends, family, and ideological fellow travelers, all of them suddenly transformed into faux Ralph Laurens: Couldn’t they do something to your hair? They let you wear jeans? Why the sport coat? Don’t you own a suit? Were those really white athletic socks you had on?
Wait a minute, I interrupted, as one friend laid out his clothing critique. You mean you can’t remember anything I said about the Republican presidential primary, but you noticed what color my socks were?
“How could I miss them? Straight out of gym class. Jeez, Michael, who wears tube socks on national television?”
Now, I could get defensive and point out that David Letterman in fact wears sneakers on his show every night. I could also argue that as a humor writer and radio talk show host, I should utilize my wardrobe to highlight my hip, happenin’, counterculture role as an irreverent media gadfly of the entrenched political establishment. Kind of a John McCain type, if John McCain didn’t want to beat the crap out of Pat Robertson.
Yes, I could make these arguments, and in fact I did, but to no avail. When I mentioned creating a Michael Graham “look,” my friends just laughed. “You already have a look: geeky white Republican. Now lace up your wingtips, button down your collar and shut up.”
Mel Gibson can wear a black T-shirt with his gray business suit because he’s Mel Gibson, movie star. Woody Allen can show up for an interview in a ratty sweater and beat-up corduroys because he’s Woody Allen, cradle robber. And Jennifer Lopez can attend the Grammy Awards (almost) wearing a decorative shower curtain and a swatch of gauze because—well, because she is so incredibly hot. But me? I can’t catch a break.
I’ve learned my lesson. I’ll be back on TV soon, and though I haven’t a clue as to what the topic is or who the guests will be, please tune in: I’ve got a handmade silk tie that is to die for.
It Is . . .
* * *
Christmas 1999
It is the only gift you will get this Christmas. And it is the only one you will give.
It is why a pair of socks wrapped in green paper sounds so much like a dinosaur when shaken by a small boy.
It is a middle-aged man, teeth gritted and face darkly red, trying to remain nonchalant as a nubile young saleslady holds up two lacy undergarments and asks him to guess which one will fit his wife.
It is what makes him answer, “The small one.”
It is the vaccination protecting a child’s belief in Santa from the sound of familiar voices in the attic on Christmas Eve.
It is the meaning of the word Pokémon in a seven-year-old’s bedtime prayer.
It is the scent of a crib warmed by a sleeping baby. It is the accompanying memory loss that makes a mother of teenage children lean over that crib and wish she could do it again.
It is why this mother believes any future children would be intelligent, respectful and pleasant.
It is why the street person’s hunger makes him sad instead of angry. And why the five-dollar bill you hurriedly shove into his shaking hand will be spent on a single Big Mac and a twelve-pack of Milwaukee’s Finest.
It is the only reason a married man shaves before coming to bed.
It is what makes his wife believe he’s just trying to improve his personal hygiene.
It is the sudden, listening stillness of a woman’s kitchen at Christmastime when she hears the screen door latch, even though he hasn’t come home in years.
It’s what turns the dollar-store, slave-labor, nylon-haired knockoff into a Ballerina Barbie when touched by six-year-old fingers.
It’s what makes her father blink back a tear and silently promise to give her a real Christmas next year.
It is why he can’t remember making the same promise when she was five.
It is the unexplainable meteorological phenomenon that puts the feel of coming snow in the air each Christmas Eve, even in South Carolina. It’s what presses small noses to windowpanes at bedtime, and causes you to tune in the local weatherman at 11 P.M. . . . just to make sure.
It is why we can’t imagine Christmas dinner without Gramma, and why Gramma sometimes looks up with a start when she hears her name. It’s why she thought, just for a moment, that it was her mother calling.
It is why she isn’t sure that it wasn’t.
It is the sole motivator for your sister to ever touch an oven. Especially after what happened last year.
It is the reason you really, honestly thought you were going to eat that piece of fruitcake when you cut it.
And when she has put your children to bed, stuffed the last bit of wrapping paper into a closet, taken the potpourri off the stove, turned out all the lights in your house and finally falls onto the sofa next to you as you sit quietly before the glistening tree, it is the only thing that can convince you that she might love you half as much as you love her.
It is why she does.
It is the reason women weep. It is the reason men fail. It is why every child, at least once in his life, has wanted to cry at Christmas.
It is as precious as a baby, wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger. It is as painful as a flesh-torn hand and a thorn-crowned head. It is the reason for both.
And if every Santa song and earnest prayer, every sincere gift and imagined wrong, every Christmas dinner and New Year’s toast, every unanswered invitation and unwelcome guest, every office party kiss and happy child’s hug—every human moment of the entire holiday season—could be stripped of its tinsel and pretense and price tag and reduced to its truest essence, we would find it there, the only one gift ever given at Christmas, the same gift, passed from hand to hand.
It is hope.
It is Christmas.
AFTERWORD
* * *
An Open Letter to America on Election Day 2024
To the American People
Tuesday, November 5, 2024
Election Day
My fellow future Americans:
You are reading this modest collection of late-twentieth-century reminiscences on a day in my not-too-distant future. Many of the events recounted herein will be dimmed, perhaps even lost, before your time.
But as you prepare for this momentous day—Election Day—in the year 2024, I am confident that you will still feel the effects of the decisions that we, the Americans of 2000, made in your stead more than twenty years earlier.
Today, you are watching history in the making as William Jefferson Clinton—an active, healthy, though somewhat hefty man of seventy-eight—stands on the eve of a victorious political campaign for his third nonconsecutive term as president of the United States. As you look excitedly toward the future under the Clinton–Mary Cheney ticket, I hope you find time to also think of us, the generation that gave you this man and his legacy.
We were the generation of Americans who held President Clinton’s fate in our hands. If, back in the 1990s, we had not nurtured him, encouraged him, forgiven him and fostered his dreams of a felony-conviction-free future, there would be no Bill Clinton for you today.
There wouldn’t have been the Clinton-Buchanan administration of 2009–2017, to ride (and perhaps rein in) the surge of Ame
rican nationalism after Mexico unilaterally annexed itself into our fifty-first through fifty-fifth states. If not for President “America First!” Clinton’s uniquely flexible political philosophy, our country might not have survived the turmoil.
And now in 2024, when our nation needs them most, Bill Clinton and his lovely new bride, Pamela Anderson Lee Clinton, are ready to serve once again. It is disturbing to think of the many times along the way when a single stumble could have denied us the leadership of this great man.
What if the truth about his draft record had come out before New Hampshire? If the truth of the Chinese campaign finance story had surfaced before the ’96 elections? If Ken Starr had granted Monica Lewinsky immunity in January 1998 instead of July? If the second independent counsel, Robert Ray, hadn’t mysteriously committed suicide with Vince Foster’s gun just days before bringing criminal charges against President Clinton? If that Chinese missile hadn’t missed the sorority house where the president was staying the night World War III broke out?
We could have lost the president at any of those moments or at hundreds of others in the national thrill ride that is the Clinton life story. But we didn’t; we hung on. We, the people of America in the last century, simply could not let go.
There were moments we were sorely tempted to look past a president who was a mirror of ourselves. Some said we should look beyond the reflection of Bill Clinton and toward our better selves. We occasionally longed to be a better America, a nation of courageous people who, through self-sacrifice and effort, would lift ourselves beyond our immediate emotions and desires . . . but then Survivor came on and we forgot about it.
But happily, there was Bill Clinton, always willing to take us back into his welcoming, unquestioning arms. He loved us—or at least craved our love—just the way we are.
If there is one lesson we have learned in our time that we could share with you, the Americans of our future, it is this: Bill Clinton isn’t just an American. He is America. He is at once both our fanciful vision of ourselves and an embodiment of who we truly are.
To leave him behind would mean so much more than a change in political parties. It would be to change ourselves, to change our character, to accept the fact that life is frequently difficult, that to be an adult means the deferment of juvenile desires, that our character is not revealed in our intentions, but in our actions.
The American people are not ready to accept that, and neither is Bill Clinton. And as long as we both have each other, we won’t have to.
God bless you, and God bless Bill Clinton’s United States of America.