Camille Paglia: Dud or Dudder ?

The problem with Kathleen Willey, one of the accusers, is she admitted to lying about testimony and had shopped her story around w/Linda Tripp as her unofficial agent.

Also Bill Clinton was the fucking worst on so many issues progressives care about now and Hilary certainly wasn't publicly critical of him then

Sure, but I think either way this is a conversation Republicans are going to force us to have, which worries me because much as I dislike the hawkish, crypto-conservative Clintons I am afraid of having a Republican in office.

― Treeship,

I don't think so. I mean, let's check this space in a year. The GOP can't discuss women because they don't like women. That's why so many of them are gay.

There are just a lot of ghosts that come with a Clinton candidacy

Hm, idk Alfred. Republicans are opportunists and i think they can twist feminist ideals to their own benefit

I haven't seen it work yet. Plus, there's the NYT story published a couple days ago leaking (or allowed to leak) the RNC's approach to attacking Clinton. Anything that impugns her femininity is out.

^^^

The GOP can't discuss women because they don't like women.

this is, sadly, v true - there's no way angle they can approach this from without tripping over themselves.

way

insofar as the RNC has any power (it doesn't).

They could claim the left was hypocritical in protecting Bill Clinton while being aggressive in going after accused people like the Duke lacrosse players or the more recent UVA thing or even that Columbia guy who still claims he is innocent. This could confuse and demoralize Clinton's more lukewarm supporters, turning them to a third party or discouraging them from voting altogether. The republican base, meanwhile, would be more motivated to vote if the relublicans successfully paint Bill as an "abusive psycopath." They might hate women but they def could flatter themselves by thinking they are women's protectors as misogynists often do.

This is all speculative obviously but it seems plausible

treeship, how old were you in the 90s?

Single digits

bringing up bill clinton's personal issues while in office as a way to get at hillary would be disastrous and total amateur hour politics imo

so like treeship said, it's a plausible plan for the republicans to attempt

american political media is not going to rehash bill clinton again. they just aren't.

This could confuse and demoralize Clinton's more lukewarm supporters, turning them to a third party or discouraging them from voting altogether.

there is 0.0% chance of this happening. maybe it should happen! but it won't.

If there is a credible rape accusation that emerges wrt Bill Clinton the progressive media won't ignore it. It's just impossible in this era imo. The right wing media also won't ignore it - i think it would be a "thing" although i can only speculate on how it would play out exactly

There are also harrassment allegations. Just a bunch of stuff

Treeship, how much is Ken Starr paying you?

there were credible rape accusations (which is to say, there were rape accusations) while he was in office and progressive media (hitchens aside) by and large defended him

you're talking about this as if it's some new explosive thing that just showed up and not a very established part of the clintons' life in public for 20 years

Tell me more about how the living ex-president with the highest "favorable" rating among them all, at 64% as polled by Gallup last year, is going to be an albatross around Hillary's neck. It's fascinating!

it's too perfect we're doing this in this thread

never say never i guess

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3176293/Woman-accused-Bill-Clinton-sexual-harassment-launches-anti-Hillary-website-recruit-victims-chronicle-scandal-day.html

ha goole otm

The media and the culture were extremely different in the 90s, like comparing apples to holograms of oranges

Every generation thinks they are the first to discover sex - and political scandals.

Things were in no way totally different in the 90s, you little rascal. Or are you talking about the 1890s? I'm not sure that would work either.

You don't think social media has changed how people read the news and which stories gain traction?

It's just a different news delivery system. Any story that has "gained traction" lately I could probably find several similar 80s-90s stories that also "gained traction" - and for the same basic reasons: sex, violence, moral outrage, spin, & did I mention sex?

I guess I don't want these cases to be re-opened bc i don't want a Republican president. But I also don't have much love for the crypto-conservative Clintons so w/e. I have no trouble believing the worst about that dude.

They already got Bill Clinton. It involved a stained dress. They got him as much as they are ever going to get him.

It took years of concerted and mostly failed effort to pin something on him. I remember when the stained dress emerged, I was like, oh my god, finally, they found something. And they made the most of it.

They managed to turn impeachment into a partisan joke. Why did this happen? Because everybody knew that they had spent forever finding it, had done nothing else but look.

By the way, Hitchens attitude on Bill Clinton was merely the first indication he was actually crazy. I'm no Clinton fan, but I did once really admire Hitchens, having read a bunch of his articles in Harpers during their great period (late 80s to late 90s).

So long as Hitchens kept to Clinton's fiscal and socialpolitical calamities ("welfare reform," the crime bill, DOMA) he was in peak form. If you want to read his Clinton book, stick to those chapters.

Oh, Clinton is despicable on that stuff -- does Hitchens make the case particularly well, given that I've seen it many times elsewhere?

Since you're here Alfred, I'll mention the attack on Norman Podhoretz that CH did is just one of the great jugular knifings ever - did you ever read that one?

Hey, back to Paglia, I was one of those people who bought Sexual Personae when it came out and thought it was really interesting. Speaking of Harpers, they thought she was interesting too....then they had to backtrack. I'm going to hide behind Greil Marcus and Harold Bloom now.....um, those guys thought she was okay, don't blame me!

I don't want to review the horror of those times, but let's not forget how Ken Starr's Whitewater panel transformed into a Starr Chamber when the Paula Jones lawsuit joined forces with it as if they weren't already one and the same (the first independent counsel, Republican Robert Fiske, was treated curtly when in 1994 he found nothing illegal in the Clintons' bungled cattle futures trading). Then there were the leaks to the press, the manipulation of a moronic Newsweek reporter who couldn't see that Linda Tripp had been hanging around Starr's office bringing witnesses since 1993, the SCOTUS decision (for which, regrettably, John Paul Stevens showed no remorse years later) affirming that a sitting president had no immunity against civil actions (I don't oppose the ruling in theory, but the facts dictated that the Court tailor this decision as narrowly as possible).

treeship can you explain what you mean by "crypto-conservative" here bc afaik the clintons are kind of completely wysiwyg?

secretly conservative. bill's record is atrocious, from the "welfare reform" to the crime bill to the trade agreements to DOMA and beyond

I suppose it might be "secret" to those who imagine Democrats are what they have not been for quite some time now?

Kind of a big selling point in his view.

bill was pretty open about his not-liberalness -- he ran as a "new democrat," promised to "end welfare as we know it," was a former DLC chair, and was fairly hawkish.

alfred, do you know of a good book on the clinton impeachment fiasco?

yes right I understand what u mean by "crypto" but I'm not sure what you believe is being concealed

alfred, do you know of a good book on the clinton impeachment fiasco?

― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.)

Ignore the title: http://www.amazon.com/The-Death-American-Virtue-Clinton/dp/0307409457

roger, she is concealing it from some people. facebook friends post pro-hillary things alongside articles that bemoan inequality and the militarization of the police, as if hillary's legacy is of having resisted these things. i think she gave a speech in ferguson that people were impressed with. the "new democrat" schtick wouldn't land anymore so clinton is remembered -- dimly of course by my generation -- as simply a democrat/progressive imo.

i think people of mine & treesh's generation who became politically aware during gwb presidency were kind of vaguely scooted towards the impression that clinton was a really good liberal president, like idk ppl didn't really tell you "you know bush is awful but bill clinton wasn't so hot either" and teach you about welfare reform and i only became aware of that reputation later in college, like when i was a teenager the only bad thing i knew about him was that he got a beej, which i thought was hilarious

anyways the democratic party is moving left, even if at a glacial pace & whatever her personal politics or history hillary's economic platform will reflect that

No one talked about Clinton-era policy because the media was trained to regard neoliberalism as gospel, and lots of pundits were stupid enough to think 2000-era Bush drivel about compassionate conservatism represented a genuine, uh, compassionate break from the '90s (and the economy really was booming from '97-'01).

People were too busy making money (dotcom boom!) to notice how shitty bubba was, plus his enemies were significantly worse

when we say he was a shitty prez, who are we comparing him to?

there needn't be a comparator. anyone to the left of joe lieberman can look at his record and find it wanting

the democratic party is moving left

still don't see it, email Senate leader Chuck Schumer about it next term

where the hell are Hil's female lovers, that's what me n' Camille wanna know

there needn't be a comparator. anyone to the left of joe lieberman can look at his record and find it wanting

well, yeah

but someone [who is not ralph nader] has to be president. maybe we need a poll

oh you're one of those