Sean Tarjoto
Yesterday was Judgement Day for President Bill Clinton. It was Judgement Day the other night too, as well as the night before. The fact is the past seven months have been a somewhat smarmy period for the nation and its capital. While foreign first-world nations laugh and third world countries choke from the sudden cut-off of nurture, we have diverted too much attention toward an embarrassing domestic dispute with our horrifically dense media culture. And as a result, the nation has come to a sudden revelation, a frighteningly sober awareness that nothing seems sacred in the omnipresent media where everything and everyone, including presidents, are safe from bare-all publicity.
It's rather common household knowledge that our President is sexually promiscuous. And so Americans are caught choosing between two confrontations, since nothing else will suffice; two solutions where the results are as favorable as they can get, not delve worse, or pave a new road for gas-hungry media. Americans need to either drop the whole mess and let obtuse philosophical injustice prevail, or drop the whole mess on the one man that America is most holding accountable: the President (Rolling Stone 80).
As Ken Starr and the nation sift through the intricate details of what exactly (oral)"sex" is and how the entangled sewing pins of obstruction law really apply to a sex scandal where barely anybody got off, there is a certain irony. The lucid, entangled embarrassing clarity of the present still is not capable of lighting the dense, yet distinctly odorous and uncertain fog of the future.
It is ironic how similar in consequences "Lewinskygate" has with that of Watergate, but how dissimilar the road to it is. The Starr Report is analogous to the Pentagon Papers; Clinton's mea culpa bears nostalgic note to Nixon's resignation; same date, same channel(s).
Meanwhile, the nation is polarized. Rolling Stone magazine has polled an angry, disappointed, confused young America of 18-34 year olds who are inimically diverse. The public does not want to see him go. The media does not want to see it end. And hovering tenaciously above it all, Congress really has no idea what to do; launching yet another investigation in the aftermath of Clinton's testimony seems like stalling in a confused attempt to decipher the whim of the public.
This is an issue of perjury, which is a crime that no one, especially the President, should get away with. Yet, the details of this sordid affair are the nails of the argument. Crucifying Clinton will not work without first hammering down the details of whether the lies he gave were in the interests of face or haste. The difference between "Hilary will kill me if she finds out" and "Congress will impeach me if me if they find out" is a matter of small but decisive capacity. "Clinton's legal situation depends on the context of the conversations" (Marcus and Grunwald 16), which are far from concrete. This is similar to Watergate save for the ironic oddities there are no secret tapes and very little worthy informants save that of Clinton and Lewinsky themselves.
American inclination tends to organize events such as these through the media. The media has the aura of being a black and white forum that appears "decisive" and "credible" because of its collective census of journalists and their readers. Moreover, the genuine feeling of quality from Clinton's video testimony, in conjunction with the timing of the DNA tests exuberate an enthralling drama. This is a story about lies and sex, and is almost painfully Shakespearean. "It has the elements of MacBeth and Lear" (Manson 70).
Perhaps it is watching the President dodge, slip, and punch his way through the lions of network television. To watch gladiators die. A computer-doctored, bare-chested Clinton bore two boxing gloves and one black eye and what seemed to be a distinctly defiant glare in this month's issue of Rolling Stone. The image has been recycled in publication, only as old as the day after the video testimony.
Is Bill a sex addict? If the nation's leader does harbor some buried psychological failing underneath that optimistic human exterior, then is that perhaps excuse? Does it give the presidential office a touch of (dark) humanity?
Questions of whether oral "sex" is ostensible adultery abound, but are beside the point. Even if a unanimous decision by Congress and the Powers That Be sentenced Clinton to political impotency, the crime of perjury remains of unaffected latitude. No doubt, what the President did to his family was wrong. They have every right to be upset. What he did to the nation is a macrocosm in effect; as well as a horrible reflection of our characters; as of no right do we have to purge so far as to air simultaneous three-network broadcasting around the world.
It seems as if the smartest route is resignation. Effective, and perhaps even honorable. Few people can accost Clinton of being an unjustified quitter. It is hardly disputable, as few could truly scold Clinton for running from the unprecedented, unnatural publicity that has opened what may be too many fresh skeletons unto our arms. That twentieth-century technology has exponentially decreased the scarcity of the President's private life is a dangerous sign of the millennium, where the aspirations of social community can now be obnoxious, unstoppable flood.
If the nation and its media cannot assume the responsibility to move on, then perhaps the President should resign. Perhaps he should create a tangible, concrete blame for the American people to see something much more apparent and sacrificial than apology. Perhaps he should resign, for once truly toss responsibility, and let Gore and Newt step in. That's what they're there for, let's see if we'll like it.
(
geocities.com/tarjoto)