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Clinton In Crisis: Two Outstanding Questions

Started by jutl, September 10, 2007, 04:33:48 PM

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jutl

As Bill Clinton's long-suffering wife Hillary leads the field for the 2008 Democratic nomination, I felt the need to look back into the dark days of the late nineties and the series of shameful events known to the press as Semengate. I bought and read Bob Woodward's book Shadow: Five Presidents and the Legacy of Watergate which covers the various office of the independent counsel (OIC) investigations set up under Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan and Clinton (although strictly speaking they weren't independent until Carter). I'd highly recommend the book, which is full of racey anecdotes about the various OICs and the interesting things they got up to. Take, for example, this snippet about Independent Counsel Arthur Christy, who in 1979 was charged by the Attorney General with investigating reports that Carter's young Chief of Staff Hamilton Jordan had snorted cocaine at the legendary New York Discotheque Studio 54 (favoured hang-out of literary genius and insatiable drug-dwarf Truman Capote). Studio 54's proprietors had been charged with various financial felonies and, in interviews with the FBI, had fingered Jordan as a regular jiver and hoover. Christy had to talk to all sorts of Starsky-and-Hutch-style low-lifes to try to verify the story, and decided that their stories could best be tested by taking them to Studio 54 and asking them to tell and show exactly what they'd seen:

QuoteAt 1:30 p.m. on February 6, Christy took Landau into Studio 54.
Where had he first met Jordan on the evening in question? Christy asked.
Landau wasn't sure if it was by the bar, next to the dance floor, or sitting on one of the lounges.
Christy brought Landau down the stairs to an area known as "the cage," with the pinball machine, couches and big pillows. It was a dimly lit, cluttered area reserved for celebrities.
Was that where Ham had asked the question?
Landau wasn't sure.
Christy asked whether he recalled any conversation with Jordan about the drugs.
Landau said Jordan had asked if he could get any cocaine, or if he could get some coke.
Cocaine or coke? Christy asked
Landau could not recall.
If Jordan had used the word "coke," could he have meant Coca-Cola? Christy asked.
No, he could not have meant Coca-Cola, Landau said. The tone of Jordan's voice indicated what he wanted.
What was the tone of Jordan's voice? Christy asked.
Landau could not elaborate on the conversation.
As Christy took him through the details, nearly every specific Landau had uttered on national television grew more vague.
Finally, Christy flew into a rage. He grabbed Landau by the necktie and threw him up against a post.
"You're a fucking liar!" he shouted.

There. I bet you weren't expecting that from a designated representative of the Attorney General's office. I expect Landau wasn't either.

Anyway, the bulk of Woodward book deals with the Starr investigation into Whitewater, the White House Travel Bureau and President Clinton's alleged obstruction of justice in the Paula Jones case (which lead to all the messiness with Monica Lewinsky). I'm sure that many of you read the excerpts from the Starr Referral when it was released back in late 1998. Woodward's account of the final hours before its submission to Congress contains some details of the to-and-fro between Lewinsky's lawyers (Cacheris and Stein) and Starr's office:

QuoteCacheris and Stein asked about a discussion Lewinsky and Tripp made on the tapes about a tomato and a penis. It was a joke the two women were making. It's not at all relevant. It doesn't connect to anything. These were among the obvious things that did not belong in any report to Congress. "I believe we can remove the reference to genitalia and the to-MA-to," Starr said.

You'll remember that the Lewinsky affair came to light because a then-friend of Lewinsky's, Linda Tripp, taped their conversations about Clinton and leaked them to Newsweek.  Now as far as I know, no-one has ever managed to discover what this reference to a tomato and a penis was. It must have been connected, at least obliquely, to the President-gamming scenario, or it would never have been included in the first place. Equally, as we can see from Woodward's account, it was considered to be disposable from the referral for the purposes of impeachment, and thus cannot have directly related to the question of whether Clinton obstructed justice. This is borne out by the record; nowhere in his testimony to the Grand Jury was Clinton asked about tomatoes.

The other question I have relates to a footnote to the referral itself:

Quote
Ms. Lewinsky testified that during this bathroom encounter, she and the President kissed, and he touched her bare breasts with his hands and his mouth.(206) The President "was talking about performing oral sex on me," according to Ms. Lewinsky.(207) But she stopped him because she was menstruating and he did not.(208) Ms. Lewinsky did perform oral sex on him.(209)

Spoiler alert
(and as a footnote to that particular day's activity: a little-known addendum was that, when questioned on her niece's activities, Lewinsky's aunt reported that she had been told that "...the encounter concluded with the President masturbating into a bathroom sink." )
[close]

Footnote 209 there reads as follows:

Quote209.  Lewinsky 8/26/98 Depo. at 20. They engaged in oral-anal contact as well. Id

However, if one examines the Lewinsky deposition as it was released to Congress, the reference to the painters-thwarted cunnilingus and the anal-oral contact is redacted:



We thus cannot determine if, unable to orally stimulate Lewinsky's privates, the President obligingly tongued her ring, or if - as so often in the tragic case - it was Lewinsky who was on kneeling duty. Now, it may seem that the second redacted section there must deal exclusively with acts performed on the President, given the preceding question, but that cannot be fully verified. There is a lot missing there, and the questioning could easily have proceeded something like:

Quote

Q. Okay, on that date did you gratify him in some way  other than performing oral sex?
A. Yes
Q. Could you elaborate please?
A. I praised his efforts in Northern Ireland
Q. Did any further sexual contact occur?
A. Yes, he tongued my ass while I read aloud from Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass

etc


So, can anyone help answer these questions? Does anyone else feel fondly nostalgic for the days when Presidential lying centred largely around where and how he ejaculated?

Pogue Mahone

There's no need to get all sentimental; presidential lying has remained centred largely around warheads and where or how they might explode.

jutl

Quote from: Pogue Mahone on September 11, 2007, 06:36:47 AM
There's no need to get all sentimental; presidential lying has remained centred largely around warheads and where or how they might explode.

That reminds me of a great paper by Deborah Cameron of the University of Strathclyde. She got two groups of students to list as many names for the penis as they could, then analysed the categories of term produced to see if they could illuminate the cultural framework that the students shared surrounding the subject of cocks.

QuoteSEX AS A WEAPON.
The association a the penis with weapons of destruction has been much analyzed and deplored in feminist writing. (For a good illustration in the domain of "nukespeak," the language of nuclear defense technology, see Cohn 1989.) It is certainly apparent in 15 items on the male group's list.
Most weaponry terms for the penis ring the changes on three types of weapon: guns (spoo gun, squirt gun, love pistol, passion rifle), spears or knives (meat spear, lightsabre), and missiles (pink torpedo, heat-seeking moisture missile). There are other terms which do not directly name weapons but which clearly evoke warfare and destruction, such as stealth bomber, destroyer, and a series of terms invoking the word helmet (polished helmet, shiny helmet, purple helmeted love warrior). The helmet presumably is a fanciful allusion to the shape and position of the glans, but its military connotations are clear (especially in the last item).
One notable feature of this whole category is the persistent collocation of "love" and "war"- terms (passion rifle, love warrior), which presumably indicates the metaphorical linking of sex and violence much discussed by feminists in relation to cultural norms of masculinity.

pdf here

chand

Quote from: jutl on September 11, 2007, 10:29:10 AM
That reminds me of a great paper by Deborah Cameron of the University of Strathclyde. She got two groups of students to list as many names for the penis as they could, then analysed the categories of term produced to see if they could illuminate the cultural framework that the students shared surrounding the subject of cocks.

I'd just like to use this opportunity to mention my greatest achievement. Back in 2003 I had a website which spun out of a ridiculous in-joke me and my mates had about a band called 'Panda Flan Attack' and several stupid spin-off bands relating to it. Anyway, as a workshy layabout student I made a website full of 'hilarious' spoof news entries about these fictional bands, including this one:

Quote19th March 2003 - PFA Anti-War Single Inexplicably Fails To Stop War
The new Panda Flan Attack protest single 'War Bad Pandas Good' has had 'no discernible effect' on US war plans, it was announced today. The single, which makes the point that war could be averted if everyone stopped fighting and went to the zoo to look at cute panda babies, was reportedly 'not a factor' in the war plans put forward by Rumsfeld and Powell. PFA member G_[wrd] blamed the UN for not acting quickly enough, saying 'You know, I was watching all these Security Council meetings on TV, and NOT ONCE did countries like France mention any of the points raised in the song'. PFA's recent tourmates, Marvin Likes Barmcakes, joined in by saying that it's 'probably about right' to blame the French for 'everything'. MLB were themselves disappointed when their penis-related anti-war song 'Coalition Of The Willy', was not playlisted by Radio 1. The song criticised Bush for 'attacking Saddam's palace' because George W has a 'teeny tiny phallus'.

One day the following year I was Googling around and found that the bit in bold, referring to a song which obviously didn't exist, had been cited in this serious looking academic article which covers much the same themes as the article mentioned above, about how we associate war with phallic imagery, thus...

Quote"Does this not suggest that the "Coalition of the Willing" might well be understood by many, if only unconsciously, as the "Coalition of the Willy"? Given Bush's pronunciation, perhaps this understanding was even a factor in Tony Blair's hisotrical endorsement of the Coalition.

The possibility seems to have been recognized in Australia in March 2003, where a pop group (Panda Flan Attack) produced an anti-war song Coalition Of The Willy exploring the psycho-physical challenges of the American leadership in "attacking Saddam's palace" [more]."

Sadly the first and last time I've ever 'explored psycho-physical challenges'. I found it fascinating though, it's interesting that that guy either misunderstood what I said or deliberately took it out of context, but theoretically people could cite that paper, and a myth could build up that it actually existed. Made me think that things we take as fact from history could easiy have evolved from similar kind of untruths.

Sorry for that bit of tenuous self-indulgence, as you were!

jutl

Not at all. You wont find a more self-indulgent thread on the board...