If
there's anything that disappoints Genevieve and me more than Clinton's serial amnesia,
it's the public's parroted shock and dismay at his behavior. "Can you
imagine?" people ask, mouths wide enough to insert a pair of Keds. While
there may be a few Pollyannas out there who genuinely believe Clinton's
behavior is out of synch with the rest of the planet's (Kenneth Starr,
known to sing hymns on his morning jog, may be one of them), most of us
make a show of dropping our jaws for two reasons: because it is a way of
asserting that we would never behave this way, and because it helps us
explain the collective right we feel to rip the roof off the White House
and hold a magnifying glass to its antechambers.
Faux censure has been a means of extracting gossip for some time. In
medieval "penitentials," priests catalogued sinful acts with a degree of
thoroughness that now seems, well, excessive. Indeed, Catholic confession
could be seen as an ingenious means of providing a fortunate few with
tantalizing gossip. The Lewinsky debacle, meanwhile, has entertained more
than a few who sit in judgement: arms crossed, priestlike, we the nation
have instructed Clinton to confess his sins again, we didn't hear him the
first time. How many times? On Easter Sunday? Where? Can we see a diagram?
Is the priest better than the confessor? Some are, some aren't.
Representative Dan Burton, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, who
called Clinton, according to the Times, "a name that is a vulgarity for a
condom," recently confessed under duress to supporting a mistress and
child out of wedlock. There may be a few elected officials who have never
had an affair, but we have a hunch they aren't the ones making all the noise.
The great irony of recent events is that we liked Clinton better when we
knew he was lying through his teeth. Polls indicated that most people
believed he was dissimulating before the confession (his guilt was pretty
clear given his silence and Monica's tapes). Why did we like him better for
lying? Perhaps because it was an understandable response -- it is, after
all, what most people do when pressed about infidelities, and perhaps it
permitted us to forgive him without implicating ourselves.
Indeed, Clinton's belated honesty put the nation in an uncomfortable
position -- it's the old "if you don't hate faggots you must be one" grade
school conundrum: if you're not disgusted with adultery you must be
screwin' around.
Of course we should make clear that we don't condone Clinton's behavior --
these are the words that everyone must pronounce to be cleansed of
associative culpability. This incantation elevates us, distances us from
the damned. In truth, both self-deception and deception of others are
lamentable, and neither has been in short supply in recent weeks.
At the end of the day, when all the fingers have been wagged, the Lewinsky
debacle is more about entertainment than anything else. Ratings are up,
circulations are high, and the subject won't go away until that changes.
Sure, everyone says they're sick of the subject, but when Larry King is
fingering his suspenders over the nuances of welfare reform, many will be
reminiscing about the good old days when CNN was interrupting regular
programming with the lab results on Monica's besmattered dress.
