When an exasperated Orrin Hatch called the Big He (Monica’s pet name for the object of her affection) a jerk, many good citizens were offended by the senator’s pungent use of the vernacular. It strikes me as a rather mild, and entirely accurate epithet.
After all, Brother Orrin had offered Charming Billy an escape route from his fine mess, speculating that if he just came out with sufficient contrition and told the whole truth to the grand jury, the American public would say, OK, Clinton is a sex pervert and pathological liar, but let’s walk away from the Zippergate stink and muddle through until the president retires and joins the ranks of disgraced public figures who have become radio talk-show hosts.
By the way, Frank and the lads at SLOC have sent out feelers to Clinton about joining SLOC after his presidency comes to an end. Whether he comes to us prematurely, or after the fulfillment of his tenure, we would be delighted to have him aboard, intoned the excited but dignified Olympic chief and pious gasbag. We believe there’s a good fit between his mastery of humbug and our professed commitment to the Olympic Spirit and the Children of the World.
The Big Jerk let Brother Orrin down, and he let everybody else down with his evasive equivocating weasely I-am-not-a-crook Nixonian speech to the nation. Everybody already knew he had canoodled, as Orrin Hatch’s salaciously put it, with the chubby bobbysoxer from Beverly Hills, and everybody knew he had lied about it. But most people didn’t think it was such a big deal, given the universal phenomenon of duplicity in matters of sexual behavior.
So, all he really had to do was stare soulfully at the camera, bite his lip, and shoot his wad, confession-wise: My fellow Americans, I owe you a big apology (eyes now misting over) for lying through my teeth about that woman Miss Lewinsky (catch in the throat) who did in fact visit me in the Oval Office where she did in fact give me a whole lot of hummers. For good measure, Clinton could have also made a clean breast of it and confessed to improper fellatio and fornication with the curvaceous Paula Jones, a former Miss America gal from Arkansas, Barbra Streisand, TV gal Cookie Roberts, and gold-medal skater and example of Olympic spirit Tara Lipinski.
Instead of using the opportunity to exploit the American public’s hunger for operatic acts of contrition and tearful appeals for forgiveness, the Big Jerk invoked wife, daughter and God and tore into special prosecutor Kenneth Starr. Now Ken Starr is a creep and I say a plague on both his office and the White House. I do feel sorry for Chelsea, but not for Hillary, the depiction of whom as a long-suffering and self-sacrificing spouse is, so to speak, hard to swallow. Her own lying defense of Bill leaves a bad taste in the mouth. Those in the know have been aware that Bill and Hillary have had an arrangement, and that besides the late Vince Foster, the First Lady has found satisfaction elsewhere for a number of years. (Though I don’t believe for a moment those persistent rumors that every Tuesday at 10 a.m. she gets a four-handed full body massage from Congressmen Chris Cannon and Merrill Cook.)
Our President’s desperate attempts to hold on to his job are doomed to failure. Sending love signals to Monica by wearing the navy and gold silk Zegna necktie didn’t work. Bombing a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan and chemical plants in the Sudan didn’t work (people were on to that gambit because of the movie Wag the Dog, where a president caught in flagrante with a Girl Scout tried to distract the nation with a phony war).
No, the Big Jerk will have to go. Sooner or later, probably sooner, we will gather around our idiot boxes and watch the president resign for the good of the country, then stride across the south lawn of the White House and board the helicopter with Hillary, Chelsea and dog Buddy. At the top of the steps he will turn and wave, bite his lip and duck into the whirring helicopter. True believers, right-wing conspirators and ditto-heads will finally have revenge for Nixon.
The world won’t be the same without the Big Jerk, or else, it will be.