The Crazy Years

Via David Boaz, a 1999 San Francisco Chronicle article that reminds us of how completely insane our political culture was back then:

Nina Burleigh, former White House correspondent for Time, confessed that she enjoyed having Clinton check out her naked legs after they played a game of hearts aboard Air Force One en route to Jasper, Ark. "If he had asked me to continue the game of hearts back in his room at the Jasper Holiday Inn, I would have been happy to go there and see what happened," Burleigh wrote in Mirabella. Elaborating for the Washington Post, she said, "I'd be happy to give him (oral sex) just to thank him for keeping abortion legal."

Apparently this really happened and Mirabella was a real magazine. And of course Mike Huckabee decided to let a convicted rapist run free because his imprisonment was somehow part of the Vast Clinton Conspiracy only for him to murder someone. Of course the year and a half after 9/11 was pretty crazy, too, but at least that craziness was based on a real national trauma.

Comments

The Jasper Holiday Inn? That's where Clinton stayed?

Posted by Bill | November 3, 2007 9:31 AM

I wonder if Justice Stevens and Justice Souter ever get offers like that.

Posted by southpaw | November 3, 2007 9:52 AM

Aren't you the delicate flower, Yglesias. It was Mirabella, the woman was a People mag-style writer, and the comment is funny as hell.

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | November 3, 2007 10:00 AM

"Aren't you the delicate flower, Yglesias. It was Mirabella, the woman was a People mag-style writer, and the comment is funny as hell."

Yup.

However, Matthew is correct that the blowjob year was a damn crazy year.

Posted by Petey | November 3, 2007 10:03 AM

What SCMT said.

I'll add that my reaction to the quote was not how "completely insane" our political culture was in those days, but how retardedly earnest and dumbed-down our journalism has become since then. You see, young fella Matt, in 1999 magazines and newspapers published that sort of thing all the time, and readers were clever enough to understand and appreciate it.

Posted by James Gary | November 3, 2007 10:09 AM

You know, if I couldn't verify my actual independent existence, I'd be starting to suspect that James Gary, Petey, and SomeCallMeTim were the same person.

Posted by James Gary | November 3, 2007 10:11 AM

"You know, if I couldn't verify my actual independent existence, I'd be starting to suspect that James Gary, Petey, and SomeCallMeTim were the same person."

You can verify that SCMT and I are different people by bringing up the topic of Isiah Lord Thomas III.

Posted by Petey | November 3, 2007 10:20 AM

Can you give me a question to distinguish between a SCMT and a Petey?

Posted by doctor | November 3, 2007 10:51 AM

Hey all,

Ok, so I, for one, am pretty horrified at the Burleigh comment in a bunch of ways.

First off, there is the meta-horrification (I am horrified at being horrified). This is my feminist streak pissed off at myself for this comment.

Second, I am horrified because this statement serves to undermine the president. Look, I agree that policy needs to matter and not character. I can agree that the Monica thing was a load of BS. Still, the fact is that, as much as possible, we need to expect our presidents to not drop the ball. Ever.

The fact is, Clinton often got called for dropping the ball when he really hadn't. But in this case, and regardless of whether or not it should matter, Clinton handicapped himself. While in power. Burleigh's statement, while asserting her rightful sexual freedoms, further helps the handicapping by hitting at Clinton's self-imposed weakness.

This all sucks. On one hand, women need to have the right to express these sentiments. On the other, this line would still seem to undermine the president. I don't think that 1999 media was more nuanced. I think it was less democratized. As such, Burleigh's statement might have gone under the radar in a way that is impossible now.

Look, I'll straight up cop to being delicate. In an environment in which character is the cudgel the we keep getting slammed with, how can I not be sensitive about moral lapses (regardless of whether or not it's a lapse in someone else's moral criteria)? It isn't as though the right will stop using character as this cudgel if we all , as a nation, decide to admit our personal moral lapses...because most of the nation isn't interested is admitting their moral lapses (or that the "lapses" are not immoral at all).

I don't know how you get beyond all of the implications of the character front the right has opened up on us. I just think that there is no reason that we should weaken ourselves there when we have bigger, more immediate fights in the rest of the theater.

Sorry for the incoherence and rambling.

Posted by Gus | November 3, 2007 11:00 AM

I'm with Gus. Clinton's recklessness opened the gates for the Neocon hordes to pour through. Call it naivete on the part of the voting public if you will, but the results were predictable.

Posted by JackD | November 3, 2007 11:20 AM

Clinton's recklessness opened the gates for the Neocon hordes to pour through.

Hmmm. This suggests a vastly different interpretation of the scenes of orcs able to breach the castle walls than we saw in the Lord of the Rings movies.

On a more serious note, though, the Lewinsky scandal broke in the beginning of 1998 -- while the Democrats lost Congress in 1994 to the maniac Gingrichites / New Right / Reagan II revivalists.

Posted by El Cid | November 3, 2007 11:29 AM

as i read this one, somecallmepeteygarytron has completely missed my's point.

he was not expressing genuine horror. he was rather pointing out how trivial the issues were back then, and how little they were deserving of outrage.

back then, we got into a tizzy about sex.
now, we've got torture, the trashing of habeas, and a fascist coup in progress, and nobody gives a damn.

and back then we thought things were *so crazy!*. but they were not. it was pretty small-potatoes stuff, stuff we'd trade for our present troubles in a heart-beat.

i think that's closer to what my is on about--not any 'delicate' sensibilities on his part.

Posted by kid bitzer | November 3, 2007 11:44 AM

"I'm with Gus. Clinton's recklessness opened the gates for the Neocon hordes to pour through. Call it naivete on the part of the voting public if you will, but the results were predictable."

Not saying that Clinton's behavior was a non-factor, but I don't think it was significant drag on Gore. He won the popular vote, and could have picked more votes if he had campaigned with Clinton more. A politician promising a "humble foreign policy" poured through the gates.

Having a media that convinced people Gore and Bush agreed on everything and Gore having advisers that were convinced Clinton would ruin his campaign were way bigger problems then Clinton.

Posted by Christopher Colaninno | November 3, 2007 11:49 AM

The Crazy Years

I thought that was the term for the lead up to the 2004 Presidential election and what we've been experiencing since.

Give me 1999 any day.

Posted by SoCalJustice | November 3, 2007 11:53 AM

as i read this one, somecallmepeteygarytron has completely missed my's point.

Ah, authorial intent vs. the text rears its head. If you're right, Yglesias should have quoted some other (almost any other) part of the article, because as done above it looks like it's being used to report insane behavior, not as an example of insane reporting of funny behavior.

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | November 3, 2007 11:55 AM

he was not expressing genuine horror. he was rather pointing out how trivial the issues were back then, and how little they were deserving of outrage.

Really? My take was that Nina Burleigh's Mirabella piece was an ironically-intended putdown of the huge storm over Clinton's blowjob--so she was already pointing out the triviality of the issue.

But having read your comment, Matt's post, and Boaz's original link (from the Cato Foundation), I'm actually not sure what to think. Boaz seems to take Burleigh at face value--whether Matt does or not is not as clear as it first seemed.

Posted by James Gary | November 3, 2007 12:00 PM

I was referring to the 2000 presidential election. As for mistakes by Gore in the campaign, I agree but note that the reason for the mistakes was an understandable desire to separate himself from Clinton. The election was much closer than it "should have been" without which the Supreme Court might have preserved its reputation and the course of history quite different.

Posted by JackD | November 3, 2007 12:01 PM

"But having read your comment, Matt's post, and Boaz's original link (from the Cato Foundation), I'm actually not sure what to think. Boaz seems to take Burleigh at face value--whether Matt does or not is not as clear as it first seemed."

We need Jacques Derrida to start commenting.

Posted by Petey | November 3, 2007 12:06 PM

And completely off topic, I just found out that the 2003 telemovie The Deal is going to be on HBO this Thursday night. It's never been shown in America in any form, so this is really nice.

If you, like me, thought that the scene in The Queen where Blair is told, "Gordon's on the phone," and replies, "tell him to wait," was the single funniest moment in the movie by far, you really ought to TiVo The Deal.

The few. The proud. The lefty politics geeks.

Posted by Petey | November 3, 2007 12:12 PM

Having a media that convinced people Gore and Bush agreed on everything and Gore having advisers that were convinced Clinton would ruin his campaign were way bigger problems then Clinton.

I agree with you, Christopher, insofar as it motivated people on the left to vote for Nader. But, wouldn't you also say that the manufactured perception of Clinton as "immoral", and the larger perception of the left as "immoral", serve to pull nominally socially conservative voters away from candidates that really do align with their economic (and other) sensibilities?

As such, Burleigh's statements serve to further polarize the sides in a stupid (and stupidly provocative) culture war?

Posted by gus | November 3, 2007 12:32 PM

I read the article as saying that Clinton should have had higher standards.

Posted by mpowell | November 3, 2007 12:44 PM

Gotta love the angle that this was sophisticated and oh-so-subtle satire. It does put an interesting twist on Ms. Burleigh's more recent writing:

"On so many levels that it would require a full-length term paper to quantify (perhaps some Wesleyan professor of porno deconstruction has already assigned it), George W. Bush is the quintessential Hooters guy. What Ariel Levy’s research shows is that during his ignominious reign, the entire country has become Hooterville—not the mythic cracker town, but a national amusement-park version of the bigbusted franchise. Women’s real sexual needs (such a quaint notion; even quainter to find there’s actually a thoughtful 30-year-old woman still writing about them) are simply irrelevant in a nation where the female role has been reduced to its darkest primordial essence: entertaining the troops."

http://www.observer.com/node/37679

Posted by southpaw | November 3, 2007 12:47 PM

I followed a link to some 1999 article, with those words: "Most blatant pork ploy. Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy sneaked in a rider conferring Great Lake status on little Lake Champlain. (Leahy hoped to capture research dollars for his state, which borders the lake.)"

Ah, the age of innocence, when the most blantant pork ploy was to snatch some measly RESEARCH DOLLARS!

Honestly, equivalents of bridges to nowhere surely existed, but our journalists follow the slogan: clueless yesterday, clueless today, clueless forever!

I am a bit confused. What "checking out bare legs" is? What I understood makes no sense:

(a) POTUS ogles a journalist's legs as they were not covered with fabric

(b) the journalists in question muses that she would be ready to engage in oral sex, which she did not

(c) it is supposed to characterize "political culture" in some way.

Comments are also confusing. Dropping the ball? What ball? Didn't Clinton start and finish his term in office with a complete pair?

Posted by piotr | November 3, 2007 12:59 PM

Call me puritanical, but I don't see how it's OK for journalists who are ostensibly covering political figures to describe their desires to engage in sex acts with those political figures.

Also not-so-great is the suggestion that these sex acts would be an exchange for said politician advancing policies that the reporter favors.

I'll assume that Burleigh's comments were tongue-in-cheek, but still, it's hard for me to see this as an Edward R. Murrow moment.

Also, there's the point that the whole damn country was locked in on the Clenis. Which in retrospect seems not to really have been all that important.

I agree with Matt's post.

Posted by Elvis Elvisberg | November 3, 2007 1:38 PM

Hey piotr,

So this is how I am reading the snip.
1. Clinton is looking at Burleigh's legs.
2. Burleigh, is not offended by this.
2a. Within the context, other women might have been.
3. Burleigh suggests that she'd even have sex with him.
4. Burleigh suggests that Clinton's policy stance should nab him a whole lot of sex.

Is this a fair take? If so, I'm saying...
1. The right attacks the left on grounds of immorality.
2. Clinton is widely considered to be a philanderer, hence "immoral".
3. Clinton abuses his position and accepts sex from Monica.
4. Burleigh says she'd go down too, and so should you.
5. This all further supports the perspective that fence-sitting voters may have about the "immorality" Clinton, and more importantly, the left.

I don't think I'm talking about political culture as much as I'm talking about the division between the national cultures in this country. Since we won't split into two countries, and there are many fights to be had, why would a reporter inject herself into the "culture war" in a way that further undermines the perceptions of the left?

I mean, I think I might know why. She fully believes that Clinton's take on abortion issue is the right one. I think my problem is that the statement needlessly rubs this position in the noses of social conservatives. I don't want anyone on our side to gloat, because the war isn't over. And in this issue in particular, the tide has turned against pro-choicers.

Posted by Gus | November 3, 2007 1:39 PM

"But, wouldn't you also say that the manufactured perception of Clinton as "immoral", and the larger perception of the left as "immoral", serve to pull nominally socially conservative voters away from candidates that really do align with their economic (and other) sensibilities?

As such, Burleigh's statements serve to further polarize the sides in a stupid (and stupidly provocative) culture war?"

Speaking more broadly then the 2000 election I'd agree that the 'left' has been tagged with being about the decline of morality and that can hurt the Democrats with some voters. Given that chart of the election outcomes if only poor, middle class, or rich people voted that post here a few days ago I'm sure how much it hurts, but it's a problem.

I'm not really what the exact context for Burleigh's statement was, but I imagine she was trying to be provocative. Hell, if she had more stuff like this I might have some clue who she is.

I guess it comes down to my belief that if you didn't vote for Al Gore because Bill Clinton got a blow job then you probably low hanging fruit for the GOP every year.

Posted by Christopher Colaninno | November 3, 2007 1:42 PM

Matt, I'm only a year older than you, and I remember this as one of the most well-known quotations of the whole Clinton/Lewinksy affair. I don't think anyone regarded the remark as tongue-in-cheek, as in some in this thread are trying to claim; conservatives were horrified by it and used it an example of the moral bankruptcy of post-Clinton feminism; liberals also were rather skeeved out by it and reacted much as Mr. Elvisberg has reacted in this thread.

Posted by James Kabala | November 3, 2007 2:25 PM

Matt, I'm only a year older than you, and I remember this as one of the most well-known quotations of the whole Clinton/Lewinksy affair. I don't think anyone regarded the remark as tongue-in-cheek, as in some in this thread are trying to claim; conservatives were horrified by it and used it an example of the moral bankruptcy of post-Clinton feminism; liberals also were rather skeeved out by it and reacted much as Mr. Elvisberg has reacted in this thread.

Posted by James Kabala | November 3, 2007 2:25 PM

"Skeeved out" is an excellent summary of the prevailing reaction.

I'd add that Nina Burleigh gives me a galloping case of the wiggins.

Posted by southpaw | November 3, 2007 2:32 PM

Thanks for your informed perspective, James. FWIW, I'm about the same age as you, and I don't remember this at all.

I think it's hard to take this story as emblamatic of much beyond the weirdness of Nina Burleigh.

Here's the heartwarming story of her courtship and wedding.

Posted by Elvis Elvisberg | November 3, 2007 3:09 PM

Gotta love the angle that this was sophisticated and oh-so-subtle satire... et al.

Hey, I never said it was sophisticated or subtle. The paragraph, which I read for the first time this morning, seems like a well-timed Bronx cheer in a debate that was hopefully the high-water-mark of American sanctimonious hypocrisy. But that's reading it from the vantage point of 2007, without the historical context other commenters have subsequently supplied.

(Historical side note: after about the first month of circus-like coverage of the Lewinsky affair, I quit reading--in sheer disgust--all newspapers and newsmagazines and didn't listen to TV or radio news at all for three years, until you-know-when. This is true.)

Posted by James Gary | November 3, 2007 4:12 PM

By much the same token, it occurred to me to wonder whether Matt Stoller was getting laid for writing this post.

Posted by Steve | November 3, 2007 4:23 PM

By much the same token, it occurred to me to wonder whether Matt Stoller was getting laid for writing this post.

If he did, more power to him. Digby is teh hawt.

Posted by James Gary | November 3, 2007 4:57 PM

It is so-nineties.

Fast forward, GOP had its duly recorded series of sexual pecadilloes, which let the public note that Clinton (a) did not pay for sex, (b) Monica was of an opposite sex, (c) and not underaged. I guess Sen. Craig is on the cutting edge of the culture war now. There is nothing disorderly in a discreet solicitation!!!

And the left gain morality agenda of its own with issues like torture or the use of female soldiers as props to conduct sexual/religious humiliation.

The lines in the "culture wars" definetely shifted. Observe a relatively recent bruhaha in Georgia. A highschool football player got a multi-year sentence for engaging in a deviant voluntary sexual practice with a minor, which somehow was on the book while the sex itself was not. Very interestingly, after the boy was sent to slammer Georgia's legislature removed classification of oral sex from the list of deviant sexual practices (so part of the outcry was why is prosecutors were against parole for an offence that was legalized). Common sense in Georgia, of all places?

Posted by piotr | November 3, 2007 6:33 PM

Elvis Elvisberg: Maybe I was just too much of a political junkie at a young age, probably more so than I am now, in fact. If you were a normal teenager with normal interests you probably wouldn't have been aware of it; it's not as if it was ever the top story on the nightly news. And who knows, maybe she did mean it tongue-in-cheek and there was universal misinterpretation of it.

Posted by James Kabala | November 3, 2007 7:21 PM

This whole bit makes me laugh.

The chimpanzees need to look at how REAL chimpanzees actually behave sexually. Yes, they screw for reasons not including procreation. Yes, they engage in homosexual behavior. Yes, some primates (I'm not sure about chimps per se) even engage in rape. Yes, bonobos are totally promiscuous and non-monogamous.

Now switch to human chimps.

1) They get upset because some male looked at some female's legs.

(Googling for an image of Burley doesn't make it clear whether Clinton has any taste or not. Some Google images indicate she's not unattractive, but no legs are on display. Clinton's interest in Elizabeth Ward Gracen made a lot more sense - she is seriously hot.)

2) They get upset because said male was married at the time - like that marriage was ever legitimate in the first place, or that marriage renders a male - despite all evolutionary evidence to the contrary - a monk.

3) They get further upset when said female doesn't mind admitting she'd screw said married male - like married males only philander with married females.

4) They get further upset when another taboo subject - oral sex - is mentioned.

5) They get further upset when another taboo subject - sex for reasons other than procreation OR "love" - is mentioned.

It is to laugh. You people have been so beaten down by religion and social customs that you can't even draw a breath.

Read my lips. Sex is a biological requirement that is more basic than and predates procreation. Evolution tied procreation to it because it's efficient to do so. It's not a rational behavior (which is not to say it can't be done rationally), it's a pre-rational basic need selected for by evolution. So that need is satisfied in ways that make no sense in many cases, just as humans do many things that make no rational sense and are directly and obviously against their actual rational interests.

As for Matt's point, I think he meant it to say that compared to today, it's meaningless. In one sense, namely that the crimes of the present administration are far greater than perjury over sex, he's correct.

In another sense, however, he isn't - because taboos and transgression still rule human culture and human behavior - and they continue to influence politics and social perception. As a demonstration, Matt was just spreading a rumor the other day about possible candidate kinkiness the LA Times was sitting on.

So is TODAY part of those "crazy times"? Apparently so.

Who really cares if some Republican likes consensual sex with some underage male who also likes old gay men - or the money they pay him for sex? Does that really matter when it comes to that Republican's desire to start a war with Iran?

I don't care that Clinton had an affair with an intern in the Oval Office. I note that he lied about it to the public - and a lot of other things.

I don't care if Craig solicited homosexual sex in a rest room. I note that he lied about it.

I don't care if Hillary is a lesbian. I note that she wants to start more wars.

I don't care if Republicans like young boys. I note that they want to start more wars.

Like I said, if you chimps had any brains, Bill Clinton could have stood there and told the US public, "Yeah, I had sex in the Oval Office. Yeah, I had sex with dozens of babes over the years while married to this permanently forty-year-old bitch. So what? Next question!"

And if Hillary had any brains, she would have dumped him, hooked up with Jodie Foster (assuming Jodie has that bad taste - and she might) and gone on without a second thought.

Let's keep our eyes on what's important. As long as nobody is being raped or otherwise coerced, how people get their thang on is simply irrelevant.

But, no - the main chimp characteristic you inherit is the one that says "nobody else can do anything I don't do". In fact, "nobody else can do anything that I DO do."

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | November 3, 2007 9:42 PM

"permanently 40-year old bitch..."

at some point, it does not sound that bad at all!

Large proportion of today's 40-year-olds are in sufficiently good shape that wishing such a partner for life is not crazy at all.

Posted by piotr | November 3, 2007 11:41 PM

All these years of man-crush articles on Bush later,absurd macho posturing, cod-pieces in flightsuits, with major media figures presently nattering on about how masculine the leading Republicans are--how manly that Thompson smells!--and some of you people are shocked--shocked!--about Nina Burleigh's little Clinton joke?

Posted by rea | November 4, 2007 7:17 AM

Richard Steven Hack: Your surname is appropriate.

Posted by James Kabala | November 4, 2007 7:20 AM

Ummmmm I live in Jasper Arkansas. We are a town of about 500. We don't have a Holiday Inn. In fact there are no chain hotels here period!!! We don't even have a traffic light. Incidentally you don't fly here. The closest airport is about 2 hours from here. It takes over 3 hours to drive from Little Rock. The article is a joke.

Posted by Kim Van Scoy | November 11, 2007 7:04 AM