LETTERS From CAMP Rehoboth |
CAMPOUT: A Rehoboth Journal -- Why wasn't Fabio on the cover? |
by Fay Jacobs |
"Did you complete your next column?" Bonnie asked. "Well, it depends on your legal definition of the word complete," I obfuscated. "Ive been working on it, on and off, for a long time; Id say I went back to it about ten different times, for, oh, twenty minutes at a stretch. Once or twice, I even took it into the bathroom to re-read, but since I havent printed it out yet, Id say no." And who can blame me? Just like everybody else I know, Ive been busy reading The Starr Report. Well, come to think of it, thats not legally true, either. I had the newspaper read to me. Since I didnt do the actual reading, I wasnt the reader, I was just the readee, and therefore, I can legally state that although I now know the material intimately, I did not finish the whole report, so...AUGGHHH!!! On Friday afternoon, September 11, when the technological revolution as we know it reached its zenith, and The Starr Report was posted on the Internet, all I could get from my Internet provider was a busy signal. The blinding frustration I felt must have been something akin to that which the leader of the free world felt every time some pesky congressman rang up the oval office and caused Monica Interruptus. I sat at my desk, hearing my computer modems busy beep, and thought that maybe the Unibomber was right after all, and technology is evil. On the other hand, if the worlds collective race to read the smarmy details of one little tawdry office romance actually crashed the Internet, it could be just the thing to get teenagers away from their keyboards and back into reading newspapers. Thanks to a busy beach weekend, I never actually had time to consider reading The Starr Report until the drive home on Sunday. And since Ive been known to get carsick simply reading the nutritional information on the back of a can of Yoo Hoo, I knew drastic action was required. "Ill drive home," I said to Bonnie, "and you can read the thing to me." So she did. No offense to my spouses oral interp skills, but both dogs were asleep, and I was starting to nod off by the time we got to Milton. And that was during the reading of the more salacious stuff. Lets face it, it cost Ken Starr 40 million of our dollars to produce something Sydney Sheldon could have knocked off in a weekend. Im surprised that Starr didnt have Fabio on the cover of this bodice ripper. At one point, I started to sweat profusely and thought I was having some perverse nervous system event. I mean, the stuff wasnt that steamy. Truth was the newspaper section was so heavy that when Bonnie laid part of it down she accidentally turned on the seat warmers. By the time we got to Denton, Bonnies voice was getting hoarse from reading, I was chugging caffeine to keep me on the road, and we were only up to the tenth time Monica accidentally loitered by the Oval Office (just you or I try that and wed be chained to the White House fence, waiting for a Swat Team to haul us off). Forty million of our dollars and this was the best the prosecutors could come up with? Unless it was a Cuban Cigar, I dont see anything impeachable here. Dont get me wrong, Im disgusted that Bill Clinton made such a foolish spectacle of himself. I mean, that drivel about the legal definition of an affair is merely his way of saying this time, he didnt get to EXHALE. This whole thing is a big case of TOO MUCH INFORMATION!!!!!! Were having a national tizzy over a sophomoric office assignation that has turned the country into one big Jerry Springer Show. Elected officials all over the map are rushing up to the microphone to blurt out details of illicit affairs. Who asked them! Has anybody stopped to think exactly how many people wouldnt be embarrassed to see the graphic details of their intimate romantic interludes (no matter how vanilla) in a special section of the New York Times? If theres a sequel, who is it going to be? Newt? Madeleine Albright? Boris Yeltsin? And as for Ken Starr, give me a break. With all those resources, and six years of investigating Clinton for everything from Whitewater to campaign financing, then to come up with nothing more than Monica Lewinsky means hes either the most inept prosecutor since Hamilton Burger faced Perry Mason, or....and heres a novel thought...the Clinton Administration actually did nothing illegal. The way Congress is behaving youd think Clinton and Monica conspired to sell arms to Iran. Oh, thats right, that wouldnt be impeachable either. By the time we got home, I had heard quite enough of The Starr Report, and by 9 p.m. it was on the kitchen floor, under the puppy, where it belonged. So now what? Are our elected officials (a few of which we actually still respect) going to have nationally televised impeachment hearings about this stuff? If I were a member of Congress, Id be embarrassed if I even suspected our founding fathers meant for the articles of impeachment to be used in judging this kind of behavior. If Ben Franklin had warned Thomas Jefferson to stop fooling around with the servants or face impeachment proceedings, I have a feeling Jefferson would have told Franklin to go fly a kite. |
LETTERS From CAMP Rehoboth, Vol. 8, No. 13, September 18, 1998. |