Wag the Dog

Tags: govt corruption | |

Today an article was published in the NZ Herald (a low rent tabloid) which refers to Mikeys’s article. The columnist had obviously not seen the film starring Robert De Niro and Dustin Hoffman ‘Wag The Dog’ (1998)

This article below is republished for her benefit:

(a comment posted as part of a discussion on http://dailykos.com)
http://justwinbaby.dailykos.com/story/2005/8/17/193249/771

…Clintons cruise missile attack on Bin Ladens Afghani training camps as an attempt to divert attention from the Lewinski stuff.

Lets go back to 1998 itself and some of the existing website commentary.

Hindsight from The New Gun Week September 10, 1998
Tools of Terrorism Big and Small by Joseph P. Tartaro Executive Editor

A number of Americans, including many newspaper and broadcast commentators, could not help comparing President Clinton’s strikes against suspected terrorist installations in The Sudan and Afghanistan on Aug. 20, following his admission of lying in the Monica Lewinski matter three days earlier with the plot of the recent movie “Wag the Dog.”

They saw the close proximity of the events as a parallel to that movie president’s attempt to deflect public attention from his own sexual peccadillos.

Whatever the underlying reasons for the missile attacks in Africa and Asia, this Administration and other governments seem genuinely concerned about the dangers posed by the growing threat of free-lance and government-sponsored terrorism.

It is worth noting that a major target of the government’s recent anti-terrorism strikes, Saudi millionaire and alleged terrorism sponsor Osama bin Laden, is probably not amused by the “Wag the Dog” analogy. He responded to the US strikes by saying he had not yet begun to fight and that his war against the United States and its interests was just getting started.

http://www.ccrkba.org/pub/rkba/hindsight/hs980910.html

Clinton’s “Wag the Dog” Maneuver

…I am a US Navy veteran. I served for 10-1/2 years. I served on USS Detroit during the strikes against Libya in 1985 (one defensive when the Libyan Navy attacked the USS America battle group, and one retaliatory as a ‘pay-back’ for the earlier attack). I missed the Gulf War because I was teaching at Great Lakes when it happened. I was on board the USS Spartanburg County off of the coast of Somalia from the end of January 1994 to May of 1994 covering the pull-out of the UN peacekeeping forces. Marines from my ship were the last American troops to leave Mogadishu, Somalia. I was also on board the USS Spartanburg County when, as the duty MARG we went to Haiti for reasons that are still unclear to me. I have always loved my country, and feel privileged to have been able to serve it to the best of my abilities.

Osama bin Laden
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Nevertheless, over and over again I have watched my country take no effective action to combat terrorism. Even as our troops, businessmen, and tourists are increasingly the target of every yahoo with a gripe, our government responds with meaningless UN resolutions and strongly worded press releases. Time and time again we sit on our hands and ask our police or the police of other nations to respond for us. The terrorists count on our lack of action, they plan on it.

I know, it sounds like I should be cheering our recent military strikes. I do think that they are a step in the right direction and I hope that the trend continues. I am a little saddened at the loss of the moral high ground that we have tried over and over again to take, but terrorists don’t seem to respond well to talking. However, I find it very difficult to believe that the same Clinton that seems to bend over backwards to try to achieve a ‘peaceful’ solution would adopt a military response to terrorist activity.

The strikes are out of character for Clinton and for the US. It’s natural to ask what is different about this terrorist activity at a pair of US embassies as opposed to the car-bombing of the US embassy in Beirut or the siege of the US embassy in Iran. It can’t be just the fact that we now have undetectable tomahawk cruise missiles - they have been around screwing up disarmament attempts since the ’70s (it’s one of our many nuke/conventional weapons systems that makes verification nearly impossible). President Clinton admitted to a lapse of judgment that is incredible in a politician as experienced as he is. If his judgment is (or can be) that impaired, then how can we place our faith in that judgment now?

http://www.anusha.com/wag-dog.htm

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Clinton’s dirty little war

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© 1999 WorldNetDaily.com

Bill Clinton says there was no justification for the Serbs to “abduct” three U.S. servicemen wearing United Nations colors in Macedonia.

This statement, so Clintonesque in its phony authoritativeness, isn’t even flying in the United States, let alone Belgrade. What are the Serbs supposed to do — sit there while U.S. bombs fall on their cities and vital infrastructure and not fight back? Is that what Bill Clinton honestly expected?

Never has this sociopathic president been so obviously out of touch with reality than in this dirty little Serbian war of his. This is a new low — even for a president who has diminished the office he holds beyond our nation’s wildest imagination…

This wag-the-dog-and-pony show of Clinton’s is a disgrace. This war is immoral. It is illegal. There are no vital U.S. interests at stake in the region. There is no battle plan. There is no exit strategy. There is only death and destruction in this war — no higher calling, no noble purpose, no lofty goal.

It’s time to stop looking for an honorable way out for Clinton. The only way out for him is via the rear entrance at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and a free ride back to Arkansas where he can devote his full attention to the only kind of “domestic affairs” for which he is renowned.

Pull the troops out of the Balkans. Stop the bombing today. Relieve the draft-dodging commander-in-chief from further responsibilities.

http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=14713

(SHADES OF CINDY SHEEHAN…PULL OUT THR TROOPS NOW??????????????????????)

MEDIA CRITIC:
Media in Cruise Control
By Jeff Cohen and Seth Ackerman

In the wake of U.S. military strikes abroad, mainstream media coverage tends to follow a traditional script. International law, if mentioned at all, is treated as mere platitude, not as a specific body of precedent. After the recent cruise missile attacks on a Sudanese pharmaceutical plant and Afghan paramilitary camps, for example, few reporters inquired into what “self-defense” actually means in international law. (See “Inalienable Right,” below.)

Civilian casualties of U.S. attacks–if shown at all in the mainstream media–appear briefly and after warnings that the footage is likely part of a propaganda campaign. In contrast to U.S. victims of foreign terrorists, we rarely learn the names of civilian victims or hear their families’ reactions to the attack. True to script, Sudanese civilian victims made only cameo appearances in American media.

And only because of the media-hyped sex scandal raging around Bill Clinton did some mainstream reporters diverge from the traditional script to question the President’s political motives (a la Wag the Dog). It’s refreshing to see Washington reporters finally asking such questions–queries rarely raised when past presidents capitalized politically on military adventures.

Another departure from script, though slow in coming in U.S. media, was the questioning of the Clinton administration’s evidence for targeting the Sudan factory. Within two days of the attack, the European press was quoting factory managers, among others, to puncture the initial U.S. claim that the Sudan plant was a terrorist-funded nerve gas factory with no civilian purpose. In fact, terror suspect Osama bin Laden had no discernable link to the plant, which produced much of Sudan’s medicine. Perhaps slowed by the U.S. media mantra that Sudanese openness to plant inspection was a propaganda ploy, it took the New York Times more than a week to clearly report that U.S. justifications had been “inaccurate, misleading or open to question.”

More telling was the relative lack of emotion about White House deception. In the days prior to the missile attack, editorials and commentaries in top U.S. outlets marshaled unprecedented fury in castigating Clinton for not telling the whole truth about his sex life. There was almost no mainstream outrage at Clinton for not telling the whole truth about an illegal bombing that killed and wounded civilians.

Here’s a chronology of the first days of mainstream news coverage of the missile attacks.

August 20
POSITIVELY REAGANESQUE
Bill Press, the “left” on CNN’s Crossfire, seeks Pat Buchanan’s approval: “You know, Pat, I think this Wag the Dog talk is nonsense. I think the president did the right thing and I know you agree. I mean it was positively Reaganesque, what he did today. I just hope, since Osama bin Laden is still alive, that we have a few cruise missiles left and use them.”

http://www.fair.org/articles/cruise-control.html

I know, I know, “Pat Buchanan”, I cant help it but Sometimes I just like that right wing fascist. Anyone arrsted for punching out a cop can’t be all bad.

MOST DANGEROUS PRESIDENCY Weapons of Mass Distraction
By Christopher Hitchens
FrontPageMagazine.com | March 22, 1999

THIS IS AN ESSAY ABOUT CANINES. It concerns, first, the President of the United States and commander in chief of the U.S. armed forces, whose character was once memorably caught by a commentator in his native Arkansas who called him “a hard dog to keep on the porch.” It concerns, second, the dog or dogs which did not bark in the nighttime. (In the Sherlock Holmes tale Silver Blaze, the failure of such a beast to give tongue–you should pardon the expression–was the giveaway that exposed his master as the intruder.) And it concerns, third, the most famous dog of 1998: the dog that was wagged by its own tail. Finally, it concerns the dogs of war, and the circumstances of their unleashing.
Not once but three times last year, Bill Clinton ordered the use of cruise missiles against remote and unpopular countries. On each occasion, the dispatch of the missiles coincided with bad moments in the calendar of his long and unsuccessful struggle to avoid impeachment. Just before the Lewinsky affair became public in January 1998, there was a New York prescreening party for Barry Levinson’s movie Wag the Dog, written by Hilary Henkin and David Mamet. By depicting a phony president starting a phony war in order to distract attention from his filthy lunge at a beret-wearing cupcake, this film became the political and celluloid equivalent of a Clintonian roman à clef. Thrown by Jane Rosenthal and Robert DeNiro, whose Tribeca Productions produced the movie, the party featured Dick Morris and an especially pleased and excited Richard Butler, who was described by an eyewitness as “glistening.” Mr. Morris is Mr. Clinton’s fabled and unscrupulous adviser on matters of public opinion. Mr. Butler is the supervisor of United Nations efforts to disarm Saddam Hussein’s despotism. In February 1998, faced with a threatened bombing attack that never came, Iraqi state TV prophylactically played a pirated copy of Wag the Dog in prime time. By Christmastime 1998, Washington police officers were giving the shove to demonstrators outside the White House who protested the December 16-19 bombing of Iraq with chants of “Killing children’s what they teach–that’s the crime they should impeach” and a “No blood for blow jobs” placard.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=1250

As far as Hitchens goes, the should deport him as a verbal terrorist.

PROVIDING “POLITICAL COVER”

In fact, Cohen proved invaluable to the president in the wake of two questionable military strikes that critics contend were ordered by Clinton to draw attention away from embarrassing news stories at home.

The first “Wag the Dog” episode occurred in August 1998 when President Clinton had the military fire missiles at terrorist training camps in Afghanistan. Most of the million-dollar cruise missiles missed their mark, but they did demolish a so-called “poison gas” facility in the Sudan, which later turned out to be, according to independent observers, a pharmaceutical plant and no threat to anyone.

Of course it was just a “coincidence” that Clinton “playmate” Monica Lewinsky was set to give her first testimony in the White House sex scandal the very next day. Nothing like the expenditure of millions of dollars worth of ordnance and waving the flag to divert attention and headlines from such embarrassing news.

Like the good “team player” he had become, the “man of principle” Bill Cohen explained away the curious timing of the air strikes as “necessary” and having “nothing to do with politics.”

It got even stickier for Cohen a few months later.

In December, on the eve of the House vote to impeach the president, Clinton ordered his military into action again. Lives of American pilots were put in jeopardy by the command to bomb targets in Iraq.

http://www.militarycorruption.com/cohen-expose.htm

I had to highlight that one. Bill Clinton accused of “WAGGING THE DOG” for increasing the bombing raids on Saddam after the inspectors left because of Saddams making it difficult fot them to do their jobs

More Bitchin’ Hitchins:

Christopher Hitchens: The House couldn’t face the-the House couldn’t face the evidence then. They weren’t strong-one-the one line disproof of the right wing conspiracy; there were several one-line disproofs. But the strongest one is the-faced with the strongest evidence in the cover up, which was the use of cruise missiles in Sudan, promiscuous, private use by the President, ordering the-of a military strike overruling his commanders, he wanted to-he wanted to…

http://www.uncommonknowledge.org/00fall/510.html

12/17/98

EDITORIAL

Let wag the dogs of war

If yesterday’s American airstrike on Iraq was not the act of a desperate man, it indisputably looked like one. Of all the 365 days of the year, President Clinton chose the eve of the impeachment vote in the House of Representatives, the event that would likely make him the second president in U.S. history to endure this humiliation, to take on Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein after an entire year of hesitation. Coincidence? Not a chance. Anyone arguing that Mr. Clinton took action to head off impeachment has a pretty convincing case. The president’s craven act was rightly met with widespread skepticism among congressional leaders and demonstrates not only Mr. Clinton’s personal recklessness, but also his inability to lead the country any longer.
Whether removed from office by the Senate or not, this president has lost whatever credibility he ever had; everything Mr. Clinton does from now till the end of his sorry presidency will be seen through this lens. We even had the spectacle of British Prime Minister Tony Blair being sent out as the vanguard to give the first official announcement of the attack, a role that clearly belongs to the president of the United States, as the leader of the coalition against Iraq — such as it is, consisting mainly of Great Britain and the United States by now.
While Americans tend to rally around the flag in times of military action overseas, and Republicans traditionally so, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott took the extraordinary step of issuing a statement in advance of the strikes, withholding his support. “I cannot support this military action in the Persian Gulf at this time,” Mr. Lott said, “Both the timing and the policy are subject to question.” They are indeed. While the White House claims that the attack was prompted by the report on Iraqi obstructionism by U.N. Special Commission Chairman Richard Butler delivered on Monday, in actual fact, as reported by The Washington Times on its front page this morning, the Pentagon had been told to prepare the attack as early as Sunday.
What makes Mr. Clinton’s action particularly appalling is that it fits a pattern we have come to recognize over the past year, known in popular short-hand as the “wag the dog” scenario. The year’s first confrontation between the United States and Iraq came in January/February following the eruption of the Monica Lewinsky scandal on Jan. 22. In August, it was another set of suspects who had to take the pounding after Mr. Clinton’s Aug. 17 televised “apology” to the American people; cruise missiles pounded a pharmaceutical facility in Sudan and a few huts in Afghanistan supposedly belonging to Saudi terrorist leader Osama Bin Laden. In November, as impeachment hearings geared up in the House of Representatives, the president began another build-up against Saddam, which culminated in the charade of Nov. 11, when the president called back U.S. planes already in the air. The reason given was that the Iraqi government had promised total compliance in a letter urgently delivered to U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan. The timing was said to be pure coincidence.
In actual fact, as reported by Newsweek magazine, it was the Clinton administration itself that had warned the Iraqis through the British that the attack would be coming. In his televised address last night, Mr. Clinton tried to justify his timing by citing the coming of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan this weekend. What was to prevent him from taking action last week? Or last month? Saddam Hussein’s non-compliance has been clear as day for quite a while.

http://www.antiwar.com/ed1.html

Washington Times Huh?

Anyway, plenty of evidence that Clinton would heve been ruthlessly SKEWERED if he advocated an all out attempt to get Osama as fat back as 1996, and certinly they would have blocked any efforts at fungding the attempts, just as their refusal to fund additional armored personnel vehicles resulted in the Blackhawk down incident, needless deaths, which have become part of a Wagnerian right wing mythology after the fact.

The complaints about Clinton are just another attempt of the Right to blame Clinton’s penis, while attempting to portray liberals as terrorist lovers who want to “understand” them.

If anything, the members of congress “need a blowjob, more than any white man in history” (paraphrase)

Perhaps if they had, they would have been more succesful in prosecuting their attempted military ventures as Clinton was in Haiti and the Balkans, where it was harder for those right wing sissies to intervene.

by Uncle Ho on Thu Aug 18th, 2005 at 10:10:32 PDT
http://justwinbaby.dailykos.com/story/2005/8/17/193249/771

nzherald / side swipe

In a move commonly known as career suicide Mikey Havoc has teamed up with the guy who wanted to film the birth of a baby for a porno, to bring you a new magazine called Uncensored. Yes, Steve Crow is publishing a low-rent version of Investigate magazine, to be launched with heavy symbolism on September 11. As a contributing editor Havoc has written a rant suggesting the Jacko trial was a deliberate move to distract the world from the Iraq war. Somehow he sees lies everywhere, but has complete faith in Jacko’s innocence. However, the truly excruciating parts of his rambling opinion piece are when he goes all evangelical. “I can only imagine how much time I would have had for thinking about other things in my life, if I had never had to worry about what stupid selfish thing George Bush was up to each day. Unfortunately I cannot do that because I happen to have developed a great zest for life and living. I care about the preservation of our species and the planet we live on”.


Monica Lewinsky

A picture from her U.S. Government ID

Monica Samille Lewinsky (born July 23, 1973) is an American woman who was thrust into the limelight after having an affair with PresidentBill Clinton.

The affair started while Lewinsky was working as an intern at the White House in 1995; its repercussions are often referred to as the Lewinsky scandal or "Monicagate." It severely affected Clinton's Presidency, and also made Lewinsky notorious.

Early life

Lewinsky was born in San Francisco, and grew up in Southern California on the west side of Los Angeles and in Beverly Hills. Her father was born in El Salvador but comes from a family of GermanJewish immigrants, while her mother's family were Jewish immigrants from Russia. After transferring from Santa Monica College in Santa Monica, California, she graduated with a psychology degree from Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon in 1995. Afterward, Lewinsky moved to Washington, D.C., where she worked at the White House during Clinton's first term.

Scandal

Monita.jpg

Monica Lewinsky receives a hug from U.S. President Bill Clinton during a fundraising event in Washington, D.C., October 1996

While working as a paid staffer at the Pentagon, the former White House intern had a short-term sexual relationship with the President. Clinton and Lewinsky both later agreed that the relationship involved oral sex but not sexual intercourse. The news of this affair, and the resulting investigation and impeachment of the President, became known as the Lewinsky scandal.

Lewinsky's confidante Linda Tripp was secretly recording her telephone conversations with the younger woman regarding the affair with Clinton. Later, after Lewinsky had submitted a false affidavit in the Paula Jones case, denying any physical relationship with Clinton and after Lewinsky had attempted to persuade Tripp to lie under oath in the Jones case, Tripp gave the tapes to Independent CounselKenneth Starr, and these tapes added to his ongoing investigation into the Whitewater scandal. Starr broadened his investigation to include investigating Lewinsky, Clinton and others for possible perjury and subornation of perjury in the Jones case. Ironically, it has been alleged that Tripp also tipped off the press to keep an eye on federal employee Jennifer Fitzgerald, who was said to have had an indiscreet affair with then-President George H. W. Bush. However, Tripp has publicly denied that allegation as "ludicrous" and "a complete fabrication." [1] Tripp, after speaking with Lewinsky, reported her findings to right-wing literary agent Lucianne Goldberg.

Admissions

Lewinsky admitted that her relationship with Clinton involved oral sex in the Oval Office and in adjoining rooms in the West Wing. This was documented in the Starr report, which eventually led to President Clinton's impeachment trial on the allegations of perjury and obstruction of justice regarding the affair.

Clinton had previously been dogged by allegations of sexual misconduct, most notably in regard to a relationship with singer and former Arkansas state employee Gennifer Flowers and an encounter with Arkansas state employee Paula Jones (née Corbin) in a Little Rock hotel room in which Jones claimed that Clinton had exposed himself to her. These affairs allegedly occurred during Clinton's time as Governor of Arkansas. Lewinsky's name actually surfaced during legal proceedings connected to the latter matter, when Jones's lawyers sought corroborating evidence of Clinton's conduct to substantiate Jones's allegations.

Clinton denied having had "a sexual affair," "sexual relations," or "a sexual relationship" with Lewinsky while under oath [2], and later claimed "I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky" in a nationally televised White House news conference. The line later became a punchline for its technical verity but deceptive nature, based on one's definition of "sexual relations."

In addition, Clinton said, "There is no sexual relationship [with Lewinsky]," a statement which he later said was truthful depending on one's definition of "is" (i.e. he was not, at the time he made that statement, still having a sexual relationship with Lewinsky). Under pressure from Starr, whom Clinton learned had obtained from Lewinsky a blue dress with Clinton's semen stain, as well as testimony from Lewinsky that the president had inserted a cigar into her vagina, Clinton admitted on August 17, 1998, that he misled the American people and that he had had an "inappropriate" relationship with Lewinsky. Clinton denied having committed perjury because, in his opinion, oral sex was not a sexual act.

In addition, relying upon the definition of "sexual relations" as worded by Judge Susan Webber Wright, who was hearing the Paula Jones case, Clinton claimed that because certain acts were performed on him, not by him, he did not engage in sexual relations. Lewinsky's testimony to the Starr Commission, however, contradicted Clinton's claim of being totally passive in their encounters. Clinton's lawyer would later explain that different people can remember the same events in different ways.

The affair led to a period of pop culture celebrity for Lewinsky, both as an unlikely sex symbol and as a younger-generation nexus of a political storm that was both lighthearted, and extremely serious at the same time. The neologism "Lewinsky" is now part of the American lexicon meaning fellatio, though the frequency of other pop culture references and jokes involving Lewinsky have decreased over time.

After the scandal

By her own account, Lewinsky survived the intense media attention by knitting. She ran her own business, selling her own brand of handbags, but she closed this business in 2004. She was also the host of the short-lived reality television dating program called Mr. Personality (2003). Lewinsky is currently studying towards an M.Sc. in Social Psychology at the London School of Economics.

Lewinsky criticized Clinton's autobiography, My Life, saying, "He could have made it right with the book, but he hasn't. He is a revisionist of history. He has lied." She continued, "I really didn't expect him to go into detail about our relationship" in the memoir, she said. "But if he had and he'd done it honestly, I wouldn't have minded.... I did though at least expect him to correct the false statements he made when he was trying to protect the Presidency. Instead, he talked about it as though I had laid it all out there for the taking. I was the buffet and he just couldn't resist the dessert," she was quoted as saying.

"That's not how it was. This was a mutual relationship, mutual on all levels, right from the way it started and all the way through. ... I don't accept that he had to completely desecrate my character." [3]

References

* Monica's Story by Andrew Morton (Paperback 1999 Publisher: St. Marshal's Press ISBN 0312973624)
* One Scandalous Story: Clinton, Lewinsky, and Thirteen Days That Tarnished American Journalism by Marvin L. Kalb
* Our Monica, Ourselves: The Clinton Affair and the Public Interest (Sexual Cultures) by Lauren Berlant and Lisa Duggan

External links

* Starr Report: Nature of President Clinton's Relationship with Monica Lewinsky
* A Guide to the Monica Lewinsky Story, also: The Starr Report; Tripp Tapes; Articles of Impeachment; The "Stalker" Tale
* Monica Lewinsky profile in the Washington Post (January 24, 1998)
* Timeline from Washington Post
* Lewinsky profile in New York magazine, 2001
* Urban Dictionary defines the slang term "Lewinsky"


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ONLINE NEWS HOUR
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/white_house/july-dec98/conversations_10-9.html

JIM LEHRER: Finally tonight, another of our conversations about issues raised by the conduct and the investigation of President Clinton in the Monica Lewinsky matter. We've heard from Stephen Carter, Orlando Patterson, and William F. Buckley. Terence Smith has tonight's conversation.

TERENCE SMITH: With me is Deborah Tannen, professor of linguistics at Georgetown University. Her most recent book is "The Argument Culture." Welcome. Deborah Tannen, let me ask you this: There is an argument going on in this town now about whether this whole matter is or is not just about sex, but isn't it also about language and the parsing of words, arguments over what the meaning of "is" is, that sort of thing?

DEBORAH TANNEN, Author, "The Argument Culture:" Yes. But also, I think, it's pitting the common sense understanding of words against the legal understanding of words. It's very easy for us to laugh at the president's parsing words in that way with the present tense, so it wasn't the past tense. But the question is: How did he get in this position where he had already been questioned under oath, had made a statement in one context and then is put in a very different context, talking to the American people and they expect a very different kind of language, and they're judging it in a very different way. So I think it's that being caught between the legal language and everyday language. All this talk about perjury, obstruction of justice, the average person's feeling is that these are very heavy words that require heavy deeds to bear their weight. They don't feel that the words should be applied to - it's the difference between a situation in which the cover-up, itself, is the crime, versus covering up a crime. If the law doesn't make these distinctions, the average person does, and what concerns me is that it ends up not giving people more respect for the law but actually it's a very dangerous situation where they have contempt for the law if they see the law can't make a simple distinction that they can so easily make.

TERENCE SMITH: For example, on this broadcast on January 21, the president looked Jim Lehrer in the eye and said, "There is no sexual relationship," taking refuge in the present tense, in effect.

DEBORAH TANNEN: That's right. But, of course, if you look at it from the point of view of that context, it seems quite absurd. But if you look at it from the how we got to that context, the history of his having been hounded, you would have to say, by people who were trying to catch him in some sort of an error, and he had already given this deposition in which he had been questioned and of course, we can talk about this-he didn't know that the questioning was going to be about Monica Lewinsky, so he wasn't prepared for that. He thought he was being questioned about sexual harassment issues relating to the Paula Jones case.

TERENCE SMITH: In his testimony.

DEBORAH TANNEN: Right. But having those prosecutors on his tail, you might say, he then wasn't free to answer in a way that he might otherwise answer.

TERENCE SMITH: You know, there's an old saying that there are two kinds of truth - one, the kind you can prove in court; and the second is the kind of truth that any fool can see. I wonder if the public isn't exercising the second standard.

DEBORAH TANNEN: They are. And I have to say what is most troubling to me in the current situation, it's a very dangerous situation when there is this tremendous gap between what the average person thinks and what I call the three "p's" - the pundits, the politicians, and the press. We need to have faith in the great institutions of our democracy -- journalists, politicians, and the law -- and what we see now is that people are losing respect for all those three institutions, because there is this tremendous gap. The average person is saying this is not impeachable; it's not that significant; we don't approve of it, but let's attend to the really important business of running the country. And yet, they are not able to get their voices heard.

You know, it's - in an odd way it reminds me not so much of Watergate but of Vietnam. I hear people saying things like I'm ashamed to be an American; I feel like leaving the country -- right after the videotape was played. The first 10 calls that I heard on C-Span - having watched the whole four hours - were saying, we've got to stop this. And they were -interestingly, it was bipartisan. The people are bipartisan. Republicans, as well as Democrats, saying - in fact, one Republican said, "If my party succeeds in bringing down someone over this" - and very interesting what he said - he said, "I'll never vote again." He didn't say I won't vote Republican; he said, "I'll never vote again." It's the cynicism about our process that is to me the most dangerous aspect of what we're seeing.

TERENCE SMITH: Do you think that the public has arrived at some sort of distinction between lying about sex and lying about a crime?

DEBORAH TANNEN: We know that the majority - not everybody but a very large majority say that if you lie about a sexual relationship, it's not the same; we should not be concerned on the same level as we would if a public figure had lied about misconduct in public office. So, yes, they made that distinction, and to see all the people in power not making the distinction is what is leading to this disillusionment, this frustration.

TERENCE SMITH: One of the famous phrases in this whole matter is when the president wagged his finger at the camera and said, "I did not have sexual relations with that woman." I wonder whether that caught your ear and what - how women, especially, but perhaps other people respond to that phrase, "that woman."

DEBORAH TANNEN: It did. It did. And it has been replayed many times. I think when you normally hear "that woman," you think that there's an attitude of contempt and that would be a very negative interpretation. I believe, again, he was caught in this situation where our society, being what it is, at that point in order to protect himself from being indicted for having said something different under oath, he thought that he had to say that. I think we really need to pull back and ask the larger question. I'm surprised it isn't being asked more. How did we get to a situation where the President of the United States was asked under oath about his sex life? This, to me, is really the major question. And I believe it's a whole series of things. We tend to put it as Clinton Vs. Starr, the gun fight at OK Corral. And that limits our way of understanding it. It's - my word for it is the argument culture. It is the whole tenor of our culture now in the law, in politics, and in the press, where attack is valued; compromise is not valued, and people are out to destroy their opponents any way they can. And this is what led to this.

TERENCE SMITH: And one of the techniques they're using - and it's resulted in a new coinage here - sexual McCarthyism is a phrase we hear now.

DEBORAH TANNEN: Yes. I have also heard people saying that it feels like a coup de tat. They feel that their electoral will is being undermined by a faction, and this is very dangerous. And the "sexual McCarthyism" is very dangerous, very interesting to see how sexual harassment now is being taken seriously. We have laws to protect against it. But these laws can, in turn, be abused, and by the argument culture we are abusing the legal system. So you have a sexual harassment case with Paula Jones. They use the discovery process - the right to depose witnesses - as an excuse to dig up women who had consensual relationships with the president. Well, that's not sexual harassment. It was not relevant to the case, but it was abused. I have actually heard cases - an academic case - where there were two men - rivals - and one went - one by one - to every woman in that department trying to find out if maybe she had been sexually harassed by his rival. In fact, they hadn't been. He gave that up.

TERENCE SMITH: Using it as a weapon.

DEBORAH TANNEN: Men can use this as a weapon in their battles against each other.

TERENCE SMITH: The whole public discussion of sometimes graphic description of sex and sexual acts in all of this, has it - it's remarkable (a); (b) has it changed public mores and what's acceptable language?

DEBORAH TANNEN: It is changing public and private mores. People are now having private conversations about personal sexual topics they would not otherwise have. One person used this phrase that he felt that we have all been raped because our children are being exposed to this explicit sexual discussion, and by the way, it would be just as offensive if we were hearing in detail about what married couples did in private. We are simply bringing into the public sphere what in the past was private, and this too is very, very troubling.

TERENCE SMITH: You know, some 65 percent of the public apparently in polls indicates that they do not want to see the president impeached, and yet, Congress is forging ahead right down that road with the Republican majority. I wonder if they're not listening. Is there a disconnect here?

DEBORAH TANNEN: Yes. And it's the disconnect that troubles me. We know that we have had more and more cynicism. People feel that the government is more interested in partisan bickering than they are in solving the problems that face them, and this is simply being reinforced. People are saying they don't want the government spending; they were saying they didn't want all that money spent on investigating the president's private life; but they can't seem to be able to stop it. And that's very troubling.

TERENCE SMITH: Deborah Tannen, thank you very much.

DEBORAH TANNEN: Thank you.

JIM LEHRER: Next week, we'll continue the series with authors Calvin Trillin and Shelby Steele.




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Text of President Clinton's responses to Judiciary Committee's 81 questions