High life
Saint and sinners
Taki
y mother, who died last week, was a true Christian. She forgave those who transgressed her, starting with my dad, who sure did transgress. She never retaliated, always forgave and forgot, and prayed for her husband's soul until the end.
Some modern thinkers among you might see her as a fool, a doormat, even a victim. She was nothing of the kind. She knew she could not change my father, because human nature simply does not change. She I thought Friday was casual day.' made the best of it, and my dad treated her like the saint she was.
Jumping from my mother to Hillary Clin- ton is very close to debasing motherhood, but they do have something in common: they stick by their man. Well, not really. Mother did it out of principle, Hillary out of greed for power and privilege. Which brings me to the point I wish to make. Ever since last January, I have been dying to write about Clinton's immorality but have wisely resisted. Taki attacking an adulterer is a bit like Rommel dismissing audacious tactics in battle as counter-productive.
My mother's death last week made me feel awfully guilty, however. Looking at her for the last time while she was being low- ered to sleep forever next to my dad, I wished he hadn't been as promiscuous as he was. I guess the same thing goes for myself, but, like him, I can't help it, and don't really want to help it.
We Greeks see adultery as a game in which we seek to excel, or so my generation was brought up to believe. Don Juan and all that. Actually, it is a source of corrup- tion in others. This is why Clinton is such a bum. The head of a country such as Ameri- ca, with its Christian values written in stone, surely has to keep himself on a high- er level than, say, the 'High life' correspon- dent of The Spectator. The Draft Dodger, however, sees himself as a victim, just like the two convicted felons Webb Hubbell and Susan McDougal do.
One of Clinton's most outspoken defenders is Geraldo Rivera, an untalented buffoon who bases his success on vulgar exhibitionism and self-advertisement each night on telly. Rivera goes ballistic over the adultery charges against the Draft Dodger. `What man is not going to lie about it?' screeches the creep. Well, yes and no. Back in 1991, the same Mr Rivera wrote a book chronicling his sexual exploits and naming the bimbos he did it with. He went as far as telling the world how the wife of a Canadi- an prime minister gave him a Monica Lewinsky on a boat-ride in Central Park. What man is not going to lie about it indeed?
These, then, are the kind of people who have kept the faith in the biggest fraud ever to diminish the White House. The Riveras, the Carvilles, the Blumenthals, the Frank Riches and so on. These are the ones who from day one have fudged the issues of perjury and bearing false witness by insist- ing it's only about sex and that it's political. Which it isn't. It's about values, and the fact that the Clintonites cannot tell the dif- ference between right and wrong.
When the scandal broke seven months ago I wrote in these here pages that I was willing to bet my last drachma Clinton would beat it. I am even more confident of my bet now. Clinton and his media acolytes know John Doe. Attack tobacco and Mr Doe will forget all about late abortion. Attack date-rape and hate-speech and peo- ple will forget about Aids and teenage
pregnancy. Stonewall, lie, obstruct and attack anyone who dares to point out the truth. Go teary-eyed where necessary, and use every word and gesture to your political advantage. This is the Clinton legacy.
Using one scandal to upstage the other is a Clinton invention. Our own Tony Blair Plato to the Draft Dodger's Socrates — has not gone as far, but he's learning. Morality does not count, spin does. The new Leader of the House of Lords once ran off with the disgusting Carl Bernstein of Watergate infamy and fiction. Bernstein's wife at the time was seven months pregnant. We saw it all in the film Heartburn, based on Baroness Jay's Washington caper. La baronessa then had an affair with Robert Neild, an economics prof, who also just happened to be married. Two down, one to go. She is now married to Michael Adler, who was married when he and Margaret started making whoopee.
Tony Blair is right to name her Leader of the Lords. She's broken up a home or two. She'll have no problem in breaking up the Lords. After all, fidelity and infidelity in la baronessa's book are morally one and the same.
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