I Am Curious, Red: Sexy Republican Thoughts

During the Clinton administration, as we remember, the Republicans were relentless in their attacks and ad hominem smears on the president. They claimed he hadn’t really deserved the oval office since Ross Perot had spoiled the race and thwarted the will of the “true majority” of Americans. There were the accusations that he had had Vince Foster murdered, that with the assistance of knowing Arkansas state troopers he had committed rape numerous times, and of course, that he used his position as governor to acquire land at a reduced rate – the land he eventually lost his entire investment on - the swampy acreage known forever as “Whitewater.”

The GOP was unable to make anything of substance stick to the president, no matter how hard they tried. Thirty million dollars spent to uncover cronyism and sweetheart deals that today wouldn’t even make Jack Abramoff’s top hundred and fifty, and couldn’t be proven besides.

They were finally able to stir up a faux national crisis in Bill's boxers, a hook (forgive me) on which to hang their psychological rage and perverse revulsion with female sexuality. For one thing was certain, and that was Clinton’s sexual allure to women and the female swoon that followed him. I think what bothered the Right most was how the women around them loved and lusted after Bill Clinton. He would simply have to go.

I think of John Ashcroft, whose first act after losing his senate seat to a corpse, only to be resurrected as the most powerful law-enforcement official in the land under a new idiot man-child president, was to cover the statue of Justice with a cloth so that visitors to the Capitol wouldn’t have to endure the disturbing sight of Justice’s filthy, dirty, disgusting, pornographic, bare alabaster breasts.

Huzzah! 1950 had returned, and nude statues were dirty again. What a relief.

Make no mistake: the Republican party exists for very few reasons, maybe only two: first, to guarantee the rich and powerful a reliable stream of wealth and privilege, and second, to combat the dangers of female sexuality. Of course, Clinton was no enemy to the wealthy and powerful, to be sure. But we can agree today that his impeachment, for lying about the Lewinsky affair – a legal, consensual sexual affair totally unrelated to his ethical comportment as president – was a new low in Right-wing sexually – repressed filth.

Those of us who could see what was really going on drew a collective breath of worry and dismay. The sex police were coming, in high dudgeon, to proclaim the new Decency: airwaves filled with clean family fun, corporate dominance in all institutions and markets, well-scrubbed evangelicals waging war on women, on families, on international institutions - and later, war all the time, everywhere.

Anyway, believe it or not, I started this post intent on talking about Thomas Jefferson. I wanted to point out that under the Clinton administration, radical conservatives (oxymoronic, I know) were fond of quoting Jefferson thusly:

"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."

No one on the Right is saying much about the tree of liberty now. In fact, they are now saying, “watch what you say about the government.”

I will end with a more apropos quotation from TJ, one I hope you, dear reader, will take to heart:

“I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.”

Peace to you all.