<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD W3 HTML//EN"> <HTML> <HEAD> <META content=text/html;charset=iso-8859-1 http-equiv=Content-Type> <META content='"MSHTML 4.71.1712.3"' name=GENERATOR> </HEAD> <BODY bgColor=#ffffff> <DIV>Ack, Doug, my apologies about the Brazil comments.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>---------------------------------------------------------</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>From the Guardian/Observer</DIV> <DIV><BR> </DIV> <DIV>Clinton's foes have only one thing on their minds<BR><BR>By Barbara Ehrenreich<BR>Wednesday January 27, 1999<BR><BR>Two or three weeks ago the only question was 'How will Clinton get out of this?' But<BR>then the great Houdini delivered his State of the Union address, in which he cleverly<BR>outflanked the Republicans on the right by proposing a first step toward the<BR>privatisation - ie, elimination - of social security, along with vast new largesse for<BR>the Pentagon.<BR> <BR>Hillary beamed, the pundits swooned, and the question became: 'How will the<BR>Republicans ever get out of this, and why don't they do so now?'<BR><BR>For surely the impeachment process has not been the great American agon we<BR>were promised - Custer's Last Stand, Iwo Jima, the Battle at the OK Corral. The<BR>visuals have been tragically dull, enlivened only by the chief justice's scowling face<BR>and whimsically gold-striped robe. CNN, with its gavel-to-gavel coverage of the<BR>tedium, became a video dead zone.<BR><BR>To make a wise and timely statement about the proceedings at any time in the<BR>last few months, all one had to do was mix and match the words 'William<BR>Jefferson Clinton', 'the Constitution of the Yew-nited States', 'impeachable offence',<BR>the 'American people' and 'fair and bipartisan' (or, depending on one's party<BR>affiliation, 'partisan and grossly unfair').<BR><BR>But there is one thing that holds the Republicans to their thankless task: witnesses.<BR><BR>They want witnesses, preferably eyewitnesses, and they keep vowing to<BR>persist till they get them. This deep, self-destructive yearning is not to be<BR>confused, however, with the gospel shout, 'Give me a witness!' Because the witness<BR>the Republicans most desperately crave is the luscious, creamy-skinned Monica<BR>Lewinsky.<BR><BR>It was essential, according to Representative Bill McCollum, that they<BR>'examine Monica Lewinsky'. Later the language took an even more revealing turn,<BR>when Ken Starr insisted the Republicans had the right to 'debrief' her.<BR><BR>The Democrats quickly picked up on their antagonists' prurient intentions, countering<BR>that a Monica appearance in the Senate would be a 'burlesque'. For weeks, like members of an aboriginal all-male totemic cult warding off wifely intrusions, they<BR>raged against the threatened pollution of the hallowed chambers with smut and God-knows-what noxious female secretions.<BR><BR>When those warnings failed to resonate, they painted a grim S&M picture of what a<BR>Republican interview of Monica would be like: the poor child, facing a roomful of men who have the power to throw her in prison, would be subject to unimaginable probings and manipulations.<BR><BR>Briefly, last weekend, the sexual drama reached a mini-climax with Ms Lewinsky's arrival in Washington. The press corps assaulted her from all sides, struggling for a shot of her face, and frustrated to find it hidden by a baseball cap.<BR><BR>The next day three Republican congressmen spent two hours alone with Monica in a $5,000 a day hotel suite - a different suite to the one she had slept in, the New York Times assured us, lest we envision the foursome together on rumpled sheets. Emerging from the interview, the congressmen were flushed and exuberant, reporting that she was 'poised', 'intelligent' and 'helpful'.<BR><BR>If no hanky-panky was discussed or proposed, what are we to make of Monica's reported post-interview comment: 'I gave them nothing'? Note the verb: not 'told', but 'gave'.<BR><BR>What were we expecting her to give them - a sexually transmitted disease perhaps? So don't let anyone tell you this is not about sex. The impeachment process only makes sense when you understand that the Republicans are the pimply high school nerds who can't get a date, while Clinton is the football captain for whom girls eagerly 'put out'.<BR><BR>Since the Republicans can't get Clinton, they're determined to get his discarded girlfriend, even if their frantic efforts end up costing them their seats. </DIV></BODY></HTML>