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Jewish World Review August 1, 2000 / 29 Tamuz, 5760

Ann Coulter

Ann Coulter
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The hole in the story

http://www.jewishworldreview.com -- THERE WAS always a peculiar tension between the Clinton defenders who earnestly insisted they believed his denials on one hand, and, on the other, the ones who thought it was totally great that the president was such a horndog. (That the two teams cheerfully labored side-by-side demonstrated how little the truth mattered to either camp.)

Joe Eszterhas' book "American Rhapsody" falls into the latter category, and with some gusto. Indeed, there's nothing really new here; it's just a rhapsodic rendition (appropriate to the title) of how the president uses women as "holes" -- as Eszterhas puts it. The worst the "Clinton haters" (as normal people came to be called) ever said about Clinton is not merely conceded by Eszterhas but ecstatically repeated.

The theme of the Hollywood set's enthusiasm for the horndog is summarized by Jann Wenner, editor of Rolling Stone magazine ("the rock 'n' roll bible"), who reported back to the troops after spending time with Clinton on the campaign trail: "He's one of us."

"Us" was rock 'n' roll and -- as Eszterhas explains: "Rock 'n' roll was ... Otis Redding running down a fire escape as an irate husband shot at him from a window above ... Chuck Berry videotaping himself as he urinated on a hooker ... Little Richard getting a backstage blow job as the curtain went up from the groupie whom Buddy Holly was doing doggy-style at the same time ... the Stones passing that catatonic naked blonde over their heads in 'Cocksucker Blues.'"

Charming. I don't think I needed to know that, but at least now I understand what the feminists are so mad about.

Anyway, the rock 'n' roll president, according to Eszterhas, "was using women's bodies still, the way he and we had callously and selfishly used one another's bodies in the '60s. The point was a pair of lips, a pair of tits, a nice ass. The point was skin, flesh, meat. The point was a hole."

Eszterhas
While that's a fine summary of the Clinton legacy, for those of us who have "moved on," this book could not be more tedious. If you thought it was bad enough to live through the Clinton administration when it was happening, re-reading the country's lowest moments in tribute form is not a good mood-enhancer. (In the one new story Eszterhas brings to the table, let me just say, Sharon Stone will not be pleased to discover she is the subject of Hollywood's first piss-and-tell.)

There is, however, one aspect to Eszterhas' paean to the '60s -- an entire generation of Bill Clintons -- that leaves me confused. The single Clinton escapade that apparently troubles Eszterhas is the rape charge. Now admittedly, this is completely foreign territory for someone like me who does not see other humans as mere objects of my own pleasure, but trying to comprehend the sexual revolutionaries' world view, I don't follow the logic on their hang-up with rape.

On Eszterhas' own account, the sexual revolution apotheosized in Bill Clinton consisted of "no small talk, no courting, no foreplay, just 'Do you want to f---?'" Sex was, he writes (in one of the few passages I can quote), "about nothing really, but a little bit of exercise and lots of pleasure."

He names at least eight "young, nubile, attractive" women who worked at Rolling Stone in the early '70s and with whom he had frequent sex -- in the "office or parking lot or back seat or Van Ness Avenue motel." Only in the next paragraph does he remember that "during those years at Rolling Stone I was married ... and so were many of the other editors."

I report even this much of his eagerly recounted sexual exploits for anthropological reasons only. If the natives consider sex nothing more than a handshake, something you do repeatedly with your office mates and people you barely know, if it is the moral and psychic equivalent of having a cup of coffee with someone -- then shouldn't forcing someone to have sex be no more repellent than forcing someone to shake your hand or have a cup of coffee with you?

Eszterhas occasionally feigns consternation at the way his generation treated humans as objects. But he's a bit too vivid on the details for his regrets to be credible as anything more that hypocritical liberal self-righteousness. He's like the guy who goes to confession and begins giving the priest endless recitations of his sexual encounters. Finally the priest says, "Are you confessing or are you bragging?" I'll believe pornography or I'll believe a sermon, but not both in the same book.


JWR contributor Ann Coulter is the author of High Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Case Against Bill Clinton. You may visit the Ann Coulter Fan Club by clicking here.


Up

07/28/00: Cheney's detractors can't get their story straight
07/25/00: AlGore: Elmer Blandry
07/21/00: The tyranny of non-objectivity
07/18/00: The state's religion
07/14/00: Reform it back
07/11/00: Keating for veep
07/07/00: Gore invented 'Clueless'
07/04/00: The stupidity litmus test
06/30/00: O.J. was 'proved innocent' too
06/27/00: The last guys 'proved innocent'
06/23/00: Serious Republican candidates don't get serious press
06/19/00: They weren't overzealous this time
06/16/00: Evolution of the strumpet
06/13/00: Actual journalistic malpractice
06/09/00: I did not have sexual
relations with that ... man!
06/06/00: IRS turns Bubba's screw
05/30/00: Too corrupt to be an Arkansas lawyer
05/26/00: Choose liberalism
05/24/00: Violence against coherence
05/22/00: Developmentally disabled Republicans
05/16/00: For womb the bell tolls
05/12/00: Asylum from Georgetown
05/10/00: The truth is out there, even for the clueless
05/08/00: Barbie is a liberal Democrat
05/02/00: Moving the goalpost
04/28/00: The bastardization of justice
04/25/00: How Monica Lewinsky saved the constitution
04/24/00: It's sunny today, so we need gun control
04/19/00: No shadow of a doubt -- liberal women are worthless
04/14/00: It takes a Communist dictator to raise a child
04/11/00: The verdict is in on Hillary
04/07/00: Vast Concoctions III
04/04/00: 'Horrifying' free speech in New York
03/31/00: Campaign finance reform brings out worst in senators
03/28/00: All the news that fits -- we print!
03/24/00: Net losses all around
03/20/00: To protect, serve --- and be spat on
03/16/00: Thank Heaven for the consigliere
03/13/00: Vast concoctions II
03/09/00: The bluebloods voted against you
03/07/00: The Tower of Babble
03/03/00: Vast concoction
03/02/00: Hillary's sartorial lies
02/28/00: You have to break a few eggs to make a joke
02/22/00: I've seen enough killing to support abortion
02/18/00: A liberal lynching
02/15/00: McCain and the flag
02/11/00: The Shakedown Express
02/08/00: To mock a mockingbird
02/05/00: Summing up Campaign 2000: 'Oh, puh-leeze!'
02/01/00: A Confederacy of Dunces
01/28/00: Dollar Bill's racist smear
01/24/00: How high is your freedom quotient?
01/21/00: Numismadness
01/18/00: How dare you attack my wife!
01/14/00: The Gore Buggernaut
01/10/00: The paradox of discrimination law

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