Google Groups no longer supports new Usenet posts or subscriptions. Historical content remains viewable.

Dismiss

cov_15newsa.html (fwd)

0 views

Skip to first unread message

The Tin Man

unread,

Dec 15, 1998, 3:00:00 AM12/15/98

to Mailing list for Honors Program

"There may be a great fire in our soul, Robert Fernandez
yet no one ever comes to warm himself rfer...@chuma.cas.usf.edu
at it, and the passers-by see only http://chuma.cas.usf.edu/~rfernand
a wisp of smoke." - Vincent van Gogh AIM: Gamaliel8

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1998 02:24:00 -0500 (EST)
From: Robert Fernandez (ENG) <rfernand>
To: rfernand
Subject: cov_15newsa.html

[1] Click here for Visa. [2]Click here for AOL!

[3]Salon Magazine

[4] Try 100 hours free on AOL!

A L S O+T O D A Y

[5]
[6]City of self-hate
By Greg Critser
Why Los Angeles elites love being bashed by Mike Davis
(12/15/98)

[7]
[ 21st ]
[8]Let's Get This Straight
By Scott Rosenberg
Bill Gates and BillClinton -- prisoners of Lawyer World

T A B L E+T A L K

What exactly is Maureen Dowd's problem? Theorize in the Politics area
of [9]Table Talk

___________________

[10] [LINK] Bone up on impeachment at BarnesandNoble.com
___________________

R E C E N T L Y[11]A kinder, gentler lynch mob
By Gary Kamiya
The GOP confirms the most brain-dead radical stereotypes from the '60s
(12/15/98)-->

[12]Off the cliff?
By Harry Jaffe
The White House tries lobbying, "scorched-earth" threats and one more
speech to sway fence-sitting Republicans
(12/11/98)

[13]Clinton's real crime
By Mollie Dickenson
The president's cagey testimony in the Paula Jones case shows he's
guilty of sexual selfishness, but not perjury
(12/11/98)

[14]"Real America?"
By Joan Walsh
Alan Dershowitz blasts Clinton critic Rep. Bob Barr for a speech to
white supremacists
(12/11/98)

[15]Impeachment hearing voices
A round-up of the most quotable moments from Friday's hearing
(12/11/98)

[16]A president apologizes
The text of President Clinton's address
(12/11/98)

[17]Clinton should be disbarred
By Lori Leibovich
A leading legal ethicist offers a punishment consistent with the
president's crimes
(12/11/98)

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Browse the
[18]NewsrealArchives

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Microsoft Expedia and Salon Wanderlust partner to provide you with a
full-service [19]travel site.

[20]Click here for the New Lincoln LS!

[21]Salon Emporium
SALON EMPORIUM
[22]Holiday cards
16 cards with matching envelopes. Inside: Peace on Earth. Goodwill
toward everyone.
[23]Salon Newsreal [24][ 21st: Can MoveOn.org make a difference? ]
spacer

A kinder, gentler lynch mob

photos

THE 'PEACHY-KEEN GOP HAS SHOWN ITS TRUE COLORS -- AND THEY CONFIRM THE
MOST BRAIN-DEAD RADICAL STEREOTYPES FROM THE '60S.

[25]BY GARY KAMIYA
I grew up believing that Republicans were the incarnation of all evil.
This was a harsh and unsophisticated judgment, but the political
discourse of 1960s Berkeley, where I grew up, lacked a certain
refinement. In fact, to be honest, it was pretty much taken straight
from Saturday morning cartoons. In our righteous view, "the people,"
whoever they were, were always being "oppressed" by The Man, a bloated
GOP plutocrat mouthing pious moral maxims. It went without saying that
Republicans were self-righteous, mean-spirited rich white men who
secretly napalmed Cambodian villages, turned loose the dogs against
civil rights marchers and dug the Carpenters. They were Bad, and if we
could somehow get rid of them -- meanwhile taking lots of acid and
listening to Hendrix -- Good Things would happen.

Later, like many of my co-religionists, I became embarrassed by these
sentiments. Such crude beliefs were unseemly. Sophistication demanded
a more nuanced view. Republicans, I now realized, could be decent men
and women who were just parroting the country-club line. Even the
Reagan Age -- that endless period I as a Californian was forced to
spend under the Great Communicator's genially callous thumb, while the
Woolly Mammoths died out and Ice Ages came and went across the globe
-- couldn't make me return to the wooden Stalinist sloganeering of my
youth. I even reevaluated the Carpenters.

And then came the [26]Starr referral and [27]Henry Hyde and the House
Judiciary Committee vote, and I realized I had gotten it right the
first time.

When the Republicans in the full House vote to remove President
Clinton from office, as they will almost certainly do, they will prove
that those brain-dead radical stereotypes about them really do apply.
They will be revealed as mean-spirited, partisan hacks, hypocrites,
moral absolutists hiding their craven desire for vengeance and power
beneath a ridiculously transparent façade of pious "deliberation" and
"respect for law." The GOP will stand exposed before all of America as
the party of vicious, petty ideologues who, in their outrageous desire
to undo the results of two lawful elections, seized upon a grotesquely
acquired legalistic evasion that falls so far short of meeting the
constitutional standard of high crimes and misdemeanors as to be
laughable.

Or, let's give them the benefit of the doubt, as the ever-generous New
York Times did in a recent editorial. Let's assume that some of them
are actually sincere in their belief that lying about sex -- in an
obvious vendetta case brought by a biased and obsessed "independent"
counsel who, after utterly failing to find any serious misdeeds,
connived to lay a perjury trap -- constitutes an impeachable offense.
But if they really believe that, then we must conclude that either
their grasp of the Constitution is so weak that their fitness to sit
in any elected office is highly questionable, or that they are so
rigid in their moral purity as to be Torquemadas in power ties,
quasi-theocratic inquisitors who would turn America into a frightening
Bible Belt version of 15th century Spain or 20th century Iran.

Why are the Republicans doing this? Why, defying the express wishes of
the American people, are they trampling on the Constitution, weakening
the presidency and inaugurating a hideous new political world of blood
feuds and true hatred? And why are they ignoring the warnings from the
business community -- to which they used to listen -- that impeachment
is dangerous and destabilizing?

The answer is simple: This is who they are. This action reflects the
GOP's true nature. This is a party so desperate to burn a president
they dislike at the stake that they'll incinerate the Constitution to
get the fire started. All that hoo-hah a few weeks ago about how
Robert Livingston was going to bring a new "moderation" to the party
now that nutty professor Gingrich was gone stands revealed as empty
verbiage. The truth is that this is now a party of zealots and
ideologues, obsessed crusaders who have completely lost touch with the
common sense, fairness and decency of the American people. Like Pol
Pot's Khmer Rouge, who declared a purifying "Year Zero" when history's
slate was to be wiped clean (and all nonpeasants were to be killed),
these high-minded crusaders want to restore America's sense of moral
purpose -- and if they have to trash the country in order to do it,
well, extremism in the defense of virtue is no vice! To the tumbrels
with the parasites, citizens, while the Times and the Post knit their
stern editorials! GOP "moderates"? What moderates? The few "moderates"
who are trotted forth on TV to be shown to the mob, like condemned
Chinese dissidents with signs hanging around their necks, seem barely
sentient.

N E X T+P A G E+| [28]"And just take off his head outside."

PHOTOGRAPHS: AP/WIDE-WORLD, MGN ONLINE

0 new messages