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Topic: Review of Blumenthal's "Clinton Wars"
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SHH
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 1527
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posted 27 May 2003 11:54 PM
quote: None of this, of course, would have let Blumenthal mount his spirited defense of Clinton, or come away sure of having fought an epic battle between good and evil instead of a tawdry squabble for spoils. The continuing illusion is costly. As America slips further toward a de facto fascism its political class refuses to recognize, The Clinton Wars may someday seem a forgotten skirmish before the storm.
This is an interesting graf. Three sentences, connected (I guess, somehow) in a manner that makes each one a paragraph left unexplained or highly debatable. The illusions are what? Costly to whom? Spoils? And of this ‘de facto fascism’, the ‘storm’ is what? Can good and evil also squabble for spoils and be petty instead of epic? Is this an abstract for a Star Wars movie? I smell book-buzz. Hell, when I’m in an old-folks home and I see it [Clinton Wars] on the five-cent special table, I’ll probably buy it and even read it. Then I’ll log on to babble and tell you youg’ins how you gots everything wrong about that. Even if you do or don’t. Some things are just too worth looking forward to. I’m having trouble taking Sid or his coterie with much seriousness. Morris does okay, I guess.
From: Ex-Silicon Valley to State Saguaro | Registered: Oct 2001
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clockwork
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 690
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posted 29 May 2003 02:47 AM
The illusion that all this matters. It's costly to the American people. Spoils, maybe the bragging rights, who gets to write the history. The 'storm' is a metaphor, I assume, that darker things are in store than this sad story in American politics. I can't say what the author had in mind: the American state has been through stuff like civil wars and race riots before. And I would assume the struggle isn't about good and evil if it's just a squabble. In fact, I think that this is the authors whole point. Star Wars was about good and evil. Monica was an outtake of Jerry Sienfeld.Smell? An insider account of the American political system masturbating to itself should, I suppose, have no buzz whatsoever? I personally, take Sid more seriously than the band of merry men that claimed he beat his wife or whatever. In fact, I think I'd listen to him over anyone that was in the Republican Party. Another review: quote: Clinton's attackers, on the other hand, mostly came from those elements unreconciled to the new toleration. When Bob Barr disparaged Clinton supporters as not being "real Americans," when Tom DeLay said he pushed impeachment to promote a "biblical worldview" that Clinton didn't share, or when Ken Starr touted his own marital fidelity and his daily singing of Christian hymns, they revealed their own alienation from the emerging live-and-let-live consensus. In this context, the Right's more sinister swipes at the Jewish intellectual Blumenthal--not to mention its resolve to press ahead with impeachment in the face of public outcry--becomes more comprehensible. These are the death throes of a retrograde morality.
The Clinton WarriorI have a nagging suspicion that people are trying to import "culture wars" to up here. Got to fight the good fight soldier! Support the troops and all that crap.
From: Pokaroo! | Registered: May 2001
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