Big Hair & Ankle Straps

Photo by Christie Gretter

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This is a tongue-in-cheek piece of political satire that I sold to a magazine back in 1996 when Bill Clinton was running for a second term (I wrote it back then as a bit of humor and read it today as simply a bit of humor from a by-gone era). By 2024 standards, it would be considered offensive/unacceptable/sexist by almost everyone. I’m putting it up here to show how much times have changed and to see if anybody notices any parallels with our current politics***

If you think about it, Cops, Mafia guys and professional gamblers share an innate ability to disregard the emotion and look at the facts, even when they know they won’t like what they see. Depending on your point of view, it’s either an art form, or proof positive that nice girls don’t date any of the three.

            Either way, it makes them polar opposites of the television news media, a few “old school” Republicans and the professional Jesus freaks. All of them, with boring regularity, get it caught in their zipper when  political or social issues come up -- especially, anything involving Bill Clinton. If you doubt it, look at the events swirling around the White House. The Prez’ has got caught again, big time, with his pants down around his knees, but his numbers remain strong. In our current culture of political correctness and self-flagellation, it should not be happening, but it is.     

            So, what’s the reason? How does Bill keep dodging bullets? Actually, there are a couple of reasons and none of them are directly related to Bill Clinton as a person, because the average, American has always seen Bill Clinton as a pretty “iffy’ Arkansas politician with a Jerry Lee Lewis haircut and a pushy wife. There’s always been that gut-level distrust of Bill Clinton. You’ll hear it in every tavern and coffee shop across the country -- hey, he ain’t been all that bad a president, but I wouldn’t let the sucker roof my house.

           This shouldn’t come as a surprise, people understood Bill Clinton when they voted for him. He was the first president who’d grown up and was a direct product of the 60’s -- he put on a pair of shades and played the saxophone on MTV, listened to Fleetwood Mac, smoked a little dope, dodged the draft and copped a feel off any woman who wasn’t comatose.

            Bill Clinton has always been Bill Clinton -- about half truth and about half Ozark Mountain bullshit. When he sat there on 60 Minutes, held hands with Hillary and fessed up to, “... causing pain in my marriage...”,  I damn near died laughing. Hillary looked like she’d just had a root canal with no Novocain and there’s Bill squirming around in the chair, trying to get a look up Leslie Stahl’s skirt. Bill wasn’t sorry he cheated on his old lady, he was sorry he got caught.

            He skated the marijuana issue by claiming he didn’t inhale. Nobody believed a word he said, but they let it slide -- just like they’ll let this slide because he sat there with a totally straight face and said he got an “Improper’. The difference between an “Improper’ and a blowjob is a legal point only an Arkansas lawyer can understand, but as I get it, Monica didn’t swallow, so it’s technically an “Improper’, not a blowjob—kind of akin to the not inhaling, I guess….Along with expecting anybody who grew up in the 60’s to have a loosey-goosey attitude about sex, nobody expects the whole truth out of Bill Clinton on any given day, they never have.

            Clinton’s spin masters will counter with theories about a right wing conspiracy. If there is a right wing conspiracy, it’s nothing to brag about, just a loose collection of irate conservatives and wealthy face-lift queens who aren’t going to miss a chance to take a cheap shot at Bill Clinton, pretty much the same thing the liberal left did to Richard Nixon. The left wing was sure Richard Nixon was a paranoid crook. The right wing is sure Bill Clinton is a pervert.         

            But, while the moralists gnash their teeth, a majority of Americans shrug their shoulders and snicker at Clinton’s latest fluff-a-thon. If you have any kind of imagination, or at the very least a dirty mind, you ought to be getting a kick out of the Clinton White House. It’s kind of like those paper place mats at the pizza parlor. The ones where they give the bored kid a purple crayon and he follows the lines around the maze, finds the clown and wins a prize. This is a new game that’ll be in the pizza parlors next week -- it’s called, “Find the Bimbo in Bill’s Office”. Take the purple crayon follow the diagram of the White House, if you can find Monica Lewinsky on her knees, going down on the President, you win a medium Pepsi.

            Anybody who was surprised that the stain on the blue dress wasn’t Grey Poupon, needs a reality check. Remember my theory about cops and Mafia guys? Cut through the hype and take a look at the pattern we have here --these women all look alike, they’re like a bunch of southern fried Stepford Wives. Every face that flashes up on the TV screen looks just like the last one of Bill’s babes. Think about it -- Bill’s not into the waifish, runway- model look, no Kate Moss for him, show Bill a big ol’ piece of fluff, who’s not very smart, has big hair, big knockers and clunks down the hall in a pair of six inch heels with ankle straps and his little heart starts going pitty-pat.

            So, why is the American public letting him get away with it? There’s a couple of reasons -- first, to their ever loving credit, most people aren’t hypocrites. The majority of Americans, male and female, at least once in their life, have got involved in some sexual escapade and then had to lie about it. Secondly, demographics play a part. That big population block in the middle was raised in the 60’s and they figure the President needs an occasional blowjob as much as the next guy.

            To the surprise of the moralists and the media, that same laissez-faire attitude has characterized the attitude of the feminist groups who haven’t found much in common with any of the so-called victims. The moralists can bellow until their lungs fall out, but the feminist organization are first and foremost, pragmatists. They have their foot on the throat of both parties because women have decided the last two presidential elections and they aren’t going to trade their position of strength on education, gun control, child care and abortion rights for Paula Jones, Monica Lewinsky or Linda Tripp.

            Besides, it’s a target rich environment -- Linda Tripp, the frustrated fat girl with the tape recorder, is right out of a Jimmy Buffett song. If ol’ Linda thought she was going to be some kind of folk hero, she’s in for some tough sledding. Nobody wants anything to do with a goofy broad who’s resume includes, self-serving gossip and snitch. About the best she can hope for is a spot in a cat food commercial.

            James Carville set the pace for the Paula Jones thing the first day, when he quipped “... it’s amazing what you find when you drag a few bucks through an Arkansas trailer park...”

             Being the acknowledged intellectual she is, Paula didn’t understand she was a victim of anything until a bunch of  “god-botherers” and Clinton haters showed up with a wad of money. When she took the hint and agreed she was a victim of something, Paula got new hair, new teeth and a Mercedes. Since her lawsuit fell flat on its ass, I figure it’s a safe bet they’ll take the Mercedes back, but I’m kind of wondering if they’re going to want the teeth back, too. If she’d have just done what Bill told her up in the hotel room, she’d probably be the Ambassador to Iraq, or at the very least, Superintendent of the Arkansas State Police.

            To understand the third part of the equation, it helps to have known Chicago, thirty years ago. Nobody ever said Mayor Richard J. Daly ran the straightest administration in the world, but when Da’ Boss was running Chicago, things worked and people didn’t give a damn if the wheels were greased, they liked the results. In 1998, the American economy is strong, we’re not at war and things look pretty good. As long as they stay that way, people are going to cut Bill Clinton a lot of slack on his sex life....

            The last part of the equation is a little more complex because it involves a large scale shifting of attitudes on the part of many Americans. Like the negative reaction to Linda Tripp, there’s been a general resentment building over the gutting of people’s private lives by moral zealots. Nowhere is it more evident than in Special Prosecutor, Kenneth Starr’s approval ratings. Good ol’ Brother Starr, the nation’s highest-paid voyeur, the Bible-thumping moralist, who’s trying to shove a $42 million Sunday School lesson down all our throats at the point of a Grand Jury. The fact that Starr’s approval ratings are about one point higher than Timothy McVeigh’s, tells me we’ve reached saturation point with the constant gutting of public figures’ private lives and the puritanical morality that’s defined and enforced by a vocal minority.

            It’ll all have its end pretty soon. Most of Bill’s babes will make a decent buck in the skin magazines, all except for Linda Tripp, she’ll be dancing around, doing that chow-chow-chow thing on the cat food commercial.

            Starr will take a shot at Clinton and miss completely. He will end up proving that when a silly, Beverly Hills rich girl with a serious case of hot pants has an affair with an older man, particularly the President, they’ll both lie about it. The bottom line will be that $42 million doesn’t buy much of a sex scandal, anymore.

             Nobody is ever going to be silly enough to put Bill Clinton on a list of great Americans, but he’ll skate the Monica deal. He’ll get by with a few nicks, a few scratches and a lot of jokes about his Presidential Library being built in a Victoria Secrets store, but Bill Clinton will survive. He’ll survive because we never expected anything better from him. It’s like the Irish say,  “ ... don’t we all know, Bill’s been a bit of a lad ...”

- The End -