1. Last night/very early this morning, I listened to the first two and about half of the third episode of Season 2 of the podcast, Slow Burn: The Clinton Impeachment. Today, needing another day of rest to help rid myself of this mild virus that's been visiting me, I listened to the rest of Season 2. Because the impeachment itself grew out of Independent Counsel Ken Starr's years long investigation of the Clintons, during which he learned that President Clinton and an intern, Monica Lewinsky, had been having an affair, parts of the podcast focused on Monica Lewinsky and her colleague, Linda Tripp, who secretly recorded confessions Lewinsky entrusted to Tripp (Tripp turned these recordings over to investigators). The series also delved into the Clinton's past in Little Rock and the scandals that dogged them before news broke of Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky (Whitewater, "TrooperGate", the allegations of Paula Jones, the death of Vince Foster, "TravelGate", and others).
Another episode explored the growing emergence and influence of conservative Evangelical Christians in political life in the 1990s and this movement's scathing treatment of Bill Clinton.
The episode I found most arresting was the one exploring how Clinton forced feminists and the women's movement to struggle with the ways that Clinton, on the one hand was their ally in terms of policies, proposed legislation, and his inclusion of women in his administration, while, on the other hand, his patterns of alleged predatory exploitation of women embodied precisely the very abusive behavior the movement was working to eliminate. How could these contradictions between Clinton's admirable political advocacy for women and his deplorable behavior in his private life and as an administrator be reconciled? Slow Burn didn't pretend to offer an answer to that question, but presented a variety of points of view from several feminists.
The last episode, episode 8, delved into the Juanita Broaddrick's accusation that Bill Clinton raped her in her hotel room in 1978. It's an ugly, horrifying story. This episode unfolds how Clinton's alleged assault remained secret for so many years, how it came to the attention of of Congress during the impeachment process, and the caution prominent media sources exercised in deciding, at the time of the impeachment, whether to tell this story.
2. Debbie arrived home just as Slow Burn ended. She's also shaking off a mild virus and told me she'd like to go to bed earlier than usual tonight and would like to get started earlier with watching some Columbo and Perry Mason.
So that's what we did.
The Perry Mason episodes were intriguing and surprising. I especially enjoyed the Columbo episode with Jackie Cooper as the show's guest star. Time and time again, as I watched Cooper play the role of a candidate running for a senate seat, I thought, "This guy is a real pro! Solid! A great actor!" I don't remember evaluating his work when I was a kid and saw him on The People's Choice and on Hennessey, but this evening I thoroughly enjoyed his work as a duplicitous, vain, egotistical, murdering politician.
3. I know that I watched the documentary movie, The War Room, not long after its release back in about 1993. It's part of the current Criterion Channel collection of movies listed under the title, Cinema Verite. It is, in fact, a documentary without voice over narration that follows the Clinton for President campaign from just before the New Hampshire primary all the way to Clinton's victory in 1992. Much of the movie focuses on the campaign's Director of Communications, George Stephanopoulos, and a charismatic consultant on the campaign team, James Carville. The movie spends much of its hour and a half showing us meetings of the campaign team, congregated in "the war room" and we see how they are developing messages, pushing back against criticisms of Clinton, figuring out how to exploit George H. W. Bush's weaknesses as a candidate, and developing television ads and other spots in order to get Clinton elected.
This movie was much more about the aggressiveness, agility, quickness, commitment, ingenuity, and youth of Clinton's core campaign team members than about Clinton himself.
I suppose, though, that this campaign team reflected the traits that made Clinton himself so successful as a political candidate. In their aggression, quickness, commitment, ingenuity, and youth, Clinton's campaign team might very well have been collectively playing out the same political strengths as Bill Clinton himself.
Quite a contrast today: Slow Burn investigated the compulsive, indulgent, narcissistic, even self-destructive and exploitative dimensions of Clinton's character while The War Room presented the charismatic, intelligent, and attractive aspects of Bill Clinton that moved a small army of young campaigners to devote endless hours of effort to getting him elected.
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