As I was either not born or not yet following the intricacies of certain events from recent history closely at the time, my understanding of what transpired is not very clear. And, since the events occurred in the past couple of generations, history has not yet sorted out the definitive account. In other words, it's almost impossible to find a truly objective source for the facts. A little farther back was that weird episode in which Edward Kennedy supposedly drove drunk into a pond and left his female passenger to die while he went and had drinks at a bar. At least, that's how my mom tells it. Something makes me think it is possible that there are some parts of the story that are not being made evident in that version...
Anyway, another one that is more recent, and perhaps far more relevant to the workings of our country is the whole Kenneth Starr-Bill Clinton thing. At the time, I think my assumption was that he was brought in to investigate the whole Monica Lewinski thing. Later, I realized that he was brought in to replace an investigator who had previously found the Clintons not guilty of any crime in the Whitewater case (which I also did not really understand at all); and that Starr spent $50,000,000 over four years poking around further in Whitewater, not uncovering anything illegal. But then, by chance, he discovered the whole Monica Lewinski thing and he started pursuing it, under the guise of it being perhaps linked to Whitewater. What I understand (based on my "liberal" sources, anyway) is that there was never any evidence that Whitewater & Lewinski were linked in any way, but that Starr (who had, incidentally, contributed to Republican political campaigns in the past and had been offered a post to be the Dean of a Law School owned by a billionare Republican operative-this is what I learned just last night-see below) knew that would be his only opportunity to put Clinton in a position to commit perjury.
Anyway, I have had an interest in reading "The Hunting of the President" by Salon writer Joe Conason (for whom I have a great deal of respect), but opted instead to borrow the documentary from my local library. Crappy documentary! I hope the book is better, but I did feel like the documentary was so spottily sourced, in places, and blatantly sensational, I really found it disheartening. My assumption and belief is that, for the most part, progressives in this country have reality and truth on their side. Sensationalism and spotty sources should be left to political camps that having nothing else to go on.
So-what I'm left with...I can pay attention to facts in the here and now. But what can a man do to get an accurrate version of history, save spending countless hours scanning microfiche of 1996 New York Times articles?
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5 comments:
I'm with you on all counts.
I just read through this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Kennedy#Chappaquiddick
which of course can't be assumed to be the whole story, but it's a start. Your mom may not be entirely right, but it seems she's not entirely wrong either.
As far as the whole Clinton situation goes, he was accused of doing everything from dealing drugs to murder, and all he was ever charged with was lying to a grand jury about having sex with Monica Lewinsky. You should not lie to grand juries, ever, for any reason. And like all politicians Clinton failed to realize that coming clean (especially where blue dresses are concerned) early is the way to go. We WILL find out if it's worth finiding out, particularly in a society obsessed with titillating things like extramarital affairs.
Did Clinton's indiscretion harm the country? Almost assuredly not. Was it wrong? Yes, but probably not worth $50,000,000 dollars of tax payer money, while Iran-Contra slipped away far easier.
We already know that the Bush Administration stretched the truth (at best) regarding WMD in Iraq, but because R's are in charge of congress no servious investigations are likely to happen as a result. These lies have led to the deaths of soon to be 2000 American soldiers, and 10's or 100's of thousands of innocent Iraqis.
Not too hard from my point of view to make that judgement call.
With luck, the blogosphere is correct, and the Administration is about to be embroiled in one giant shit storm over Valerie Plame, and having lost last years election to an obvious criminal nincompoop may almost feel worth it, as he explodes in a fireball of his own creation.
The Magpie saga continues.
Interesting on the Chappaquiddick-thanks for tracking it down (I know how hard it is to get you to look up anything on Wickipedia).
Unless there really is a lot of stuff that went on I'm totally not aware of, the absurdity of that Clinton criminal investigation is/was mind-blowing.
The Bush stuff is heinous. It's kind of ironic that with Bush having sold himself to the religious right all these years, the most Christian thing about him may be that his legacy of damage to this world and its people may be approaching Biblical proportions.
Man, we could really use a President like FDR or Teddy Roosevelt. How about we just find anyone with Roosevelt as the last name and go from there. Can't really do much worse.
Might want to keep a scrapebook or journal of historical events for Lucy. Your unbaised view would be the one she could trust the most.
I think there's actually a way to download your blog entries as a text file. If I'm wrong about that, it'd be a real shame. If I'm right, I'll want to do it, probably, on a yearly basis from now on.
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