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How can any progressive person defend Bill Clinton? This is the President financed by multinationals to get NAFTA through Congress. The President who let the WTI incinerator poison children in East Liverpool, Ohio. The President who signed legislation with the salvage rider to destroy old growth forests. The President who bombed Sudan and Afghanistan to divert attention from the sex scandal.
Oh, yeah. The sex scandal. What an interesting diversion from the massive crimes the man has committed. The fact that president after president can bomb, invade and murder civilians with nary a hint of impeachment epitomizes the moral depravity of the Republicrat monopoly of power.
The fact that president after president can have sexual fling after sexual fling and only in 1998 is it questioned illustrates what? A stricter standard of personal morality for public figures? Really? With the onslaught led by people like Newt Gingrich, it seems that dumping one's wife for the crime of having cancer is the high standard of morality to which these people strive.
Progressives have to scramble for a few seconds of news time for an anti-incinerator protest, a rally to save forests or a demonstration against genetically contaminated food. Yet the media devotes hours to this drivel for month after month.
Unquestionably, the sex scandal diverts Americans from addressing real issues and proves that the current Congress has its head so far in the sewer that it is incapable of governing. (An interesting question would be whether we should impeach the President, impeach the Congress, impeach the corporate media, or impeach all of them.)
The sex scandal is a diversion from addressing sexual oppression. Such as the legions of Asian women being forced into prostitution by global economic "restructuring." One wonders to what degree the burgeoning Asian sex industry is frequented by the same Congressmen who so piously bemoan the journeys of the Presidential penis.
But the scandal is not merely a diversion. It can become a turning point in the right wing assault on individual liberties. Their hate campaign has laid the foundation for attacks on homosexuals and bombing of abortion clinics. Their bigoted mentality cannot even tolerate an open discussion of masturbation. The right wing appears anxious to investigate every sexual act which fails to have the proper number of pelvic thrusts from the correct copulatory position. Perhaps it is time to use the word "pervert" to define those whose primary source of erotic pleasure is suppressing the sexuality of others.
The right wing is working overtime to terminate the long-held norm that private behavior is private. With an agenda of putting genital police in every bedroom, the removal of a president for refusal to disclose private acts would excite them to intensify their attacks on individual freedom.
If they succeed in legitimizing this investigation of personal sexuality, it could have profound consequences for progressives. Given recent advances in electronic technology, would it be far-fetched to imagine environmental activists or labor organizers viewing police videos of themselves appearing to perform sexual acts they never imagined with people they never met?
Let there be no mistake about it-of the many crimes that Clinton has committed, lying about personal sex is not one of them. Not because he didn't lie, but because no government has any right to crucify citizens for private sex and no citizen (even a despicable President) has any duty to answer such questions.
Though it may require all of our energy to hold our noses and refrain from barfing, we must defend Bill Clinton. Not because we have any respect for this corporate pawn. But because there appear to be no limits on the moral degeneracy of his accusers.