The summer of ’94 closed as it began, overheated and mean-spirited.
Down in Kentucky last week, a Republican congressman who owns a Christian bookstore stood by at an Owensboro “smokers’ rights” rally while a gaggle of pinheads burned First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton in effigy.
The leader of the lung-cancer rally, one Stan Arachikavitz, poured gasoline on the effigy as a country-western band strummed. Two women put the figure to the torch. A proud moment for the Bluegrass State.
“Hillary didn’t last as long as my Marlboro,” crowed Arachikavitz, the fun-seeking head of the Kentucky Association of Tobacco Supporters and a chap who reportedly sports swastika tatoos on his forearms.
The GOP congressman, Ron Lewis, said later he thought the burning in effigy was “inappropriate,” but as a Christian gentleman he declined to disavow it.
“I didn’t feel like it was something I was doing,” said Lewis, who opined that he “understood the level of the frustration” of tobacco growers unhappy with Clinton administration plans to raise tobacco taxes to fund health-care reform.
A Republican congressional candidate spoke at the rally, and Gatewood Galbraith, a Democratic gubernatorial candidate also in attendance, told The Associated Press he “didn’t see it (the burning) as a hate thing.”
Pouring gasoline on a stick figure in a dress draped on a wooden cross wearing a sign that reads, “I’m Hillary” apparently does not constitute “a hate thing” in Kentucky, so one has to wonder what it would it take. But then it’s been that kind of a summer.
Because the Clintons are unpopular with many Americans, there is no longer any minimum standard for trashing them.
At the Virginia Republican convention earlier this summer, prankish entrepreneurs who keep their radio dial turned to Rush Limbaugh peddled buttons bemoaning the absence of Lee Harvey Oswald from the American scene.
During the recent Whitewater hearings in the Senate, on a day devoted to televised questions about the suicide of White House Deputy Counsel Vincent Foster, Sen. Robert Bennett (R-Utah) questioned an FBI agent about the strands of blond hairs found on Foster’s clothing.
He was just curious, the senator insisted, and just wanted to know if the agents knew anything about that hair. Didn’t mean to imply anything by it, of course.
Blond hairs. Get it?
The FBI agent, all but dumbstruck by Bennett’s line of inquiry, suggested it was impossible to determine how the hair got on Foster’s clothing, although he did note that several members of Foster’s family are blond.
Meanwhile, TV preacher Jerry Falwell continues to peddle his line of hate-Clinton videotapes. For a price, you can own a videotape which effectively accuses the president of the United States of all manner of wrongdoing, including murder.
With the notable exception of William Bennett, Clinton’s political opponents claim never to have seen a moment of the Falwell tapes, which are advertised most nights of the week on cable television.
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But Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas and Rep. Newt Gingrich of Georgia and others agree that, while they haven’t seen the videotapes, accusing folks of murder and mayhem without a hint of evidence is a poor way to conduct political debate.
Interestingly, all of this hate and innuendo aimed at the Clintons is deemed to be fair enough, by the current standard.
The Clintons are counseled to toughen up in the face of these perverse attacks and understand that some among us have a problem adjusting to Mrs. Clinton’s “role” in the White House.
By the current logic, the Clintons are supposed to understand that the president got only 43 percent of the vote in 1992.
Apparently, that means he shouldn’t be trying to change the nation’s health-care delivery system, or press Congress to ban the purchase of guns sold as “Streetsweepers,” or raise taxes on tobacco-a product that was long ago proven to be a killer-as a means of paying for health insurance.
The price of doing those things-and a price that apparently is deemed acceptable by a pundit class which ignores the effigy and the ugly, false accusations-is a campaign to demonize Bill and Hillary Clinton.
It is a campaign which at its core believes that it is not enough to oppose Clinton’s policies. He and his wife must be cast as evil-doers. And the campaign continues apace.