Thread: BILL CLINTON
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Old May 9th 08, 11:26 PM posted to rec.radio.shortwave
Tex[_2_] Tex[_2_] is offline
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Default BILL CLINTON

His desperate and pathetic spectacle of trying to remain relevant is
sad couldn't happen to a more deserving fellow. There is something
very satisfying watching this has been pandering to sparse crowds of
toothless white trash voters (the only people who are even remotely
interested in hearing his bs). From the looks of his bulbous red nose
as of yesterday it appears he is not handling the demise of his "wife"
well (who was it who said he had a "nose like a vacuum cleaner" when
it came to cocaine?). From all reports it hasn't adversely affected
his sex life though. According to the recent released biography
'Clinton in Exile' by Carol Felsenthal the private jet he flies around
on is called the "**** jet". No wonder he has been so anxious to fly
around to every nook and cranny campaigning for Hillary.

Every American owes a debt of gratitude to Obama for sparing the
country 8 more years of the Clinton soap opera, Hillary's polyester
pant suits, Bill reestablishing the White House as a Whore House, and
the arrogant finger jabbing in your face rants from both of them.

Some excerpts of the book's reviews:
"Packaged with a particularly hangdog picture of the ex-president on
its cover, this book explores loaded subjects like Clinton's last-
minute pardons, imperiled legacy, flashy new billionaire friends and
business connections. It's a book with chapter headings like "It's
Monica, Stupid!" and "Philanderer in Chief."

Given the relative dearth of book-length reporting on Clinton's
suburban years, Felsenthal does have a worthwhile opportunity. A post-
presidency is of great historical interest, none more so than that of
Theodore Roosevelt, whose struggle with life out of the limelight was
part of Felsenthal's inspiration for "Clinton in Exile." And while no
two post-presidencies are alike, she presents Clinton's as more like
Roosevelt's than that of Jimmy Carter. "Bill Clinton found the
prospect of looking to Jimmy Carter totally unattractive," she writes.
Clinton, she says, envies Carter his Nobel Peace Prize.

When Roosevelt left the White House, he embarked on the grand soul-
searching adventure and publicity stunt of an African safari. But
Clinton, according to this book, found himself marooned in Chappaqua,
New York, staked out by reporters hoping to catch him walking Buddy,
his dog.

"So much thought had been given to Hillary's life after the White
House and so little thought to Bill's," Felsenthal writes of Clinton
and his wife, the future senator and presidential candidate, "that he
had not bothered to hire a post-presidency press secretary or to line
up a staff." Not surprisingly, "Clinton in Exile" cites examples of
the nasty, unfounded news reports that the ex-president wanted to
avoid.

After a period of floundering and depression, about which "Clinton in
Exile" eagerly speculates, the former president found his sea legs by
establishing a Manhattan office in Harlem rather than Midtown, thus
turning a public relations crisis into a bonanza. And he tapped into
the money and adulation that came with speeches given overseas. "As
the world came to accept him," says a former finance chairman of the
Democratic National Committee, Alan Solomont, "he stopped feeling
sorry for himself."

That line is attributed and relatively straightforward. But Felsenthal
often relies on catty, unidentified sources. She also has much better
luck eliciting comments from erstwhile Clinton friends who claim to
have been dropped ("Who's Bill Clinton?" one of them asks her
sarcastically) than from the wealthy, skirt-chasing, private-plane-
lending new cronies with whom, she says, he plutocratically zips
around.

Without drawing on much new information, "Clinton in Exile" ticks off
the developments of her subject's recent years. He created the William
J. Clinton Foundation and the William J. Clinton Presidential Library.
(Felsenthal casts no new light on how either is financed.) He
developed an unexpectedly warm friendship with an unlikely ex-
president, George H.W. Bush, as they joined forces for Asian tsunami
relief. He underwent heart surgery, wrote books and took up golf,
about which Felsenthal extrapolates with typical gusto: "People who
don't trust Clinton are given to saying that he cheats at golf," she
writes, naming none of them, "and that the man who cheats at golf also
cheats at life (and on his wife)."

How have any of these undertakings shaped the Clinton legacy in his
post-presidential years? This book is at its most barbed in describing
his aggressive campaigning on his wife's behalf against Senator Barack
Obama and in elaborating on what, to Felsenthal and one of her more
expansive sources, the historian Douglas Brinkley, is the great big
scarlet letter ("I" for impeachment) on his chest, despite Clinton's
claim of pride in having deflecting charges leveled by a right-wing
conspiracy. "If he's going to try to rebuild his legacy," Brinkley
says, "he's going to somehow have to sell this notion that impeachment
was a badge of honor."