R E C E N T L Y
The sexual symbolism of Ted Kaczynski's crimes
Deconstructing the Kennedys
Should an economist wear a short, tantalizing black dress to work?
Prozac is for wimps
The nanny trial, "Boogie Nights" and feminist writing about men
- - - - - - - - - -
A L S O
About Camille Paglia
- - - - - - - - - -
C O L U M N I S T S
Sexpert Opinion
Bestseller Hell
Spice of Life
Telling a book by its cover
Right On!
Word by Word
Ask Camille
New Year's wish for the Reverend Al
Let's talk about race
Sound Salvation
Unzipped
The Awful Truth
|
A S K_C A M I L L E +|+ C A M I L L E+P A G L I A | PAGE 2 OF 2
If it is true, as was first reported by the American Spectator, that
Clinton's fetish is passive oral sex, what does this mean? I'm sure gay men,
those adepts and connoisseurs of fellatio, are standing breathless at the
sidelines! According to an Arkansas state trooper, Clinton does not consider
oral sex to be adultery, based on his own quirky and rather heretical Bible
study.
Add to the mix last week's comments to a Los Angeles radio show by that
slimy weasel, Dick Morris, the former presidential advisor whom some suspect
of acting here by prearranged scheme. Morris' teasing hypothesis that Hillary
Clinton does not enjoy "regular" sexual relations with men was immediately
misread by the media as a scurrilous imputation of lesbianism. (This led to the
next day's arresting Page Six headline in the New York Post, "Lesbians: no
way Hillary's gay," where snapshots of Chastity Bono, Candace Gingrich and me
were lined up like three Furies as we solemnly pronounced Hillary
unequivocally straight.)
But Morris may have been cleverly trying to acquit Clinton of sex addiction by
showing that, far from being abnormal, the president is just an average Joe
whose natural foamy needs are not being met by his busy-busy, straight-arrow
wife. So perhaps we have a world-class politician who systematically craves
semi-public oral sex and who chose a hard-driving wife not particularly into
coitus -- despite all the cozy, even "embarrassing" physical demonstrations
that Clinton insiders breathlessly tell us about. (How naive: It's a truism
that couples who hang all over each other in public are usually at odds in
private.)
It's amazing and gratifying that the American public has so matured over the
past decade that it can now judge a politician's sex life irrelevant to his
job performance in office. However, even Clinton's sophisticated Hollywood
allies seem to be misjudging his alleged liaison with Monica Lewinsky. I was
very disappointed, for example, with the way the acutely intelligent and
super-talented Susan Sarandon, interviewed briefly on "Entertainment Tonight"
last week, dismissed Clinton's current problems as inconsequential, merely
unjustified hysteria over his private love life.
I too see no problem with a philandering president; I couldn't care less about
a politician's multiple sexual adventures. But if Bill Clinton had any kind of
sexual relationship with an intern, it was ethically wrong and even abhorrent.
I don't accept the widely cited parallel with the late François Mitterand,
president of France, who enjoyed a long-term relationship with a mature mistress. In Latin countries, the
mistress does indeed have a special status, tolerated with varying degrees of
resentment or acceptance by the entrenched wife and mother, who is not
discarded at midlife, in the cruel American way.
But Lewinsky had no such privileged status. She enjoyed no social
benefits and got no real return from her relationship with the
president -- except perhaps job help once she was shunted off and discarded.
She was not recognized by Clinton's friends, unlike Camilla Parker-Bowles, who
presided as hostess at dinner parties at Charles' country estate at High Grove
(to poor Diana's humiliation). Insecure and desperate for male attention
(press reports speak of her cool, distant father), the flamboyant, manically
flirtatious and clearly uncontrolled Lewinsky was callously exploited by
Clinton, a married man more than twice her age. She was less lover than sex
slave, possibly part of a far-flung stable servicing Clinton at his
convenience. This isn't sex; it's plumbing. If it was true, as Lewinsky
allegedly complained to friends, that there was no vaginal action, then there
was also no sexual reciprocity. Kept on her knees but not remunerated, Lewinsky
was denied the professional dignity of the prostitute, who is honorably
compensated for her valuable skills.
Since when does the nation's highest ranking official treat White House
interns like a cafeteria or dessert cart? As someone who voted for Clinton
twice -- and would vote for him a third time because I support most of his
policies -- I find his alleged behavior toward Lewinsky disgraceful, a word that
only conservatives seem ready to use at this time. When will my fellow
Democrats shake off their cowardly herd mentality and condemn what needs to be
condemned? It's precisely this kind of hush-hush hypocrisy during Clinton's
first term that eventually produced the recent media overkill, as liberal
journalists vented their rage at having been snookered by their charming
loverboy.
The world overflows with women of every age ready, willing and able to
satisfy a randy president. Since I am on record as favoring a lowering of the
age of consent to 14, I don't give a fig whether the vacationing or partying
Clinton beats the bushes for teeny-boppers or the Wife of Bath. (Was no one
else skeptical of the official story of how he tore up his knee in the dark at
a golfing pal's villa?) But it is gross and unseemly for the chief executive
to be using his hallowed workplace for sophomoric fun and games. Clinton has
violated both the letter and the spirit of sexual harassment guidelines -- whose
intelligent and moderate application I have endorsed since 1986. (See my 1991
attack on Anita Hill, reprinted in "Sex, Art, and American Culture," and my
1994 defense of Paula Jones on CNN's "Larry King Live," transcript in "Vamps &
Tramps.")
Oral sex, as Clinton appears to practice it, is a hit-and-run game. It's a
way to shut women up, to stop their nagging. "Kiss it!" Clinton allegedly
told Paula Jones when he dropped his pants in the Little Rock hotel room. He
wants to be consoled by women's receptive maternalism, but he's too scared to
let his slick willy linger long in the dark love chamber. Like Edgar Allan
Poe, he shrinks from the razor-sharp pendulum in that pit. Clinton suffers
from Freudian ambivalence about women. He drinks deep from their liquid
emotionality, which the American people see glistening in his empathic face,
but then he flees as fast as he can, for he fears smothering entrapment.
Hence he is always propelling himself into the visionary future, a quest to
escape his own impacted female origins. That bridge to the 21st
century is shaking with a male stampede.
Clinton is a tactile, not a phallic president. His favorite gropes are at
funerals, where he can give long, warm, tearful bear hugs to endless lines of
ladies without scandal. He needs Hillary to structure him and give him spine,
or he'd melt into a butter puddle of lip-smacking schmooziness. Look at how
inept he was in reintroducing his yappy new puppy to the affronted
presidential cat on the White House lawn after the last family vacation.
"Hillary will deal with that naughty dog!" I muttered peevishly to my
significant other.
But do we really want the unelected Hillary as the only standing authority
inside the demoralized White House? Two weeks ago, the executive mansion was
as disarrayed as "Hamlet's" Elsinore, where the guilty, insomniac, incestuous
King Claudius carouses by night. The major media were remarkably quiescent in
the face of Hillary's putsch. It was pure Evita Perón until the president
took back the reins of power in his State of the Union speech -- where, thank
Zeus, the American democracy showed the world that it was still smoothly
functioning.
If anyone is addicted, it's Hillary -- to Bill's masochistic collapses into her
all-indulgent forgiveness, where she soothes him with indiscriminate blame of
others for his messes. Like the battered wife, she loves her man most when he
comes crawling back and promises never to do it again. "Chain of fools!" as
Aretha said. When will the major media get over their archaically chivalrous
pussyfooting around Hillary and start doing some honest probing of her
remarkable, bizarre character?
Nothing in my career, except my remarks on date-rape, has gotten me more
torrents of abuse than my writing on Hillary -- not "Kind of a Bitch: Why I
Like Hillary Clinton" in the April 18, 1993 London Sunday Times (reprinted in "Vamps &
Tramps") but "Ice Queen, Drag Queen," the March 4, 1996 cover story of the
New Republic. (The latter drew a ranting letter to the editor from Clinton
crony and Hollywood producer, Linda Bloodworth-Thomason, so I guess it struck
home.) Since the Clintons have dragged us through one agonizing collective
psychodrama after another, I fail to see why we can't psychoanalyze them in
return.
I happened to be in the hall during Hillary's speech at the 1996 Democratic
National Convention (I was in Chicago to do "Oprah" on, yes, Hera help me,
date-rape), and I was struck by the fierce, glowering, rather frightening
woman seated next to Chelsea Clinton as she rapturously beamed down at her
mother on the podium. "Is that security agent a prison matron?" I asked
myself. Only later did I find out, to my shock, that the bruiser was
Hillary's mother -- who hardly allowed herself a single smile at this peak
moment in her daughter's career.
The dark waters in the Rodham family run deep. Those who want to understand
the dysfunction of the presidential marriage, which has disordered the
national discourse and already stained Clinton's legacy, must start with
Hillary's early problems with female sexual identity, which produced her
ambition and achievement but also her self-destructive tunnel vision,
paranoia and thundering "Fire Sermon" removal from reality. However, I am
equally convinced that for the rest of her life Hillary Clinton will be a
passionate and effective spokesman for women's rights around the world.
Are we headed for impeachment? I hope not. Even if Clinton and his
wenching buddies did put the strong arm on Lewinsky to buy her silence,
these are still insufficient grounds for nullifying the 1996 election. But we
clearly need something intermediate in the public arsenal, some expression of
official censure that would stop short of impeachment and still let Clinton
fulfill as best he can his program of promising initiatives in so many fields,
from health care to education.
Ask Camille and she will tell.
|
