Flytrap's Trashy Books
Scandals customarily
generate lots of quick, trashy literature; the kind of unedited, misspelled
garbage designed to sell scads of copies before people realize just how junky
it is. But Flytrap, until now, has been a publishing flop. The last few weeks
have finally brought the first crop of scandal books: William J. Bennett's
The Death of Outrage: Bill Clinton and the Assault on American Ideals ,
Ann Coulter's High Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Case Against Bill
Clinton , and Jerome D. Levin's The Clinton Syndrome: The President and
the Self-Destructive Nature of Sexual Addiction .
None of
these books is Flytrap's All the President's Men (or should that be
Women ?). The books are, for the most part, shameless attempts to exploit
the nation's sorrow for money and fame. They are essentially clip jobs,
repackaging newspaper and TV reports with a gloss of new opinion. But there is
something interesting about them: the three distinct strains of Clinton
criticism they represent.
1 Somber Moral Instruction:
Unsurprisingly, Bennett's
project in The Death of Outrage is to stiffen America's backbone, to
persuade us to care about Clinton's misdeeds and to punish them. He writes,
"American citizens know better--and they will demonstrate that indeed they do
know better. Americans will realize they are being played for fools by the
president and his defenders."
The Death of Outrage
suffers from the same surfeit of self-righteousness that plagues all Bennett's
ventures. It is jacketed with the sober brown paper that covered The Book of
Virtues , and it seems a calculating attempt by Bennett to secure his
franchise as America's scold in chief. Bennett's pose of nonpartisan moral
authority, annoying enough when he writes for kids, seems particularly forced
in The Death of Outrage . Click for a spectacular example.
After reading Bennett,
however, I began to think that the consciousness-raising he preaches might
actually be possible. He is a fine rhetorician, and The Death of Outrage
makes the best case yet for public condemnation of Clinton. Bennett's arguments
are nothing you haven't read before on the New York Times editorial page
or in the Weekly Standard , but they're powerful nonetheless. Basic
premises: Clinton's reckless, repeated adultery weakens essential moral codes;
his betrayal of vows and his lies undermine public trust; his use of legal
chicanery to duck ethical responsibility is cowardly and grotesque; the
public's silence in the face of this is a capitulation, "moral disarmament";
and America, which has always believed that politicians' moral behavior
matters, must start judging Clinton's character.
But the
inspiration of this book is its tone. Bennett is obviously obsessed, partisan,
and furious about Flytrap, yet he has managed to write a book without vitriol.
He refrains from gloating. He chastises others for their glee in savaging
Clinton. He takes Clinton's immorality so seriously that he can't even joke
about it. Like television, the book is a cool medium; Bennett's anger is
convincing because he holds it in check.
2 Rage:
I realized the effectiveness
of Bennett's restraint when I opened Coulter's High Crimes and
Misdemeanors , which represents the second strain of criticism. If Bennett
is superego, Coulter is id. Bennett says in measured tones what conservatives
ought to believe. MSNBC pundit Coulter screams what they really feel.
High Crimes has two
principal aims: 1) to explain what, historically and legally, constitutes an
impeachable offense (summary: moral offenses, not just criminal ones) and 2) to
build an impeachment case against Clinton by summarizing his malfeasance in
everything from the Paula Jones case to campaign fund raising to Webb Hubbell's
job search to the White House Travel Office to Monica Lewinsky. But Coulter,
whose TV manner is that of a woman going stark raving mad, is the wrong person
to write a sober legal tract. High Crimes is supposed to show that
Clinton's enemies have a strong legal case against him. Instead, it suggests
Clinton's enemies are nutters.
Coulter argues ad hominem:
Clinton's China satellite policy was "treason." He is "The Manchurian
Candidate" and a "horny hick." Clinton doesn't allow alcohol in the Oval Office
because "it might interfere with his potency." She says Newsweek 's
Eleanor Clift has gone "beyond the call of duty to earn [her] presidential
kneepads."
High
Crimes is painfully shoddy, even for a book rushed to press. Misspellings
are commonplace. Quotes are muffed: Clinton's most famous comment, "I did not
have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky," is rendered "I never had
sexual relations with that woman." Entire paragraphs are repeated, nearly word
for word, in different chapters of the book. Coulter claims to lay out the
facts against Clinton, but it's hard to trust her: In I happen to know
something about, she grossly misrepresents evidence to make Clinton look worse.
Coulter's legal scholarship is so repetitious and garbled that it's hard to
puzzle out her definition of "high crimes and misdemeanors." It's as though the
book was not edited at all.
3 Psychobabble:
I did not think a book could
be any worse than High Crimes . Then I encountered Jerome
Levin's--whoops, I mean, Dr. Jerome Levin's-- The Clinton Syndrome .
Psychotherapist Levin's ostensible purpose is to use Clinton's problems to
bring attention to sex addiction. His underlying purpose seems more cynical: to
get his shoddy little book stocked in both the political and self-help
sections.
To these ends Levin has
written a psychological profile of the president as sex addict. According to
Levin, the root of Flytrap is Clinton's "hang up." As the child of an "enabler"
and a "rageaholic," as well as an "ACOA (Adult Child of Alcoholics)," Clinton
became a chronic "musterbator," a boy who overachieved in order to win the
"unconditional love" that was missing at home. He sought it in power, in the
love of the crowd, and especially in casual sex. But all were poor substitutes
for true love and didn't vanquish his feelings of inadequacy and guilt. The
deaths of Ron Brown ("an older-brother figure" to Clinton), Yitzak Rabin ("an
important father figure"), and his mother (a mother figure?) made Clinton
vulnerable to Lewinsky.
"The more I thought about
it," writes Levin, "the more I realized that Clinton had about as much chance
of leaving her alone as a cocaine addict has of passing up a line." Clinton
deserves sympathy and compassion, not vitriol, because he exercises no control
over his compulsive sexual behavior. Straight-faced conclusion: Clinton should
hold "SCA (Sexual Compulsives Anonymous)" chapter meetings at the White House,
thus inspiring millions of other Americans to overcome their addictions.
Never mind that the very
existence of sex addiction is questioned by most respectable shrinks. Never
mind that Levin's profile of Clinton is constructed from a papier-mâché of A.M.
Rosenthal columns and episodes of Charlie Rose . Never mind that The
Clinton Syndrome is filled with gobbledygook such as "Let us sum up Bill
Clinton's early childhood influences in terms of bio-psycho-social
determinants." (Let's not and say we did.) Never mind that it's even more badly
edited than High Crimes . Never mind that this flimflam is padded to book
length with 100 pages of irrelevant stories about other addicts. It doesn't
matter. This is Flytrap's moment. Arianna Huffington is touting Levin on the
air, and his book is stacked high by the register at my local Borders.
The
sidebar on Bill Bennett's self-righteousness is . The sidebar on how Ann
Coulter misrepresents a Clinton story is .
More Flytrap
...
