The Net-Roots Are All Moist Between Their Legs Today

Jonesin' for the "Big Dog!"

Bill Clinton, back from his celebrity/hero tour of the Far East, where he rescued not one but TWO "girl" agents provocateurs from a North Korea the women had gone to China to antagonize, addressed the gathering Friday morning, enjoining them to ever-more progressive activism. He urged the Net-rooters on to even greater efforts to found and foster 'progressivism.' (More, better Dims, I guess?)

And the Net-Rooters were so grateful for the attention (they're bloggers!) that the only thing they asked him about was "Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

Talk about a free ride! These are the models of a 'new,' critical, citizen 'journalism'?

I for one was not impressed (yeah, yeah...when am I ever?).

Bill Clintoon is not now, never was, and never will be a "progressive," unless it be thought "progressive" that a nominal Dim were the most successful REPUBLICAN president since Eisenhower at advancing the CorpoRat agenda. He's a smart guy. I met him once, before he was president. Formidble fella.

But, let's remember 'triangulation," shall we? He 'ended' that horrible 'welfare as we know it' which rolled up the social safety net. He pushed through NAFTA. He signed and approved, loudly, the repeal, by Phil Gramm and the rest, of the Glass-Steagal Act, and thereby facilitated the 'crash' of 2008. He rammed through the revision of the 1933 Communications Act, which gave the CorpoRats unrestricted ability to consolidate--and then, predictably, to eviscerate--"the Press." Bob Barr has apologized for pushing DOMA through Congress, but Clintoon has never apologized for not vetoing the obscene fucking thing. Sure, he'd have been overturned. So what? I'll not deny he had his moments, but's not mistake his policies as "liberal," or his views "Progresive."

Lew Lapham has this assessment:

"I think Bill was a tremendous talk-show host—I think of him the same way I think of Oprah. He’s a very clever politician. I’ve met him a couple times, and he’s the kind of person who can remember everybody’s name having only seen them once before. He’s formidable. But I don’t know what he’s about except the greater glory of Bill Clinton...

Well, I wrote a lot of columns about the Clintons when he was in office, and I guess my favorite description of him was as a piñata: You could hit him and anything would come out—scandal, gossip, friendship, a speech. I think of them as terminal narcissists. I can remember when Gore was running for office in 2000, he made a speech here in New York, and Clinton came to make a speech as well. It’s the middle of the summer, 2000, Clinton is talking to the entire New York media somewhere down at NYU. The entire speech was about himself. He didn’t mention Gore’s name once.

And here we were supposed to be in the middle of an election that was important to win. I think of the Clintons as being out for only themselves. I still remember the photograph of the 16-wheeler truck that was pulled up in front of the White House when they departed, carrying with them everything that could be moved."

Lapham's posthumously naming Tim Russert the "Head-waiter" to the Village people's Sunday news buffet was one of the nastiest, sweetest, most necessary and most welcome instances of saying ill of the dead since I was banned at Eschaton for exhibiting too much glee at the demise of Jerry Falwell.

Clintoon as talk-show host makes eminent sense. He was the first President since Kennedy whose personality actually exceeded the Office. Considering his 'progeny,' you may judge for yourself what sort of development that has turned out to be...

(Edited, 8/15, @ 1:00 pm MDT)