The New York Times says Bill Clinton's latest round of lies -- his autobiography -- has "many of his old antagonists ... gearing up again." Among many others, MSNBC's Bill Press said the book was "bringing all the Clinton haters out from under their rocks. I mean, they're salivating because they get another chance to get into all of these issues."
We're not salivating with anticipation -- that's drool as we fall into a coma.
Since Clinton was impeached, liberals have been trapped in a time warp. They just can't seem to "move on." Book after book after book retelling Clinton's side of impeachment. As far as I know, conservatives have produced one book touching on Bill Clinton's impeachment in this time: In 2003, National Review's Rich Lowry decided it was finally safe to attack Clinton and thereupon produced the only Regnery book with Bill Clinton's mug on the cover that did not make The New York Times' best-sellers list. That's how obsessed the Clinton-haters are.
Now there's even a documentary version of the liberals' "vast right-wing conspiracy" fantasy, "The Hunting of the President." O.J. had more dignity.
If we're so obsessed with it, why do they keep bringing it upâ¢
At 957 pages, this is the first book ever published that contains a 20-minute intermission. Readers are advised to put it down and read a passage from Clinton's 1988 Democratic National Convention speech nominating Michael Dukakis just to stay awake. This thing is so long, he almost called it "War and Peace." Or, I suppose, more properly, "War and a Piece."
Considering how obsessed liberals are with turning their version of Clinton's impeachment into the historical record, it's interesting how these books spend very little time talking about Clinton's impeachment. In lieu of discussing the facts of his impeachment, Clinton simply makes analogies to grand historical events -- events notable for bearing not the remotest relationship to his own sordid story.
Clinton claims, for example, that conservatives decided to target him in lieu of the Soviet Union after the Cold War ended and conservatives needed a new villain. In other words, Clinton is equating himself, in scale and importance, to the Soviet Union, the global communist conspiracy and the Marxist-Leninist Revolution. Nope, no ego problem there.
Alternatively, Clinton claims conservatives hated him because he represented "the '60s." As is now well-known, four lawyers, toiling away after hours and on weekends, worked quietly behind the scenes to propel the Paula Jones case to the Supreme Court and bring Monica Lewinsky to the attention of the independent counsel. All four of us were 5 to 8 years old when Bill Clinton graduated from Georgetown in 1968.
If Clinton wasn't the Soviet Empire or "the '60s," then he was Rosa Parks! Clinton actually compares his battle against impeachment to civil rights struggles in the South. Haven't blacks been insulted enough without this horny hick comparing his impeachment to Selma?
Most presidential memoirs get right to the president part, on the assumption that people would not be interested in, for example, Harry Truman's deal-making as Jackson County executive or Jimmy Carter's initiatives as a state senator in Georgia -- let alone who they took to their junior high school proms. When Ulysses S. Grant wrote his memoirs, he skipped his presidency altogether and just wrote about what would be most interesting to people -- his service as a Civil War commander.
But Clinton thinks people are dying to read 900 pages about his very ordinary life. What actually happened during the Clinton presidency⢠No one can remember anything about it except the bimbos, the lies and the felonies. Fittingly, in the final analysis, Clinton will not be remembered for what he did as president, but for who he did.
Ann Coulter, a lawyer and political analyst, is a columnist for Human Events.
