Reprinted from The Washington Times , 5am -- May 5, 1998
Southern gallantry gets the heave-ho
The clintonoids have given Southern gallantry an entirely new meaning:
by Wesley Pruden
Never take a hit if you can find a woman big enough to hide behind.
Hillary Clinton is not so much a Tammy Wynette wannabe, crying to stand by her man, as a post-feminist original, eager to stand in front of her man. She's absorbed so much shrapnel for her man that she couldn't get through the metal detector in any airport in America.
She's the little woman who trots faithfully at the heels of the wife-abuser, smiling cheerfully through her bruises. Hillary has earned the nation's pity, Kenneth Starr's caution, and her own poll ratings prove it. She may not enjoy the humiliation but she can tolerate it, buoyed by the notion that she will eventually make something out of her good ol' boy, or at least extract the only favors she wants from him. The head-shrinker term for this is "co-dependency." Down home, where the head-shrinker business is so bad most of the shrinks are on food stamps, they call it "settling" -- for whatever you can get.
Young Bill Clinton did not pay close enough attention down home, as he absorbed the manly values of Hot Springs. Lucky Luciano, Frank Costello, Owney Madden and Carlos Marcello, whatever evil they may have plotted in the bathhouses lining Central Avenue, never publicly humiliated their women, nor cast them as surrogates to take the punishment when due.
Webb Hubbell is eager to take a second fall --his term for it is a "roll over" -- for Bill Clinton even if it means his wife has to go to prison, too. Do these guys have no shame?
Well, not much. The president is merely living up to expectations. A man who lies to get out of wearing his country's uniform, and flees to foreign shores to parade his contempt for the land that gave him life, liberty and privilege, does not have to stoop further to sacrifice the woman he promised to love, honor and protect for whatever cheap gratifications of the moment fall in his path. In the Arkansas I grew up in, such a man would have been scorned, or worse, and certainly not elected governor.
Webb Hubbell seemed to have been cut from longer-staple cotton. He, too, was honored with high office by the men and women he grew up with, first as chief justice of the state Supreme Court, then as mayor of the state capital, finally as a senior partner in one of the most prestigious law firms in the state. But one look at those leggy models in the Victoria's Secret catalog and he turned into a tub -- a very large tub -- of quivering muscadine jelly. He allowed his clients, who didn't know it, to outfit his wife in fine silks and satins.
Before the shopping spree was over, he was overbilling his clients by nearly a half-million dollars, and in a rare outburst of honesty explained: "So does every lawyer in the country." This kind of honesty is all that Kenneth Starr wants from him about whatever shady stuff Hillary was doing for her clients, since Mrs. Clinton seems unable to recall the details herself.
And if his wife has to twist slowly, slowly in the wind to protect Hillary, well, that's just the risk His Former Honor (or whatever disgraced Supreme Court justices want to be called) will have to take. Anyone listening to the infamous prison tapes of telephone conversations between the Hubbells can hear the plaintive terror and wishful regret in Suzy Hubbell's voice.
"I am the one that has to explain this to Marcia," she says of White House aide Marsha Scott, assigned to monitor the loyalty level of FOBs the Clintons are ready to dispose of. "She says you are not going to get any public support if you open Hillary up to this. Well, by public support I know exactly what she means. I'm not stupid."
Replies loyal husband: "And I spent Saturday with you saying I would not do that. I will not raise those allegations that might open it up to Hillary. And you know that. I told you that."
Says the fall-guy wife: "... Marsha is ratcheting it up and making it sound like if Webb goes ahead and sues the firm, then any support I have at the White House is gone. I'm hearing the squeeze play."
Replies loyal husband, who knows what the mob expects of him: "So, I need to roll over one more time."
Webb later explains to his mouthpiece that he's got his wife under control: "And I talked to Suzy a little bit last night, and I just had to say, 'Suzy, there's a reason why we're not going to say anything.'"
Replies the lawyer: "Right."
But there's nothing right about it. Just when we think we've seen (and smelled) everything the Clintons and their cronies could have tracked into the house where Jefferson, Lincoln, Wilson and two Roosevelts slept, Bill Clinton reminds us anew that we ain't seen nothin' yet.Wesley Pruden is editor in chief of The Times.
Copyright 1998 News World Communications, Inc.
Reprinted with permission of
The Washington Times.
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