Reprinted from The Washington Times , 5am -- May 8, 1998
The runaway bigots in the White House
by Wesley Pruden
For most Americans, religious faith is something precious to live by. At the White House, it's both a prop for a photo-op and a club to pound the unwary.
You can find Bill Clinton nearly every Sunday morning on the steps of the church, waiting for the photographers, with one hand in Hillary's and the other clutching the biggest Bible he can find. If his Bible gets any bigger he'll need help carrying it.
Ordinarily, it's not nice to notice such things, since a man's religious faith -- or lack of any -- is his business, not ours. Only God can make a tree or examine a man's heart.
But these are not ordinary times, and Bill Clinton is not an ordinary president. In his desperation to salvage what's left of his presidency, nothing is off limits, nothing is over the line. Anything goes, everything goes. The president's mad dogs, contemptuous as they may be of anyone who wears the military uniform, nevertheless look to old Tecumseh Sherman for their inspiration. "I can make the march and I can make Georgia howl," he told an admiring Lincoln in 1864 on the eve of his infamous march from Atlanta to the sea. "I propose to kill even the puppies, because puppies grow up to be Southern dogs." This would become the order of battle for a White House 130 years later: Burn everything to the ground, and plow up the ashes.
When Sidney Blumenthal and the demented James Carville were loosed on Kenneth Starr and Hick Ewing, proposing to mock and jeer at their evangelical Christianity, the president gave them no caution about observing the decencies and restraints that guide the rest of us. The president, a Baptist, might even have relished Mr. Carville's mean-spirited jibes at Mr. Starr's faith. Mr. Clinton grew up in Arkansas at a time when the country Baptists and the rural Churches of Christ were particularly hostile to each other, often engaging in bitter public debates over fine points of theology. This was entertainment in the small towns where the movies were widely regarded as the work of the devil.
Mr. Carville, who hails from the deep swamps where only gators and snakes feel at home and the voodoo queen Marie Leveau is held in high repute, makes particular sport of Mr. Starr's practice of singing hymns --a cappella, in the tradition of the Church of Christ -- as he jogs along the river bank in the early hours of the morning. "I sing a hymn," Mr. Starr once told a Christian businessmen's breakfast, "and I sing it aloud. And then I pray."
Mr. Carville hooted, and made notes. "He goes down by the Potomac and listens to hymns," he said the other day, "as the cleansing water of the Potomac goes by, and we're going to wash all Sodomites and fornicators out of town." Mr. Carville's cruel and cryptic put-down of homosexuals did not go over well at the White House, where the gay constituency is highly valued, but there was no rebuke for the rest of his soliloquy.
Mr. Carville is a free-lance spinner, of course, since he no longer has any known official tie to the White House, and he often takes flight on riffs that make even the president's paid spinners wince. He's harmless enough, and, unlike the street people who accost the unwary with similar mumbled fantasies about CIA radio transmitters in their teeth, he rarely demands spare change.
Sidney Blumenthal is another matter entirely. Although the White House tried to distance the president from Mr. Blumenthal's ugly attack on Hick Ewing, calling him a "religious fanatic" because he admits that he prays for divine guidance, he's a government employee and the president is nominally responsible for him. One White House aide describes him as "the bigot-in-chief, but he's the first lady's bigot-in-chief."
Sidney's ties to Mrs. Clinton's apron -- he's more a lady-in-waiting than an aide, and is said to give great pedicures -- make him untouchable. The president, even if he wanted to, is in no position to demand the first lady rid the White House of him.
And there's no evidence that the president wants to. He has used the forms of religious faith often, misquoting Scripture and distorting the expressions of his critics' faith, and now has loosed the White House mad dogs to spread venom to sanctuaries where Mafia dons would never go.
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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