The Trump-Clinton Nexus

Every word of this article is true:

No matter how many outraged opinion pieces or news articles (but I repeat myself) the New York Times produces, no matter how many smarter-than-thou analysts with non-prescription eyeglasses mope about sadly on CNN, no matter how many Obama fan boys and girls left in the White House press corps shriek at the president whenever in earshot, it just doesn’t matter anymore.

The economy hums. Trump keeps us out of foreign entanglements. Wages increase. America’s traditional meritocracy replaces the Democrats’ grievance-based society. Life happens.

And while the New York Times op-ed was a nice try by the media, they must on some level, deep down, grasp the new reality: no one hears their screams.

This seems sooooo familiar.

Follow us, dear reader(s) back to 1998. Older reader(s) will recall, but younger reader(s) should know, that 1998 was all Clinton-Lewinsky all the time.

Younger reader(s), we want you to understand something about the world 20 years ago. The internet barely existed. Same with satellite TV. There was no satellite radio and no digital music.

So you really couldn't get away from the news even if you wanted to. Everywhere one looked it was Bill and Monica and Ken Starr, on magazines, on TV. Everywhere.

After a while people just tuned it out. In fact people resented the scandal. People were sick of hearing about the scandal and just wanted it to go away. 

Which is exactly what has happened with Trump. 

What's that line about history as farce?

Tuesday Tally

Incomplete 1990's  Edition.

With the 20th anniversary of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal we've felt a bit nostalgic for that time. We're not the only ones. The esteemed M. Steyn recently wrote about the Dawning of the Age of Incompletion. This certainly defines the 90's.

A strange decade indeed, sandwiched between the Cold War and 9/11. The Ironic Decade, the Boring Decade. The decade about nothing? -'da-da-da....' 

First off let's define our terms. For example, the events and trends that define the 19th Century don't really begin till the defeat of Napoleon in 1815 and don't really end till the First World War in 1914. We take a similar view of the 90's. We feel the decade begins with Bill Clinton's nomination (note-not his election)in 1992 and ends with 9/11.*

With that in mind here's a list of the most 90's events of the 90's.

Bill Clinton's Impeachment: a year of partisan battle that ended in a senate 50-50 vote .Talk about dull. Talk about incomplete. The 90's unfinished blowjob.

Y2K: Was it all a hoax? Five years of everyone worrying about computers imploding with the calendar changeover and then nothing happened.

The Seinfeld Finale: The decade's most important show ended with a trial in which all the people wronged by Jerry, Elaine, George and Kramer testify against them. It was sour grapes and blaa.

The Summer of the Shark: The summer of 2001; shark attacks, Gary Condit, the fetal stem cells debate....it was a different planet. The Twin Towers weren't the only thing that collapsed.

*We were tempted to go with the fall of the Berlin Wall, but no. 1989-1992 was still the era of Reagan/Bush.

Twenty Years Ago: The Day After Drudge

In January of 1998 we were vaguely aware of Matt Drudge.

One morning we got in our Saturn and drove down to the 7-11 to pick up a coffee and some Marlboro Lights. We put the radio on Imus and just before the commercials came on we heard the tail end of Charles McChord saying something about Clinton and an intern, we really didn't catch what it was all about.

Around 1 PM we turned the TV on and saw White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry deflecting Lewinsky related questions.

And so it began, the long year of Bill and Monica.

Who wouldn't want that year back?  

As noted before 1998 was the worst year of our life. Clinton-Lewinsky was the background to year in which we dropped out of college, endured bouts of unemployment, held a dead end job, and an appendectomy. 'You idiot! It's in the back of the book!' Our fiancee admonished when we asked where the appendix is.

That year saw a cold winter and a really hot summer. We know because we were life guarding, $6:15 an hour folks, ten hour days. We had the 8-6 shift. No one showed up for a couple of hours at least. That summer we burned through the American Heritage series.

The gig paid our half of the rent and the utilities. Back then our idea of the high life was Red Lobster. So we were doing OK. We used the pool's sionaric acid to clean our basement bachelor shower when our fiancee moved in. We still have a chlorine burn on our calf from daily bucket dumps into effluent tank. 

For a while our pool was real popular with the 30ish mom set. We were 24, tan, 30 pounds lighter than today, and walked around lifting a fifteen pound dumbbell. We tanned real nice too, turning a nice apricot color.  A shirt? We had no need for one.  Once we walked passed two moms at the baby pool and heard one of them ask the other, 'Tempted?' Damn right they were tempted.

Younger reader(s) will not be aware that once the Monica story broke official Washington assumed Clinton would have to resign. By the next Monday Clinton made his famous statement, 'I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Ms.Lewinsky...' He was lying of course, we all knew he was lying. 

We spent the whole year wondering if he was really going to get away with it. He did.

Soon after we got our gig at CNN. The residue of the impeachment was all over the joint. 

Those poor bastards still had no idea what Drudge was doing to their industry. Neither did we, and 1999 was a pretty long year too.

20 Years Later, the Media Still Sucks

Twenty Years Ago Today Matt Drudge published this exclusive:

Web Posted: 01/17/98 23:32:47 PST -- NEWSWEEK KILLS STORY ON WHITE HOUSE INTERN 
BLOCKBUSTER REPORT: 23-YEAR OLD, FORMER WHITE HOUSE INTERN, SEX RELATIONSHIP WITH PRESIDENT 
**World Exclusive****Must Credit the DRUDGE REPORT** 
At the last minute, at 6 p.m. on Saturday evening, NEWSWEEK magazine killed a story that was destined to shake official Washington to its foundation: A White House intern carried on a sexual affair with the President of the United States! 

Most people get this story wrong.

Drudge's target wasn't President Clinton. It was Newsweek. The magazine thought of every excuse it could to spike Michael Isakoff's  story. 

It's an old story, the media helping Dems.

When James O'Keefe took his ACORN tapes to Andrew Breitbart, he said, 'We're going to nail ACORN.' Breitbart replied, 'No, we're going to nail the media.'

And so they did.

Today Drudge thrives while Newsweek has slashed its page numbers in half.

By the way, we write for magazines that have maintained their page numbers and actually expanded over the same period that Newsweek has shrunk.

To quote Andrew Breitbart (PBUH) once more, 'It's not your business model that sucks. It you that sucks.