”Bill Clinton Wept Over the Monica Lewinsky Scandal”
Monica Lewinsky, Monica Lewinsky was the last thing on the minds of former Joint Chiefs Chairman General Hugh Shelton during his meeting with President Clinton’s final few days before George W. Bush ‘s 2001 inauguration. But in a unique look at the Bubba shame on the case, it seems that Lewinsky and his own behavior has been at the forefront in the last days of Clinton. “Hugh, I need to see you in private, please,” the retired general said Clinton recalls in his autobiography to come without hesitation. Shelton fired the president in an office near the hall of the White House position, and Clinton to clean the officer’s appeal among many more ethical to keep the brass slot. “Hugh, I know that in recent years have put enormous pressure on you based on my work…. I know the principles for which you stand, and I know the values, and character, that our men and women in uniform and expected to possess and in truth, I have not lived up to these values, and yet you’ve blocked me, “Shelton recalls Clinton said.
Then the tears began streaming “. I want to personally thank you for your support,” Shelton says in the book later this month, “I was completely impressed.”
Where oh where have we seen this look before?” Dana concludes. “Oh, yes: Monica Lewinsky.” And with that, Dana has established her nonsensical justification for pinning the success of the “Mama Grizzlies” on their “pretty but not prom queen, ever so slightly bodacious but fundamentally unthreatening” looks, while simultaneously implicating them all in a completely unrelated 1998 oral sex scandal, complete with slide-show.
But where else have we seen this “mild degree of fat tissue without being overweight”? In most people!
I spoke with Dr. Karasu yesterday to learn more about this “mild degree of fat tissue” and how exactly it evokes Dana’s characterization of Lewinsky-esque non-threatening bodaciousness in women. “Psychologically, people react positively to certain physical traits,” Karasu told me. “Too-skinny or too-fat people do not get a similar response in terms of confidence in their
ability.” How too-skinny? “A model could not run for office,” Karasu argues. How too-fat? “A person who is overweight in excess of 100 pounds” might see someappearance-based push-back come election day.
That leaves us with . . . oh, most people falling into the Lewinsky fat-degree range. Including men! “I think that fatness in this country is equally distributed,” Karasu said. “Neither man nor woman has any advantage or disadvantage . . . . they are equally fat.” And they’re all equally stamped with that affectionately sexual, light-hearted jolliness that Dana claims defines the Mama Grizzly-Lewinsky set.
Shelton, who later backed Hillary Clinton over Barack Obama for president in 2008, portrays a President Clinton fully engaged in military planning and hunting Osama bin Laden despite his troubles. For example, he devotes a chapter to shooting down the so-called Wag the Dog episode where the prez ordered a missile strike on Iraq days before his December 1998 impeachment. Critics charged that Clinton copied the 1997 movie in which the president, caught in a sex affair, fabricated a war to divert the nation’s attention. “There was not one scrap of truth to it,” writes Shelton, who also served George W. Bush as Joint Chiefs chairman through 9/11.
The general isn’t kind to all in his life story. Arizona Sen. John McCain, Obama’s 2008 foe, gets it the worst for ranting at Shelton at repeated congressional hearings. “I was convinced that he had a screw loose,” Shelton writes. McCain’s office has no comment.
Shelton adds that McCain’s GOP candidacy worried him. “I was extremely concerned about the possibility of someone as apparently unstable as McCain … having responsibility over the nuclear” arsenal.
