Friday, July 02, 2004

Gary Indiana on the Clinton memoir--
"Presuming the reader is old enough to cast his or her mind back to the poisonous social atmosphere that prevailed before the expulsion of George the First and dissolved for eight years under Clinton despite the grotesque efforts of the hard right to remove him from office, and again, presuming our reader has not been sufficiently hypnotized--by the prospect of an even larger plasma TV screen, a space-shuttle-size SUV, and a cell phone that gives you an enema while booking you into a fancy restaurant--to ignore the stench of malaise and hopelessness that a few years of our Dry Drunk and Compulsive Liar in Chief, George the Second, have poured over all but the very, very rich and very, very psychopathic, it should be easy to credit most of Clinton's book with abundant goodwill, a fair amount of wit, and far more reflection and intelligence than any of the recent literary effusions of G.W. Bush's hagiographers and anorexic cheerleaders have evidenced, despite the fascinatingly demonic abandon they have brought to their exhibitionism. "