America is stunned by the sharp contrast. How can it be that, in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?
Then a representative of the NAGB (The national association of green bugs) shows up on Nightline and charges the ant with green bias, and makes the case that the grasshopper is the victim of 30 million years of greenism.
Kermit the Frog appears on Oprah with the grasshopper, and everybody cries when he sings "It's not easy being green." Bill and Hillary Clinton make a special guest appearance on the CBS Evening News to tell a concerned Dan Rather that they will do everything they can for the grasshopper who has been denied the prosperity he deserves by those who benefited unfairly during the Reagan summers. Richard Gephardt exclaims in an interview with Peter Jennings that the ant has gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper, and calls for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his "fair share."
Finally, the EEOC drafts the "Economic Equity and Anti-Greenism Act," retroactive to the beginning of the summer. The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of green bugs and, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the government. Hillary gets her old law firm to represent the grasshopper in a defamation suit against the ant, and the case is tried before a panel of federal hearing officers that Bill appointed from a list of single-parent welfare moms who can only hear cases on Thursday's between 1:30 and 3 PM. The ant loses the case.
The story ends as we see the grasshopper finishing up the last bits of the ant's food while the government house he's in, which just happens to be the ant's old house, crumbles around him since he doesn't know how to maintain it.
The ant has disappeared in the snow. And on the TV, which the grasshopper bought by selling most of the ant's food, they are showing Bill Clinton standing before a wildly applauding group of Democrats announcing that a new era of "fairness" has dawned in America.
Solely to be fairly used for the educational purposes of open discussion.
People who go around saying "Let's move on" may be expressing nothing more than their exasperation at the media's non-stop obsession with Monica Lewinsky, but what that really amounts to is "Let's move away from the rule of law," because we refuse to think beyond the moment or look below the surface.
The whole American system of justice and the freedom of ourselves and our children depend on the rule of law, which is more important than any of the so-called "real issues" that people want to move on to.
This may be the golden age of lazy phrases for lazy people. Consider some of the nonsense notions that are floating around.
For example, "I take full responsibility" is just a collection of meaningless words unless you take the consequences. But this phrase is used repeatedly by politicians who want to end the discussion of their misdeeds, precisely so they do not have to take any consequences. And we fall for it.
What about "improper" or "inappropriate" relations? When I wear socks that don't match, that is inappropriate. If I wear my checkered sports jacket to a black tie dinner, that is improper. But things like this are miles away from the scandals and law-breaking that are at issue.
Then there is the fall-back positions of the Clinton defenders - that he is admittedly a "flawed" man. Let's talk sense. None of us is flawless. But there is a huge difference between flawed and being corrupt, especially when it is those in power who are corrupt.
The Clintons have been corrupt throughout their careers and they have corrupted governments in Arkansas and in Washington. The Whitewater partnership with the McDougals that Bill Clinton called a "private" business transaction was financially benefitted by a criminal fraud that cost tens of millions of federal dollars and led to more than 20 felony convictions.
The refusal of one of the convicted felons to say "yes" or "no" as to whether Bill Clinton was in on the fraud is quietly passed over by a lazy public and a lazy media. What upsets them is that she went to jail for stonewalling the court.
We don't have to ask whether Hillary Clinton was involved in the fraud because she was a lawyer for the crooks and helped keep the fraudulent operation in business when state officials wanted to shut down the savings and loan association that was being looted. That is why her billing records got subpoenaed - and why they got "lost" in the White House for two years.
Hillary Clinton's claim that $100,000 she received was from a commodity trade has been treated as just another funny little fib. But when the wife of a governor receives a hundred grand in laundered money, that is not a laughing matter, unless corruption and abuse of power are big jokes. If they are, the Clintons have been a lot of laughs for a lot of years.
Having state troopers bring a female employee to your hotel room, where you drop your pants, may be funny to some or "private" to others, but I frankly found the story too gross to believe until it turned out that Monica Lewinsky did what he wanted Paula Jones to do. It was an abuse of power, if ever there was one, and committing perjury about it in a court of law is not just telling a little fib among friends about a night out on the town with someone you picked up at a bar.
Using the Justice Department for malicious prosecution of innocent people in the White House travel office is not "private", even when you want to give their jobs to your personal friends. Illegal collection of FBI files on hundreds of Republicans and having the Internal Revenue Service target conservative think tanks for audits are not private.
These are abuses of power - and the victims are not just the particular individuals or institutions that are targeted. When the vast powers of government can be used to ruin anyone who opposes or exposes you and reward those who cover up your crimes, then those who hold that power are for all practical purposes above the law, no matter what the Constitution says.
If all it takes are some clever phrases to make us shrug it off, then the problem is not just with the spin-masters, but with us. And the consequences are not just for now, but for future Americans and future holders of power over them. Will this even be America then?
Not for commercial use. Solely to be fairly used for the educational purposes of open discussion.
I believe the president. I have always believed him. I believed him when he said he had never been drafted in the Vietnam War and I believed him when he said he had forgotten to mention that he had been drafted in the Vietnam War. I believed him when he said he hadn't had sex with Gennifer Flowers and I believe him now, when he reportedly says he did.
I believe the president did not rent out the Lincoln Bedroom, did not sell access to himself and the vice president to hundreds of well-heeled special pleaders and did not supervise the largest, most systematic money-laundering operation in campaign finance history, collecting more than $3 million in illegal and improper donations. I believe that Charlie Trie and James Riady were motivated by nothing but patriotism for their adopted country.
I believed Vice President Gore when he said that he had made dunning calls to political contributors "on a few occasions" from his White House office, and I believed him when he said that, actually, "a few" meant 46. I believe in no controlling legal authority.
I believe Bruce Babbitt when he says that the $286,000 contributed to the DNC by Indian tribes opposed to granting a casino license to rival tribes had nothing to do with his denial of the license. I believed the secretary when he said that he had not been instructed in this matter by then-White House deputy chief of staff Harold Ickes. I believed him when he said later that he had told lobbyist and friend Paul Eckstein that Ickes had told him to move on the casino decision, but that he had been lying to Eckstein. I agree with the secretary that it is an outrage that anyone would question his integrity.
I believe in the Clinton Standard of adherence to the nation's campaign finance and bribery laws, enunciated by the president on March 7, 1997: "I don't believe you can find any evidence of the fact that I had changed government policy solely because of a contribution." I note with approval the use of the word "evidence" and also the use of the word "solely." I believe that it is proper to change government policy to address the concerns of people who have given the president money, as long as nobody can find evidence of this being the sole reason.
I believe the president has lived up to his promise to preside over the most ethical administration in American history. I believe that indicted former agriculture secretary Mike Espy did not accept $35,000 in illegal favors from Tyson Foods and other regulated businesses. I believe that indicted former housing secretary Henry Cisneros did not lie to the FBI and tell others to lie to cover up $250,000 in blackmail payments to his former mistress. I believe that convicted former associate attorney general Webster Hubbell was not involved in the obstruction of justice when the president's minions arranged for Hubbell to receive $400,000 in sweetheart consulting deals at a time when he was reneging on his promise to cooperate with Kenneth Starr's Whitewater investigation.
I believe Paula Jones is a cheap tramp who was asking for it. I believe Kathleen Willey is a cheap tramp who was asking for it. I believe Monica Lewinsky is a cheap tramp who was asking for it.
I believe Lewinsky was fantasizing in her 20 hours of taped conversation in which she reportedly detailed her sexual relationship with the president and begged Linda Tripp to join her in lying about the relationship. I believe that any gifts, correspondence, telephone calls and the 37 post-employment White House visits that may have passed between Lewinsky and the president are evidence only of a platonic relationship; such innocent intimate friendships are quite common between middle-aged married men and young single women, and also between presidents of the United States and White House interns.
I see nothing suspicious in the report that the president's intimate, Vernon Jordan, arranged a $40,000-per-year job for Lewinsky shortly after she signed but before she filed an affidavit saying she had not had sex with the president. Nor do I read anything into the fact that the ambassador to the United Nations, Bill Richardson, visited Lewinsky at the Watergate to offer her a job. I believe the instructions Lewinsky gave Tripp informing her on how to properly perjure herself in the Willey matter simply wrote themselves.
I believe that The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, Newsweek, Time, U.S. News & World Report, ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, PBS and NPR are all part of a vast right-wing conspiracy. Especially NPR.