Salon Newsreal | True romance

A L S O__T O D A Y
Naked man without a plan
By Jonathan Broder
The Clinton defense team's tortured, legalistic argument will only hasten impeachment
to news

Monica's betrayal
MOTHERS WHO THINK
By Jenn Shreve
By caving in to Kenneth Starr, Lewinsky violated the adulterer's code of honor
Hush, hush, sweet Monica
MEDIA CIRCUS
By Gary Kaufman
Wouldn't it be wonderful if the most famous person who's never been interviewed stayed that way?

T A B L E+T A L K
Will exposing former sex offenders lead to vigilantism? Discuss the dark side of Megan's Law in the Headlines area of Table Talk

D A I L Y+Q U O T E
McGwire: Bigger than Sinatra

R E C E N T L Y
The year of reliving dangerously
By David Horowitz
The unbearable heaviness of not remembering correctly
(09/08/98)
What we really can't forgive Clinton for: He got caught
By Fred Branfman
Why Clinton's days are numbered
(09/04/98)
Field of pills
By Tom McNichol
Have steroids, will homer
(09/03/98)
America rides out the shock waves
By Jonathan Broder
Yale finance expert David DeRosa predicts that Wall Street will withstand the globe's economic convulsions
(09/02/98)
Who lost Russia?
By Jonathan Broder
As Moscow teeters on the brink, Russian experts blame years of bad American advice
(09/01/98)
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Then there are the other clues. Clinton apparently left messages on Monica's answering machine -- a deeply risky thing to do. Such messages can be preserved or overheard (as perhaps they were -- recorded by Linda Tripp, who had Monica play them over the telephone to her). The sheer madness of leaving icky-poo messages suggests a kind of puppy-love giddiness. I have had friends describe such details and then rant in disgust: "He's acting like a teenager stricken by first love." Exactly. (The incredulity may soon end. This week, after Linda Tripp's agent, Lucianne Goldberg, leaked some of Clinton's humiliating love-whispers to Monica, the "true-love" scenario made it into the pages of the National Enquirer, which, let's be honest, is the real newspaper of record nowadays.)
It's this adolescent quality of the affair that leaves Clinton defenders almost breathless. The unthinkable romance -- youthfully indiscreet, reckless and passionate. He's the president, Democrats howl in private, why couldn't he keep it zipped for his eight years?
Why? Because the American public has misunderstood the critical key to Clinton's character from the beginning. He has been repeatedly interpreted as a baby-boomer politician, a New Democrat, a child of alcoholics -- all of which miss the critical factor in Clinton's psychological development. He is a Southern White Male. As am I, so let me clue you in: If you really want to peel the onion of Clinton's psyche, you must eventually hunker down with the Bible of Southern Studies, W.J. Cash's "The Mind of the South."
It was Cash who, for the first time in American literary history, explored the deepest impulses of all those who preceded Clinton and all those who will come after. (Cash published the book in 1941 and then, horrified at the profound truths he had unearthed for the delectation of cackling Yankees, hanged himself with his necktie from the door of a Mexican hotel.)
From Day 1, every Southerner contends with the vestigial pillars of Dixie Chivalry, one of these being the Cult of Southern Womanhood, or, in Cash's lovely neologism, "gyneolatry." The result was the highly stylized figurine on a pedestal famously known as the Southern Belle. As a statue, she was perfect; as a wife, she was thoroughly desexualized, resembling more a mother than a lover. The curse of every Southern boy is the feeling that he must marry the proper (but boring) girl. From birth on, the notion of goodness and sexiness are cleaved. (It's also why Southern racism has about it the fury of sexuality denied: Because the good belle has been drained of sexuality, the natural vessel to contain animal passion is negritude, or if miscegenation is unthinkable, white trashiness.) As a result, "many Southerners," Cash wrote 50 years before Clinton slinked into the side chamber of his Oval Office, "find positive pleasure in the furtive itself [and] require secrecy and the guilty sense of sin as necessary conditions of the highest zest."
Clinton probably thought he had escaped the traditional Southern curse of marrying a well-behaved belle, but the fact is he just married the liberal simulacrum of a belle: a completely desexualized feminist. Thus, Clinton is irresistibly drawn to a woman who in his mind embodies the animal passions -- not a well-bred (or well-educated) female with a proper hairdo, trim, shapeless bosom and modest callipygian tush. But a woman who trumpets her sexuality with big hair, crimson lipstick, great Willendorfian titties and a high-water booty.
Yet all Southerners are incurable romantics, Cash says, battered by "the two currents of Puritanism and hedonism." Thus, it's not that Clinton merely wants some hot sweaty romping with a little cigar diddling thrown in. He also longs for it to mean something. It may shock the rest of the country but it will come as no surprise to his co-regionalists that Clinton might fall desperately in love with the young zaftig woman who gave him his first glimpse of post-presidential passion -- after 30 years of doing precisely what he was supposed to do, marrying the right woman, containing (as best he could) all of his desires, holding in check everything that might jeopardize the steep ramp of his career path.
Most of the media and public have expressed near revulsion for Monica because she connived her way into his office, quoted "Romeo and Juliet" in her Valentine ad, called him the Big Creep -- i.e., treated the president as if he were a high-school boyfriend. Maureen Dowd recently vented yet another variation of her weekly Monica abuse that honked at the girl's adolescent stalking of the president and expressed contempt that Monica presumed she and the president of the United States had "a future together."
But everything that Monica did, Bill did. He left messages on her machines, recklessly gave her gifts, sent her coded signals, said that they had a future together after he left the White House (even fantasizing aloud about having a longed-for son with her, according to one account). Maybe he was stalking her too. Maybe this was a two-way stalking, or in the plain language that Al Gore wants Americans to reclaim, we might just call it love.

SALON | Sept. 9, 1998
Jack Hitt is a writer-at-large for GQ magazine.

A L S O__T O D A Y Naked man without a plan By Jonathan Broder The Clinton defense team's tortured, legalistic argument will only hasten impeachment Monica's betrayal MOTHERS WHO THINK By Jenn Shreve By caving in to Kenneth Starr, Lewinsky violated the adulterer's code of honor Hush, hush, sweet Monica MEDIA CIRCUS By Gary Kaufman Wouldn't it be wonderful if the most famous person who's never been interviewed stayed that way? T A B L E+T A L K Will exposing former sex offenders lead to vigilantism? Discuss the dark side of Megan's Law in the Headlines area of Table Talk D A I L Y+Q U O T E McGwire: Bigger than Sinatra R E C E N T L Y The year of reliving dangerously By David Horowitz The unbearable heaviness of not remembering correctly (09/08/98) What we really can't forgive Clinton for: He got caught By Fred Branfman Why Clinton's days are numbered (09/04/98) Field of pills By Tom McNichol Have steroids, will homer (09/03/98) America rides out the shock waves By Jonathan Broder Yale finance expert David DeRosa predicts that Wall Street will withstand the globe's economic convulsions (09/02/98) Who lost Russia? By Jonathan Broder As Moscow teeters on the brink, Russian experts blame years of bad American advice (09/01/98) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Browse the Newsreal Archives - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
		TRUE ROMANCE \| PAGE 1, 2 - - - - - - - - - - Then there are the other clues. Clinton apparently left messages on Monica's answering machine -- a deeply risky thing to do. Such messages can be preserved or overheard (as perhaps they were -- recorded by Linda Tripp, who had Monica play them over the telephone to her). The sheer madness of leaving icky-poo messages suggests a kind of puppy-love giddiness. I have had friends describe such details and then rant in disgust: "He's acting like a teenager stricken by first love." Exactly. (The incredulity may soon end. This week, after Linda Tripp's agent, Lucianne Goldberg, leaked some of Clinton's humiliating love-whispers to Monica, the "true-love" scenario made it into the pages of the National Enquirer, which, let's be honest, is the real newspaper of record nowadays.) It's this adolescent quality of the affair that leaves Clinton defenders almost breathless. The unthinkable romance -- youthfully indiscreet, reckless and passionate. He's the president, Democrats howl in private, why couldn't he keep it zipped for his eight years? Why? Because the American public has misunderstood the critical key to Clinton's character from the beginning. He has been repeatedly interpreted as a baby-boomer politician, a New Democrat, a child of alcoholics -- all of which miss the critical factor in Clinton's psychological development. He is a Southern White Male. As am I, so let me clue you in: If you really want to peel the onion of Clinton's psyche, you must eventually hunker down with the Bible of Southern Studies, W.J. Cash's "The Mind of the South." It was Cash who, for the first time in American literary history, explored the deepest impulses of all those who preceded Clinton and all those who will come after. (Cash published the book in 1941 and then, horrified at the profound truths he had unearthed for the delectation of cackling Yankees, hanged himself with his necktie from the door of a Mexican hotel.) From Day 1, every Southerner contends with the vestigial pillars of Dixie Chivalry, one of these being the Cult of Southern Womanhood, or, in Cash's lovely neologism, "gyneolatry." The result was the highly stylized figurine on a pedestal famously known as the Southern Belle. As a statue, she was perfect; as a wife, she was thoroughly desexualized, resembling more a mother than a lover. The curse of every Southern boy is the feeling that he must marry the proper (but boring) girl. From birth on, the notion of goodness and sexiness are cleaved. (It's also why Southern racism has about it the fury of sexuality denied: Because the good belle has been drained of sexuality, the natural vessel to contain animal passion is negritude, or if miscegenation is unthinkable, white trashiness.) As a result, "many Southerners," Cash wrote 50 years before Clinton slinked into the side chamber of his Oval Office, "find positive pleasure in the furtive itself [and] require secrecy and the guilty sense of sin as necessary conditions of the highest zest." Clinton probably thought he had escaped the traditional Southern curse of marrying a well-behaved belle, but the fact is he just married the liberal simulacrum of a belle: a completely desexualized feminist. Thus, Clinton is irresistibly drawn to a woman who in his mind embodies the animal passions -- not a well-bred (or well-educated) female with a proper hairdo, trim, shapeless bosom and modest callipygian tush. But a woman who trumpets her sexuality with big hair, crimson lipstick, great Willendorfian titties and a high-water booty. Yet all Southerners are incurable romantics, Cash says, battered by "the two currents of Puritanism and hedonism." Thus, it's not that Clinton merely wants some hot sweaty romping with a little cigar diddling thrown in. He also longs for it to mean something. It may shock the rest of the country but it will come as no surprise to his co-regionalists that Clinton might fall desperately in love with the young zaftig woman who gave him his first glimpse of post-presidential passion -- after 30 years of doing precisely what he was supposed to do, marrying the right woman, containing (as best he could) all of his desires, holding in check everything that might jeopardize the steep ramp of his career path. Most of the media and public have expressed near revulsion for Monica because she connived her way into his office, quoted "Romeo and Juliet" in her Valentine ad, called him the Big Creep -- i.e., treated the president as if he were a high-school boyfriend. Maureen Dowd recently vented yet another variation of her weekly Monica abuse that honked at the girl's adolescent stalking of the president and expressed contempt that Monica presumed she and the president of the United States had "a future together." But everything that Monica did, Bill did. He left messages on her machines, recklessly gave her gifts, sent her coded signals, said that they had a future together after he left the White House (even fantasizing aloud about having a longed-for son with her, according to one account). Maybe he was stalking her too. Maybe this was a two-way stalking, or in the plain language that Al Gore wants Americans to reclaim, we might just call it love. SALON \| Sept. 9, 1998 Jack Hitt is a writer-at-large for GQ magazine.