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A S K_C A M I L L E +|+ C A M I L L E+P A G L I A
Dear Camille:
You're on record as favoring President Clinton politically, though you've not
spared him for his many sellouts, lies and evasions. You've also spoken
extremely disparagingly of Ken Starr. I understand your distaste for
both -- Clinton for cowardice and Starr for nerdiness -- but wonder if you find
anything in either man to respect?
I'm also curious about your attitude toward the impeachment. Seems to me
anyone who respects the rule of law, which is what allows democracy to work,
has to favor letting the process work itself out.
Everyone on both sides, it seems to me, should favor this process. No way will
Clinton be removed from office, and censure wouldn't satisfy the significant
popular segment that wants this man to finally, once and for all, pay some
kind of real penalty for the many degradations he's visited on the presidency.
Finally, what do you think of the institution of the independent counsel? I
thought it awful when used in such a blatantly partisan way during the Iran-contra investigation, and think it awful now, though I despise Clinton and think he's getting what he richly deserves.
Richard A. Rail
Dear Maj. Rail:
The rule of law seems precisely what has been most impugned by the chaotic,
rancorous process that led to President Clinton's impeachment. I agree with
you that Clinton deserves whatever he gets: He has played fast and loose with
the truth for far too long, and he seems outrageously to assume that
presidents may enjoy royal privileges and pleasures without personal
accountability. Furthermore, the hard-line tactics of his team of
lawyers -- who are mere pawns of their invisible coach, Mistress Hillary -- have been repulsively arrogant.
However, defending the rule of law in this case was the primary responsibility
of Kenneth Starr, who is not a popularly elected political leader with
multiple roles on the world stage but a supposedly impartial prosecutor with a
single mission of expeditious investigation and reporting. It is here that
Starr failed most miserably, with his conservative bias, split attention (due
to private legal work), managerial shilly-shallying and baffling inability to
construct a coherent summary of the multipartite inquiries into the Clintons'
tangled past.
Starr's professional failings were compounded by the stupidity and malice of
the House of Representatives' Republican leaders, who thought they could
spook the country into an anti-Clinton stampede by dropping the X-rated Starr
Report wholesale onto the Internet and who caused yet another backlash by
forcing articles of impeachment through the Judiciary Committee and House
without allowing members to vote on an alternative resolution of censure
(which I began calling for early last year and which may finally be enacted,
after a pro forma trial, by the Senate).
The noble ideal of the rule of law was hardly served by the coarse
partisanship of Republican bullies like Reps. Henry Hyde and Bob Barr -- or by
that of the puerile herd of braying Democratic asses like Reps. Barney Frank
and Robert Wexler. Only the second-tier moderate Republicans who quietly and
reluctantly announced their pro-impeachment votes on the House floor emerged
from the debacle with dignity intact.
Reform of the special prosecutor statute is plainly needed to avoid
totalitarian abuses -- to which Starr's truculent staff came perilously close.
(If Monica Lewinsky's mother concealed material evidence, however, she rightly
got her pampered upper-middle-class feelings bruised before the grand jury.)
Abolishing the office of special prosecutor altogether would be unwise, since
our judicial system has a salient weakness: our attorneys general, as
political appointees, are too much at the mercy of White House whims. A
Democratic administration, in fact, flagrantly compromised the Department of
Justice when John F. Kennedy, the first Roman Catholic president, handed the
post of attorney general to his brother Robert -- thus confirming the worst
fears of the Protestant establishment about Catholic nepotism.
It's tragic indeed that the ebullient, charismatic Clinton threw so much
promise down the drain. Health-care reform was desperately needed, but the two
Clintons blew it. Education reform was Clinton's issue since he was
governor of Arkansas, but he accomplished little in that area once he arrived
in the White House. And in his stunningly ill-timed and ambiguously motivated
attack on Iraq last month, Clinton managed to neutralize his own supporters'
potent argument that Starr's juggernaut investigation wasted nearly $50
million of taxpayers' money. In four days of impeachment bombing, 320
Tomahawk missiles alone were launched at Iraq at a cost of $750,000
each -- making Starr look like thrifty Scrooge.
How silent and supine were the major media when TV cameras showed President
Clinton smiling and jovial in a tuxedo at a Washington black-tie banquet as
innocent Iraqi families were being terrorized by all-night American bombing
raids. Saddam Hussein may be a brutal, murderous tyrant, but his regime is
not a current threat to American national security. What is far more
dangerous is the use and abuse of the American military for questionable
purposes by a president distracted by jet lag and by legal crises of his own
making. When Islamic governments and peoples are offended by what looks like
American injustice and imperialism, no American citizen is safe anywhere in
the world.
Dear Camille:
I appreciate your bold and fresh perspective on multifaceted topics and
look forward to reading your column every week.
I must ask your opinion to the media coverage of the multiple births
that seem to hit the airwaves at least once a year. I am quite frankly
appalled that it is covered so informally and in such a celebratory fashion. With the
staggering cost of health care and raising children, it seems there
would be a little more concern.
Only now is the question of ethics being addressed.
What is your opinion on ethical issues surrounding multiple births and
the use of fertility drugs?
Lori A. Oliva
Dear Ms. Oliva:
The huge hoopla over multiple births, which became a media ritual with the
birth of the Dionne quintuplets in Canada in 1934, seems to come from
atavistic emotions dating from the earliest period of human life, with its
constant struggle for survival. Like the cornucopia, a harvest emblem at
Thanksgiving, multiple births symbolize abundance, pouring forth with almost
magical energy.
However, I agree that there is something unsettling about multiple births
becoming circuslike public spectacles. Born in a pack, the infants
themselves, if they manage to survive, cannot hope for individual attention in
childhood. The parents' lives are hijacked as their home becomes a warehouse
run with massive outside aid from family, neighbors and inevitably the
government.
I see no ethical distinction between a fertility drug and a synthetic
contraceptive like the birth-control pill: As scientific interventions in
nature's procreative pattern, both are defiant expressions of human free will,
which I applaud. What to do about multiple conceptions? When a high number
of fetuses are detected by ultrasound, most physicians routinely recommend
"reduction," a chilling euphemism for abortion, which gives the lucky
survivors a better chance of full development. Understandably, this obstetric
practice has been kept relatively discreet, given the risks abortion providers
run from crackpots with rifles.
Triage -- deciding who will live and who will die -- is an awesome burden, and I am happy not to have it. Hopefully, such decisions (designed for mass victims
of natural catastrophe, accidents or war but also affecting the elderly and
infants with severe disabilities) will continue to be made by physicians, not
by cost-cutting insurance company administrators trying to meet the bottom
line.
N E X T_P A G E | Has Gen X-speak corrupted the English language? - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - |
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