Or maybe it would be more accurate to say that we just have a slightly different sense of fun than most. Last night, it was my great pleasure to join the crowd at Clamor HQ for a viewing of Harry Thomason and Nickolas Perry’s film The Hunting of the President. While there was an over-reliance on cheesy old file footage, I found it to be a pretty compelling road map of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy and its actions leading to the implausible impeachment of President Clinton. It’s pretty easy to forget the ridiculous lengths to which the right-wing crackpots went in an attempt depose Bill Clinton and seeing it all again (and in a concise package) with the benefit of hindsight is a pretty thought-provoking experience. Clinton, obviously, wasn’t exactly hell-bent on socialism, but the Starr/Scaife/Brock etc. ad nauseum crowd viewed the guy as the second coming of Trotsky or some shit and took up their lances like holy crusaders to destroy the guy and the incredibly modest liberalism he represented (if you’ll forgive the mixed Trotsky/Crusades metaphor). These guys aren’t interested in any ‘public sphere’ niceties - any opposition to mercenary capitalism is tantamount to outright treason in their ideology. It’s scary to watch…scarier still when you remember that these creeps now run the entire federal government.

Anyway, it made for an awfully pleasant evening. And we did drink a couple of Heinekens, so maybe we aren’t monomaniacs obsessed with the intersection of politics and media.

-Keith McCrea, Reviews Editor

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 12th, 2004 at 10:35 am by Arthur. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.