THE POST-CLINTON ERA For six months THE SCRAPBOOK has tried to pretend that this is the Bush Era. But let’s face facts: We’re really just in the early stages of the Post-Clinton years. Looking back on Bill Clinton’s presidency, THE SCRAPBOOK admits that it was as guilty as anyone of portraying our former president as a chiseling, megalomaniacal horndog. But we recognize that in the cool repose of retirement a former commander in chief can elevate himself above contentious political battles and reacquaint himself with his better angels. Indeed, in Mr. Clinton’s case, he is…well, he’s still a chiseling, megalomaniacal horndog. Here, then, to tide you over during our week off (we won’t be publishing next week) is a survey of Clinton-related activities: -The latest National Enquirer, which skeptical readers should note has accurately reported everything from Jesse Jackson’s love child to the Puff Daddy/J-Lo breakup, reveals that Hillary Clinton has banished her husband from their Washington home. Looking sleep-deprived in the accompanying photographs (THE SCRAPBOOK wouldn’t sleep easy, either, if the ex-president were trying to sneak into our bed), Hillary reportedly told “pals,” “It makes my skin crawl at the thought of him touching me again.” According to the Enquirer, New York’s junior senator is convinced her husband is still sweet on Monica Lewinsky. Coincidentally, Lewinsky is cooperating with HBO on a documentary about her affair with the Big Creep. “It’s all she eats and sleeps,” said a pal. -Speaking of large, friendly women, the photograph below was taken at a wedding during Clinton’s recent buck-raking tour of the U.K. (So eager is Clinton for gigs that one celebrity booker described him as the only ex-president “who might show up at your bar mitzvah if you paid him.”) Clinton appears to be ogling the woman. But a “pal” tells us it’s more innocent than it looks. Clinton was merely asking her views on the peace process in Northern Ireland. -While Clinton has recently been booed at everything from corporate speaking gigs to the Belmont Stakes, some receptions are friendlier than others. At game three of this month’s NBA finals, ESPN magazine’s Ric Bucher spotted Clinton posing near a loading dock at Philadelphia’s First Union Center with “two provocatively-dressed girls who had been hanging around the Lakers’ bench all night.” Bucher was baffled that a man with Clinton’s history wouldn’t avoid “a photo-op with a bare-midriffed, hip-hugger-wearing tall blonde falling out of her halter top. You can bet the National Enquirer would pay a handsome price for those pics.” Or—THE SCRAPBOOK is shameless—send those photos to us, and we’ll give you all the glory this page has at its disposal. -The life of an ex-president, of course, isn’t all six-figure paydays and full-figured groupies. There’s also the beloved children—like the ones Clinton went to see June 13 in Chicago at City Year’s annual Convention of Idealism. So idealistic were these kids that they didn’t even seem to mind that Clinton kept them waiting for an hour-and-a-half in 100-degree heat (earning him a down-arrow in Newsweek’s Conventional Wisdom box: “No apology from Narcissus”). But THE SCRAPBOOK thinks Clinton should be cut some slack, as he re-acclimates himself to the rules of polite society that the rest of us follow. At least he’s trying. As Julia Payne, Clinton’s spokeswoman, said of the ex-president’s now-smaller motorcades: “We stop at red lights, usually. It depends where we are.” -A blue ribbon to Newsweek, by the way, which also reports that Roger Clinton may have been involved in schemes that promised the possibility of pardons and other favors in exchange for cash. There is always one advantage to being Bill Clinton: Roger is your brother, and it’s hard not to benefit by comparison. -Amidst all this controversy, two rays of sunshine. Last Wednesday, Clinton went to Ohio to accept the first annual “Dayton Peace Prize,” one of the two or three most prestigious international diplomacy awards that Dayton, Ohio, offers. Sure, it’s not a Nobel, but if the Nobel committee didn’t appreciate Clinton’s efforts, his daughter surely did. Just graduated from Stanford, Chelsea included interviews with her father in her 150-page senior thesis on the Northern Ireland peace process (which last week gave way to the worst rioting in years). And proving it’s never too late to suck up to the Clintons, her thesis adviser, Jack Rakove, gushed to the New York Times that though Chelsea hadn’t settled on a topic until this past winter, “She did an absolutely prodigious amount of work….If you talk books with her, you can be blown away by how much she knows.” Sounds like someone’s angling for a lifetime sinecure from the Clinton Library. AMERICA HELD HOSTAGE There is news from Beijing, all of it bad, concerning the case of Li Shaomin, profiled in a recent WEEKLY STANDARD editorial (“Dear Mr. President,” June 18). Professor Li is among the group of American academics who have been incarcerated—and denied contact with their families—by Communist China’s infamous Ministry of State Security. On June 18, officials of that agency telephoned Li’s father in Hong Kong to inform him that his son had been indicted on charges of spying for Taiwan. The indictment carried no public disclosure of evidence against Li Shaomin (none exists), and after more than four months, Chinese authorities have still not allowed him access to an attorney. But they now seem intent on bringing him to trial, perhaps as early as this week. Responding to international press inquiries about Li’s treatment, a foreign ministry spokeswoman in Beijing (the same one whose jokes about the one-child policy were described in William Kristol’s piece last week) says only that “China is a country ruled by law.” That’s not reassuring: Under Chinese “law,” Li Shaomin faces a closed-door kangaroo court—and a sentence of life in prison or death by pistol shot. There is at least a glimmer of hope on the home front, however. Li’s wife, Liu Yingli, was the star witness at a House International Relations Committee hearing June 20, and the committee unanimously approved, and sent to the floor, a resolution of congressional support for all American political prisoners in China. That legislation, sponsored by Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey, calls on President Bush to make release of those prisoners his highest foreign policy priority. We wholeheartedly endorse the bill. But we like to think the president doesn’t need such prompting. The stakes are plainly very high. And time is short. DEATH BY THERAPY, CONT. Last week saw the sentencing of Connell Watkins and Julie Ponder, the two Jefferson County, Colorado, “therapists” who smothered 10-year-old Candace Newmaker during an April 18, 2000, “rebirthing” therapy (see Christopher Caldwell’s May 28 cover story, “Death by Therapy”). The two were convicted of child abuse resulting in death, which carries a penalty of 16 to 48 years’ imprisonment. Judge Jane Tidball chose the minimum. “The crime itself was horrible,” Tidball said. “However, there was no evidence at the trial that the defendants wanted to harm Candace.” THE SCRAPBOOK is open to the argument that 16 years is a sufficient sentence. But Tidball is wrong to claim that there was no evidence of intended harm. Jurors were showered with such evidence, including videotape of the pair goading young Candace Newmaker to “go ahead and die.” That they didn’t really plan to kill her is beside the point. They were convicted of child abuse, not murder. It is one of the hallmarks of child abuse that it spirals out of control, and turns from “teaching a kid who’s boss” into something no one intended. That’s why there are laws against it.
