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This guy has an interesting take.
Note to Hooten:
       No, goofus, Rush didn't write this article.
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The Washington Times - Politics
Wesley Pruden
March 13, 1998
A perfect expression for the Gelded Age
When Jefferson Davis stood on the steps of the capitol in
Montgomery to take the oath as president of the Confederacy,
Alexander Stephens captured the electric drama of the moment:
       "The man and the hour have met."
We know what happened to Mr. Davis. Colliding with an hour, when
it's the hour at a pivot of history, can give any man a headache.
Bill Clinton may not have needed the kneepads for his trysts with
Monica, but he remembered to suit up in shoulder pads and
expensive lawyers.
Another man and another hour have met.
Bill Clinton is the perfect expression of our Gelded Age, despite
his sweaty exertions in the pursuit of lust at government
expense. Manly distinctions were bred out of him on the cheap
streets of Hot Springs, even as the collapsing cultural and
spiritual pretensions of Hot Springs were becoming the new
American way of life.
The flowering of the new American way of life has only just
begun. Signs of it abound around us. A young woman in Connecticut
is a point shy of a collegiate scoring record, and breaks her
foot. No problem, we'll set up an uncontested shot for her. If
she misses, the refs can bring in a stepladder for the second
attempt. A professional golfer with bum legs has trouble walking
the course like the other guys. No problem, he can use a golf
cart. Or a Toyota, if he prefers.
Some of the guys in Puerto Rico think statehood would be nice.
Almost nobody speaks a language the rest of us understand, and
the island is not within a country mile of meeting the
requirements other states have had to meet. No problem, Congress
will draw up special rules for the occasion, and their friends
the lobbyists wax fat.
The ladies can't meet the physical standards required of other
soldiers? No problem, we'll give them special rules, and if we
ever have to fight an army that won't honor ladies' rules, we'll
get the United Nations to adopt a resolution of censure.
The commander in chief can't meet the moral-fitness standards
everyone else in his command must meet, or else. No problem.
We'll call in Billy Graham, our foremost evangelist, who has
spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ to more people than any man in
history, to give him Baptist dispensation (the first in 2,000
years) to enable him to get a little relief for the tension all
us thoroughly hip moderns suffer.
The Ten Commandments were first downgraded to the Ten
Suggestions; now we've put asterisks by half of them:
       Thou Shalt Not Kill. (*Killing inconvenient children is OK.)
       Thou Shalt Not Steal. (*Unless it's a government contract
                               that would otherwise go to a
                               middle-aged white guy.)
       Thou Shalt Not Covet. (*Tell this to the IRS, if you
                              dare.)
       Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery. (*The JW Marriott, highly
                                       recommended, may have a
                                       weekend rate.)
       Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness. (*Unless you can afford
                                              Uncle Bob Bennett.)
It's all of a piece, as our president might say, and we should
have seen Bill Clinton coming. We've been throwing out the rules
for decades, along with the honor accorded religious values even
by men who did not live by them, and it was only a matter of time
before we got a president who operates on the maxim that the only
rule is that there are no rules. In Bill Clinton's America,
everyone gets a dispensation from the rules he doesn't like.
Dick Morris, who was the conscience of the Clinton administration
 >>> Continued to next message...
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