Clinston

Terence Sin (zippy@myna.com)
Tue, 26 Jan 1999 23:33:08 +0000

This one is going to go down as a classic of this year's media spectacle
event-scene: Clinton holding the pope's hand as the pope inches his
creaky bones across the stage, like a son taking his dad out of senior's
home on Sunday for lunch. This was followed by a clip of Clinton on
that famous day when he denied having sexual relations with that woman,
Ms. Lewinsky. The transition was marked by the rarely-shown
mise-en-scene of that famous speech, showing Hillary Clinton to the
left, just outside of the frontal camera frame, nodding her head in
agreement as the president cemented his place in the impeachment roster,
and gave *the* defining performance of the entire spectacle. I mean
come on, everyone knew he was lying then, but still there is some sort
of dramatic and spontaneous quality to that speech that is beyond pure
spinning.

You've got to wonder what was going through the pope's mind. Maybe he
was thinking Clinton is like the son he never had.