Ladies & Gentlemen, I give you Mark Morford of the San Francisco Gate. For you lurkers out there, pop some corn & enjoy the show!
== Mark's Notes & Errata ==
Where opinion meets benign syntax abuse
Come Back, Clinton Sex Nation
Is the country better off with a president who actually has an active libido? Hell yes.
By Mark Morford
B
ill Clinton was damn sexy. Oh yes he was. This is a given.He had The Appeal. Magnetic, charming as hell, a man who you knew actually had sex and enjoyed it and possessed a highly active all-American libido and knew what all the body parts did and where they went, Hillary notwithstanding.
And yet he was president and that made it all a little weird and unusual and refreshing and then of course it turned ugly, and he was vilified and attacked and sneered at from all corners for overusing this libido, but still, there it is.
And women swooned for him, yes they did, and there were articles and commentaries and even in glossy women's fashion mags they talked up the amazing sex appeal of the president, the Southern charm and masculine assurance and that naughty gleam in his eye.
And women had dreams about him, wrote into magazines and called in to talk shows, and they were sexual dreams, trysts and liaisons and Monicas, because women, well, they knew.
They knew it was genuine. They knew Clinton was an honest appreciator of the female form. You get the distinct feeling that Clinton genuinely and respectfully and with great zeal (and yes, also some very poor taste) truly loved women, loved the female gender, so much so he screwed it all up and took it to painful and finally rather sleazy extremes.
Of course it's worth noting that Clinton's zest for flesh was nowhere near the glorious levels of gleeful sexaholism as that of our noble and
heroic JFK , a man who merged with more women than Rocco Siffredi and went so far as to haul around his own personal giddy 19-year-old intern on road trips, just to service him sexually. Hey, just like Mick Jagger! Cool.Oh but how Clinton was slandered. Oh but how he was swarmed upon, savagely, brutally, not just for screwing around, not merely for having an ugly and dumb-ass affair, not even for lying about it. But essentially for having sex at all, for actually appearing to enjoy it, unashamedly, and for being unable to control his appetites. For being, you know, human. Heaven forfend.
Then there's Bush. Oh dear god.
George W. Bush does not have sex. You just know this. Dubya is not one to even remotely appreciate or even care about much less understand anything at all regarding the messy glorious divinity of women or women's pleasure and the true sticky all-American pastime.
It shows in his demeanor, in his squinty eyes, in his smirk, in his vicious laws. George W. Bush is quite possibly the least sexually appealing or attuned president since, well, his father. This, too, is a given.
Bush gives zero spark. Simply does not register. You do not wish to think of Dubya in any sexual way whatsoever. He could very well be celibate and anatomically incorrect and if it weren't for the record number of days he's spent on vacation at his ranch with the horsies and the farm animals since becoming president, you might think the man had no fleshy animate contact whatsoever.
And then there's his Cabinet. Bush is surrounded by what is quite possibly the least sexually tempting, most ogre-like cadre of bitter sagging hawks and scowling civil rights stompers in the history of humankind.
At least Clinton had Stephanopolous and Carville and Mike McCurry and hell even Gore had a sort of stiff bland GQ handsomeness. Bush has Ashcroft and Dick Cheney and Karl Rove and Ari Fleischer. Paint peels. Flowers wilt. Hide the children.
It is worthy of comparison. It is worth noting. Under Mr. Libido, under insanely maligned Clinton -- under, in other words, a sexually aware and energized leadership -- the nation was largely at peace, attained record budget surpluses, record low unemployment, international respect and admiration. Women's rights were assured and gay rights were protected and Clinton was welcomed like a freakin' rock star abroad, and, from what I understand, he still is.
He was widely loved and admired and respected and hey, here's a guy with an actual libido, and a whip-smart mind, and is unafraid to use either, rightfully and wrongfully. He's actually human, flawed and screwed up and heartily sexual and libidinously active and sorta proud of that fact and wow, what a concept.
And now we have Shrub. And now, it is all reversed, inverted, painfully ingrown, like a bad karmic toenail.
All right, let's spell it out. Let's get to the point already.
Because there is a direct and undeniable correlation between a nation's level of sexual awareness or repressiveness and its overall national level of openness or uptightness, its overall feeling of patriotic constipation. Just ask, say, Afghanistan.
There is a direct relationship between how we are now a divisive and frigid BushCo nation, in a state of perpetual war, saddled with a gutted budget, in an economic tailspin, how national morale is in the gutter and international respect for the U.S. almost nonexistent, and the overall cheerless and desolate climate of sexual education and awareness among our current leadership. Oh yes there is.
The environment is slammed and schools are scrambling for fiscal scraps and Medicare is on the verge of collapse and megacorporations from Halliburton to Lockheed Martin are salivating and rubbing their hands together and cheering and invidious Wal-Mart is the world's largest and most powerful arbiter of taste, and you don't think it has anything to do with our leadership's sense of amatory dread? Think again.
Look. It ain't rocket science. Lack of sex, repression of libido, ignorance of sexuality or sex education, lack of sexual celebration or outlet -- these things, on a national level, on an energetic universal level, can only result in conflict, bitterness, angst and war, and the need to flaunt bogus machismo, invent new enemies and strut around the planet thinking you're literally God's gift to empire when you're really just a draconian impotent bully.
Look at the world's most rigid and violent and oppressive nations for proof, at Syria Saudi Arabia Afghanistan China et al. Notice their attitudes toward sex and women and sexual expression. Draw easy parallel with Ashcroft and Dick Cheney and Rove and BushCo's anti-gay anti-women anti-choice propaganda. Voilà.
Now, glimpse the current state of American affairs, that acidic stifling powder-keg feeling, that sense of sad closed-mindedness and deep-seated fear and the sense that the only real screwing going on is what the USA Patriot Act and the 2004 Bush budget are doing to you, right now. Show me a brutish dictator/despot/pseudo-fascist/Rumsfeld, and I'll show you a sneering hunk of sexual ineptitude.
An oversimplification? Damn straight. Is it nevertheless shockingly and bitterly true and therefore means you must, with all your juicy energetic sexualized might, work day and night with your body and your mind and your lover's tongue to counter such bilious anti-sexual attitudes, such asexual tyranny? Damn straight.
Here is the new mantra. Here is the new cutesy slogan you may initially scoff at and roll your eyes about and perhaps all-too-quickly dismiss, but which is much deeper than you realize and becomes more and more true the more you think about it and the more you infuse it with your belief and your grins and your tongue:
"A sexually attuned nation is a prosperous nation." Or, maybe: "A nation that sleeps together stays together." There. Isn't that cute? Go ahead, take it. Run with it. You know you want to. Clinton would be proud.