Time: Tue Oct 14 07:56:48 1997
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Date: Tue, 14 Oct 1997 07:49:41 -0700
To: (Recipient list suppressed)
From: Paul Andrew Mitchell [address in tool bar]
Subject: SLS: "Our First Kitsch President" (fwd)
<snip>
>
>The Washington Times
>October 13, 1997
>
>Our first kitsch president
>
>By Suzanne Fields
>
>After you wade through the excuses, the rationalizations, the
>justifications spilling out of the White House over fund-raising
>soirees, an interested observer is left with one rock-bottom perception.
>These guys are tacky. They have no taste.
>
>Bill Clinton has trashed the Oval Office with his vulgar schemes
>to trade conversation and coffee, teasing and titillating his visitors
>with eye contact and proximity so they'll eventually pay for the
>pleasure of his company with campaign contributions. Why shouldn't he
>sell the Lincoln Bedroom to the highest bidders? What else is the
>Lincoln Bedroom for?
>
>Like the bourgeois gentilhomme, the president never acquired the
>ability to distinguish between himself and his acquired possessions and
>power in Washington. His behavior reflects the character of an
>arriviste, a provincial politician who never took time to grow naturally
>into his surroundings and trappings of power, which require taste,
>prudence and gravitas.
>
>Taste in its original meaning refers to judgment. In England and
>in New England and the Old South, where taste traditionally was more
>important than wealth and power (though these qualities often came
>together) in defining a person's character, "good taste" meant "sound
>understanding." The poet John Keats wrote that "Beauty is truth, and
>truth beauty." There was no distinction between the aesthetic and the
>authentic, the formal design and its moral integrity, the appearance of
>honesty and honesty itself.
>
>But the word "taste," like its focus, has changed meaning in a
>society of consumerism. Taste today refers only to material surfaces and
>consumption, not profound appreciation for the genuine article.
>
>Bill Clinton has the taste of an advertising copy writer. For
>years now advertisers have known that "taste" sells. That's why
>designers, once acknowledged for the quality of their style, sell their
>name, writ large across their products, so that those who have no taste
>can think they've acquired it. They buy the illusion of taste. The proof
>is written in two-inch high letters across their bosoms.
>
>We don't yet know for sure whether the contributors to Bill
>Clinton's campaign got anything in return for their money beyond a
>photograph of themselves with the president, or perhaps an autograph
>writ large. The current defense of the president is that Bill Clinton
>played his guests for suckers. They wouldn't be the first.
>
>It's not surprising that the White House would rather be
>perceived as incompetent than corrupt. Corruption requires a breakdown
>in acknowledged standards, a fall from principle, which can compel legal
>punishment. Incompetence merely begets condescension: He's the shill
>from Hot Springs, after all.
>
>Taste is more a taboo subject "than sex or money," writes
>Stephen Bayley, an author of a contemporary book on the subject. Taste
>is incontrovertible. Bill Clinton could no more change his taste than
>rewrite his past. Vulgarity and venality run through his taste in
>friends as well as many of his business and political associates.
>
>Bill Clinton may be our first kitsch president, displaying a
>spectacular garishness of the spirit. Kitsch derives from the German
>word which means to cheapen. There are all different kinds of kitsch,
>but all have one thing in common -- an element of inappropriateness --
>that which is easily mocked or satirized.
>
>Arief Wiriadinata, on display as a guest on the tape of one of
>the Oval Office coffees, is the perfect supporting actor of kitsch,
>walking up to the president to say, "James Riady sent me." This is
>dialogue from a bad B movie. For an instant the Oval Office became
>square.
>
>Fast forward to farce as Harold Ickes, the former White House
>deputy chief of staff, testifies before a Senate committee that the
>coffees that raised more than $26 million were not fund-raisers. "There
>was no admission charge," Mr. Ickes says. "There were people who came to
>the coffees who never gave a dime."
>
>Even the Democrats are beginning to admit to being embarrassed
>by the videos. Every age has its bemused tolerance for kitsch and
>schlock, whether in art objects or music or public behavior. But it's
>not very funny when it trivializes the highest honor the people of the
>United States can bestow.
>
>Copyright 1997 News World Communications, Inc.
>
<snip>
===========================================================================
Paul Andrew Mitchell, Sui Juris : Counselor at Law, federal witness 01
B.A.: Political Science, UCLA; M.S.: Public Administration, U.C.Irvine 02
tel: (520) 320-1514: machine; fax: (520) 320-1256: 24-hour/day-night 03
email: [address in tool bar] : using Eudora Pro 3.0.3 on 586 CPU 04
website: http://supremelaw.com : visit the Supreme Law Library now 05
ship to: c/o 2509 N. Campbell, #1776 : this is free speech, at its best 06
Tucson, Arizona state : state zone, not the federal zone 07
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_____________________________________: Law is authority in written words 09
As agents of the Most High, we came here to establish justice. We shall 10
not leave, until our mission is accomplished and justice reigns eternal. 11
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