A Wet Time at the Bubbathon

George Neumayr - Reigning Like a Dog:

God sent his rain down on the just and unjust at Bill Clinton's presidential library opening on Thursday -- a celebration of his "glorified house trailer," as Clinton put it, quoting a British publication's description of the architectural monstrosity next to the Arkansas river. Looking unwell and spent from his heart surgery, Clinton spoke of "red and blue" coming together, though there was little red apart from the color of ponchos in the audience at what looked like a rained-out U2 concert. It was an event held in the South but it might as well have been held in Hollywood. The press regarded it as a moment of great American majesty, but it smacked of the depressing cultural shabbiness that Clinton's Fleetwood Mac inauguration augured. The 1970s America that Clinton's events always epitomize is so devoid of distinctively American high culture that it has to outsource cultural performances to foreign rockers like Bono.

The press purred over the proceedings, though strangely the Clinton News Network and pro-Clinton gabbers on MSNBC felt safe enough to come out and acknowledge that Clinton as president had the morals of a strip club owner. "A rascally dog," Hillary Rosen on MSNBC called him. What happened to the left's agnosticism about attacks on Clinton's character? The infidelity charges against him were "uncorroborated," "baloney," "unbelievable," they used to say. Gennifer Flowers and all the others were lying connivers, they assured the American people. The right called him a "rascally dog" and they cried foul. Now they call him a rascally dog and pat themselves on the back for honesty that comes about 14 years too late.

Then they did the barking version of Jingle Bells.