About Face—Jay Nordlinger, page 52Face-Time,

He is suddenly attacked by a common form of Hollywood modesty. Some things are just too peculiar to utter. This is a guy who can swear like a pirate. He has described to me, in a booming voice in a small restaurant, just exactly how an Oscar-winning actress satisfied her two male co-stars, simultaneously. But now, talking about what did not happen between Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky, he suddenly has the jitters. Sometimes, the reasons that something didn’t happen are more alarming than the reasons that something did happen. But then, coitus interruptus (or, more accurately, coitus never-had-us) is about the sharpest metaphor yet for the absurd muddle of the Clinton administration.

This is a president, after all, who couldn’t even complete the simple act of inhaling marijuana smoke—trust me, not too taxing—so it’s not hard to put the rest of his official half-acts into perspective. Health care, Social Security reform, tax cuts, Lani Guinier, NATO expansion, Bosnia, welfare reform, school uniforms, affirmative action—there’s practically no issue on which the president hasn’t flip-flopped. He has, in other words, pulled out of everything. That weird bit with the cigar wasn’t perversion. It was evasion. And that stained blue dress! Sort of like sitting at the back table in Chez Jay, getting the call, putting down the Evian, puttering down the hill in the minivan, and pulling into the house next door to Peter Law-ford’s beach house.

ET

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Erik Tarloff

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He is suddenly attacked by a common form of Hollywood modesty. Some things are just too peculiar to utter. This is a guy who can swear like a pirate. He has described to me, in a booming voice in a small restaurant, just exactly how an Oscar-winning actress satisfied her two male co-stars, simultaneously. But now, talking about what did not happen between Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky, he suddenly has the jitters. Sometimes, the reasons that something didn’t happen are more alarming than the reasons that something did happen. But then, coitus interruptus (or, more accurately, coitus never-had-us) is about the sharpest metaphor yet for the absurd muddle of the Clinton administration.

This is a president, after all, who couldn’t even complete the simple act of inhaling marijuana smoke—trust me, not too taxing—so it’s not hard to put the rest of his official half-acts into perspective. Health care, Social Security reform, tax cuts, Lani Guinier, NATO expansion, Bosnia, welfare reform, school uniforms, affirmative action—there’s practically no issue on which the president hasn’t flip-flopped. He has, in other words, pulled out of everything. That weird bit with the cigar wasn’t perversion. It was evasion. And that stained blue dress! Sort of like sitting at the back table in Chez Jay, getting the call, putting down the Evian, puttering down the hill in the minivan, and pulling into the house next door to Peter Law-ford’s beach house.