Bob Livingston's Feeble Grasp of History
Letter to the Editor - December 31, 1998
Background:
After Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich was cannibalized by his own party following the
disastrous 1998 elections, Bob Livingston stepped up to the plate.
Spouting sanctimonious drivel from every orifice, Livingston continued the far right's
attempted coup d'etat against President Clinton.
The republic was saved, however, by none other than Larry Flynt, publisher of
Hustler Magazine, who had dug up information regarding Livingston's
sordid love life. Livingston planned to stand firm, but was knifed
in the back by his Christian Right allies. He resigned, hypocritically pissing and moaning
about the "loss of privacy" and the "politics of destruction." One republican
congressman's voice broke as he discussed Livingston's fall.
Who would have thought that the American political system would be rescued by
a reviled pornographer?
This letter was accepted for publication in the San Antonio Express-News prior to
Livingston's tumble into the abyss. Before it could run, Livingston was gone. To its credit,
the paper decided to run the letter anyway, altering the first paragraph to reflect
the current state of affairs.
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To the editors:
Acting Speaker of the House Bob Livingston, in a meeting this week
with a group of feminists, said "Richard Nixon's crime was covering
up a crime he did not commit, Clinton is covering up a crime he did
commit, and that is a large difference."
As a student of Watergate, I have to ask: exactly which crime was
it that Nixon didn't commit?
Was it ordering the burglary of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist's
office in order to gather damaging information?
Was it asking the CIA to interfere in the FBI investigation
into the burglary at the Democratic National Committee's
headquarters, another burglary that Nixon was suspected of ordering?
Was it using the Internal Revenue Service to audit reporters and
politicians critical of his often brutal policies?
As for the alleged "crime" President Clinton committed: he
gave evasive answers to intrusive, immaterial questions about his
private life that no American citizen would willingly answer.
Questions, I might add, that were based on information obtained
from conversations illegally recorded at the behest of a former
member of Richard Nixon's dirty tricks team from the early
seventies, Lucianne Goldberg.
Gee, Clinton's "crime" is so much worse than when Ronald Reagan
lied to Congress and the nation in order to cover-up his
authorizing selling weapons to a terrorist nation in order to
finance a band of CIA-trained drug-running nun-rapers fighting an
illegal war against a democratically-elected government.
Do the Republicans really want to bring up the historic record?
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The only other alteration they made was deleting the phrase "nun-rapers," although
the Contra's indulgence in that particular pastime is a well documented fact.
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© 1998 by David Bryant.
All Rights Reserved.
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