Harry Clinton and the Penis of Azkaban

This week's media trip down memory lane concerns Slick Willie's new book My Life. Just like the earlier Reagan nostalgia stroll, the media is focusing on Clinton's popularity, his optimism, his economic revolution, his presiding over peace and prosperity for eight years. Right? No, wait, they're focusing on his dick.

This was an actual exchange on the abhorrent Wolf Blitzer program "News from CNN" yesterday morning. He had Katrina vanden Heuvel of The Nation and Jonah Goldberg of The National Review on the show. But he probably should have had Dr. Drew and Annie Sprinkle. Just read this, I'm still shaking my head:

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(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CLINTON: To me, the whole battle was a badge of honor. I don't see it as a great stain because it was illegitimate. On the day I die I'll still be glad I fought him, and I'll still be glad that I beat him. And I'll still believe that it was a bogus, phony deal.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: Bill Clinton speaking to Dan Rather on "60 Minutes" last night. Let's return to our discussion about the former president on the eve of the public sale of his memoir, "My Life"...

When I heard him say "I don't see it as a great stain," the word "stain" jumped out at me, Katrina, for obvious reasons, remembering the single piece of evidence that got Bill Clinton into deep trouble was that stain on Monica Lewinsky's blue dress. Was this a coincidence that he used this word as precise as Bill Clinton is, or was it not?

VANDEN HEUVEL: I hadn't thought of that, Wolf, until you brought it up. You know, when I thought of "stain" -- and I thought this is a Rorschach test, this whole kind of nightmarish time warp we're reliving here, I thought of different stains.
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You're kidding, right, Wolf? You have two journalists on and you're seriously asking about semen? I'm not Bill Clinton's biggest fan, but that has to do with substantive policy differences. But apparently the media cannot stop obsessing over porn enough to even notice those policies. And to those who think this is what America wants to hear, bullshit. This is what media thinks America wants to hear, rejected by Clinton's immense popularity in the face of impeachment back in 1999.

I wonder if Wolf and the rest of the voyeurs will get just as freaked out by Illinois Republican Senate candidate Jack Ryan's taste for the bizarre:

Actress Jeri Ryan accused ex-husband Jack Ryan of insisting she go to "explicit sex clubs" in New York, New Orleans and Paris during their marriage - including "a bizarre club with cages, whips and other apparatus hanging from the ceiling."

Jeri Ryan alleged, "he took me to a sex club in Paris, without telling me where we were going. I told him I thought it was out of his system. I told him he had promised me we would never go. People were having sex everywhere. I cried, I was physically ill. [He] became very upset with me, and said it was not a "turn on" for me to cry.

Of course, Ryan's Republican, and this was his wife at the time, so this is obviously an example of "family values." It's when you go outside the marriage, like Clinton... and Henry Hyde, and Bob Livingston, and Dan Burton, and Bob Packwood, and Helen Chenowith, and... oh, never mind.