From: poser@vxcrna.cern.ch (Till Poser  -  ZEUS OFFLINE)
Subject: Re: The US - laughing stock of the world
Summary: No: Richard A. Mulac - laughing stock of the world !
Reply-To: poser@vxdsyc.desy.de
Organization: Deutsches Elektronen Synchrotron, Experiment ZEUS bei HERA
Date: Sun, 8 Nov 1992 18:57:27 GMT

In article <1diocbINNa2b@usenet.INS.CWRU.Edu>,
ck347@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Richard A. Mulac) indulges in yet another
tale of woe, this one so ludicrous and smarmy, however, that a response
is somewhat in order:

>   I can't believe it.

How about just cutting the bilious sour-grape bullshit? Your histrionics
aren't even entertaining any more.

>                       President-elect Bill Clinton's mistress, Gennifer
> Flowers, posing nude in this month's Penthouse.  We have gone from the
> envy of the world to the butt of it's jokes.  Even if you don't believe 
> that she was his mistress, she was a close confidant whom he trusted.

Let me put it this way: From the European press that I followed all
during campaign and election, the only reason for considering the US a
laughing stock was the utterly loudicrous and puerile focus on a
perfectly ridiculous and picayune side issue such as the Flowers
thingee. It was Bush who lost credibility over here over that thing,
rather than Clinton. The whole silly foofooraw was chalked up to the
innate Anglosaxon inability to deal with the all to human aspects of
life with more than adolescent pruriency.

Actually, as "Die Zeit" evaluated, it was fortunate that Clinton got hit
with this ridiculous issue early in the game, since it served admirably
as an inocculation against further such accusations. 

> If his judgment allowed him to choose for a close trusted friend a person 
> who would spill true or untrue details of an intimate relationship to the
> press and embarrass him by posing nude in a magazine, what kind of people 
> will he pick to help him run the country using that same "judgment"?

As we all know there is a darker side to the human psyche. Some people
will betray trusts in the view of lucrative monetary reimbursements,
others will, when feeling politically flaunted, engage in lengthy
rodomontade, making like a jilted prom quean (no spelling error here!).
It's known as human fallability, so, what shame? 

> I guess one thing we'll be short of during the next four years is family
> values at the top.  I just hope he doesn't turn the White House into a
> brothel like Kennedy did.  What a black eye on the United States of
> America.  Oh, the shame of it all!

Oh yes, that family values thing! That was just too cute for words. Us
EuroEvilSeXularHuManists[TM] had a good chuckle over that, especially when
it became more than apparent that this approach didn't play well at
all, especially in those areas that it was targeted for. It also relievd
us, since it seemed to indicate that the Buchanan faction of the Reps
didn't have that much of a base as we feared. You know, he made noises
that we have come to loathe and abonimate when they come from people
like le Pen or Schoenhuber and other European fascists.

Bush's campaign was seen as the epitome of the typical US smear
campaign, a last ditch effort of a fading politico without perspective,
insight and vision, pandering to hate, divisiveness and individual greed
(I was amazed how well that played in this group, given the sample of
USAians of similar eduacation that I have the privilege of working
with). If anything it was an example of how _not_ to go about politics. 

>   I know, maybe if we start now we can develop a campaign based on the 
> theme "America wants change".  I'm sure the American people will go for
> it and elect someone else in 1996.

We'll see. Over here, Clinton's election has been greeted with quite a
bit of enthusiasm. Not that he'll go soft on the Europeans, and
especially the Germans, we've got strong indications to the contrary.
But he seems to have the will and the incentive to get the US out of the
Third World with respect to its management, or rather squandering, of
human resources, which we perceive to be one of the major problems of
the US. It should be noted, that in a world of high economic and
political interdependence, a sane and hale US is of high interest to
those who, perforce, have to recon with it.

After all is said and done, the Europeans tend to prefer to give a new
guy the benefit of doubt, especially, when there is nothing really
incriminating on his slate (and as to fooling around a wee bit, that
might even gain him a modicum of respect in romanic states in Europe, so
there). It is a practice that some USAians should do well to emulate.


> Richard Mulac                                       ck347@cleveland.freenet.edu

       Till Poser         Internet: poser@vxdsyc.desy.de
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