Norman Mailer on Clinton



It isn't enough that novelist Norman Mailer's wife once "dated" former President Bill Clinton. No. The gassbag feels he must -- he must! -- in the latest Playboy no less, peddle his thoughts on his Eskimo brother, William Jefferson Clinton.

A conversation concerning Bill Clinton between Norman Mailer and his son, John Buffalo Mailer:

Norman Mailer: "'Just because I could' is an empty remark. Anyone who's met Monica knows she's attractive. She's got beautiful coloring, she's intense, she's bright -- that's the real reason he did it.

"And for another reason entirely, which may be richer, although it is certainly meaner: a bright woman I know once said, 'Clinton lived in a minimum security prison. Every 15 minutes security checked up on where he was.' I thought, she's absolutely right. What we're dealing with here is an incarcerated man. It's as if he were in the finest, grandest minimum security prison in the world, the White House. In that sense, five percent of him is a convict.

"John Buffalo Mailer: And once you're in prison you do what you can get away with.

"NM: Exactly.

"JBM: Then his remark is not so hollow."

And maybe all of this new scrutiny is getting to Bill as, apparently, he got gruff with Peter Jennings, according to NewsMax:

"Jennings' challenge sent Clinton into a thinly veiled rage, prompting him to threaten, 'You don't want to go here, Peter.'

"The full exchange went like this:

"JENNINGS (Discussing rankings by presidential historians]: They gave you a forty-first in terms of moral authority - after Nixon.

"CLINTON: They're wrong about that. You know why they're wrong about it? They're wrong about it.

"JENNINGS: Why, sir?

"CLINTON: Because we had $100 million spent against us in all these inspections . . . In spite of it all, you don't have any example where I ever lied to the American people about my job, where I have let the American people down. And I had more support from the world when I quit than when I started. And I will go to my grave being at peace about it. And I don't really care about what they think.

"JENNINGS: Oh, yes you do.

"CLINTON: They have no idea . . .

"JENNINGS: Excuse me, Mr. President. I can feel it across the room. You care very deeply.

"CLINTON: No, no. I care. I care. You don't want to go here, Peter. You don't want to go here. Not after what your people did. And the way you - your network - what you did with Kenneth Starr. The way your people repeated every little sleazy thing he did. No one has any idea of what that's like."