A Senator's Garden of Impeachable Verse

(November 1998)

A is for Affair, the protracted tryst he -
Our President - took up with Miss M. Lewinsky.
Shameful, disgusting, and other bad words
Are used both by Joe Blow and paid analyst nerds.
But though he may be scum, we can't put him in jail
Just for adultery, and some want to avail
Themselves of bigger weapons than moral invective.
Now the question becomes, from a legal perspective,
Is this perjury semi-entrapment quite fair?
And a nation now speculates: "Do we still care?"

B is for Base, as in third, as in dating.
The argument made, which has not proved placating,
Is that no one touched home, and no score was made,
And therefore the game has not really been played.
But the people who approve this argument's form
Most often make homesinside sophomore dorms,
And thus people attacking the President plead
That three out of four is quite bad indeed.

C is for Cigar, with a quite sullied seal,
The essence of Freudian symbol made real.
I guess Clinton was thinking he'd give her a smoke
And then something else that might make the girl choke.
It's this kind of useless yet sordid detail
That's avoided by newscasts, then ridiculed stale.
What is still lost on me is just what this breach meant
In terms of Ken Starr justifying impeachment.
And Starr shouldn't be shocked at where our thoughts linger:
When you point at an object, a dog stares at your finger.

D is for Dong, who drives Bill to the girls,
The real leader of the Leader of the Free World.
We're just lucky that in foreign negotiations,
Schroeder or Yeltsin won't inspire titillation.
(When did ministers totally stop being cute? Oh,
since Pakistan unseated Benazir Bhutto.)

E is for Education, which Monica mentioned
On the back of an erotic postcard she sent him.
I don't think Clinton probably heard what she said.
He was already getting quite enough from her head.

F is for Friend, just like Linda Tripp.
Her conduct provides us some valuable tips:
If you talk on the phone with your troubled best friend,
Make sure to record her, so that if it ends
Up in some kind of court, you can hand the tapes over,
And thus show just how much you care for her and love her.
(And really good friends draw away mocking stares
By having much bigger and more laughable hair.)

G is for Grand Jury, indictment by one's peers,
For Bill, a bunch of white guys with their own secret fears.
To make sure it's impartial, a jury is selected,
Except in this case, where it's, um, elected.
The ramifications are too horrid to contemplate:
"I'll save you for history if you build me an interstate."

H is for Hillary, the wife sorely wronged,
But steadfast, just like Tammy Wynette in that song.
It's strange how in public she looks so composed,
Whether in fashion rags striking a pose
Or helping a Democrat win a tough race.
But we all hope she's slapped him across his fat face,
And told him that even though he is the Prez,
In her house, from now on, he does who she says.

I is for Is. Is its meaning uncertain?
For an answer to that let us draw back the curtain
On the masterful doubler of double-talk talking
Then redoubling it, leaving semanticists gawking.
To be or not to be? Is that the question?
Is it is, or was, or could be? A suggestion:
"Is" is "to be" in the third person singular,
Denoting a quality or (perhaps) a thing you are.
Though Bill may have drawn scorn from our nation's grammarians,
He picked up the bloc of hard-core Heidiggerians.

J is for Job. Not the kind reprimanded,
But the one that our Monica later demanded;
I mean, after the jobs that got the thing started,
The reciprocal one wanted when she departed.
"I don't want to earn this job, I just want to be given it."
Here's some coffee, Monica. Wake up. You're living it.
And here's some advice you should never forget:
One job doth not always another beget.

K is for Kramerbooks, Dupont Circle bookshop
And one of the places Ken Starr made a stop,
Attempting to subpoena M.'s book-buying receipts,
Hoping to find the nature of various deceits.
I personally think this is rather deranged,
Not least since I'd have to be tortured and hanged
If this were an acceptable way to proceed.
We all read about bad things, but we all just read.
There's only one case in which I would not scoff
At this tactic: the investigation of Philip Roth.

L is our heroine, M.S. Lewinsky.
To rhyme it one needs the grace of a Nijinsky.
Perhaps if Bill Clinton had slipped her a finski
Or given her gifts not so awfully chintzy
This whole sordid business could have slid past us
And not given rise to some rhyming disasters.

M is for Misdemeanors, also High Crimes.
It is a sad sign of our paranoid times
That to treason, bribery and sabotage
We want to add "making a semantic dodge."
But maybe this has damaged the country. Let's think: it's
Artificially raised the price of frog trinkets.
Or maybe when it seemed the affair would go bust, he
Would call up Saddam on the phone to discuss it.
Perhaps clothing stores have taken a rap
After Clinton's endorsement of a dress from the Gap.
But what I think the country is finding most stressful
Is that the perjury attempt ended up unsuccessful.

N is for Nattering Nabobs of the press,
Eager to please, but desperate to impress.
They force-fed us oodles of Bill and of Monica,
With taped depositions and snoop pictures from Konicas,
And when we told them we were sick of this story,
They took up that cause to pursue their own glory.
Whether shouting 'cross tables or discoursing in columns,
Spewing mass venom or trying to be solemn
(And I must say that anchors describing the iniquity,
Seem to have reached new heights of obliquity),
They have changed the course of this scandal. How?
If at one point we cared, we surely don't care now.

O is for Our friend Osama bin Laden,
Who by his dastardly bombings has gotten
Some missiles fired at him from U.S. destroyers -
Just like with our Prez and subpoenas from lawyers.
Though some said that Clinton, in taking this action,
May have been merely trying to cause a distraction,
I don't think he made up the idea in his head.
He did not "Wag the Dog." He bit it instead.

P is for Punishment fitting the crime,
Whether censure, impeachment, or doing hard time.
The problem that might get Bill Clinton acquitted
Is that some folks maintain that no crime's been committed,
And those that think Clinton is probably a crook
Want to throw the book at him, but they don't know what book;
For perjury in a dismissed civil suit
As an impeachable crime is in some dispute.
Of course, Bill could resign and end this sick game,
But he'll never do that since he'd have to show shame.

Q is for Q-Tip, the Abstract Poetic,
Whom at Tribe Called Quest's last DC concert I sweated.
In freestyle he expounded thus on Bill Clinton:
"He gets in mad trouble but he keeps on hittin."

R is for Remorse, which was slow to be shown us,
And then turned by the press into Clinton's big onus.
They catalogued failures, they chirped and regretted:
"He didn't say 'I'm sorry!' He wants to forget it!"
But an angered public failed to coalesce,
Causing further anger and blame wars in the press.
"They think Clinton's OK? Well, they can't get that by us!
"We'll show them what we do when our customers defy us!"
On TV and in columns invective was hurled,
And nary a thing happened in the real world.

S is for that Starr beyond mortals, Ken,
Who seeks illegal doings again and again.
Though his first investigation (sad for him) came up empty,
Starr crossed up all up and found prurience aplenty.
Yes, Starr was discouraged, but never abated,
And then wrote a report now (ahem) disseminated
(Whose writing style, frankly, at its most emphatic
Sounds like Hustler rendered in terms bureaucratic).
And now in Starr's chambers he dismisses suggestions
That he could be partisan. Hah! What a question!
The vast body of Democrats is in good moral stead.
All Starr wants to do is lop off the head.

T is for Truth, always-valued commodity,
In DC so rare as to count as an oddity.
The proper response to events that took place:
Finger-waving denials till you're red in the face.
And admissions of truth are so greatly amended
That tracing the logic can leave one's mind bended.
Still, to grasp this, one need not be a whiz:
The Truth is whatever the polls think it is.

U is for the U.N. and Saddam Hussein.
We threaten with airstrikes but always in vain.
Maybe instead of pushes to more brinks, we
Should simply threaten Saddam with M.S. Lewinsky.
(See, another bad rhyme. I don't know why I try this.
Maybe if I do it enough someone will buy this.)

V is for Vulgar, prurient, and salacious,
All good descriptors of the facts that now face us.
How can I say this? Well, I should know 'em,
Because each of those words also describes this poem.

W is for Why, as in we are all wondering
Why Bill risked it all for thighs loudly thundering.
You'd think that the Prez, of all people, could meet some
Hot and fresh chicks to deliver his pizza.
JFK's tryst with Marilyn we can all comprehend,
And some of us men would probably defend.
But with Gennifer, Paula and Monica most recent,
Bill's giving adultery a name quite indecent.
This can't possibly be all there is. I posit
A passel of hotties in the Oval Office closet.

X is for X-Rated, which the Starr report would have been
If it hadn't been written with no flair and a wooden pen.
If Starr admits nothing else, he must now concede
That government porno is scary indeed.

Y is the Youth of America learning
That being a liar does not set one's pants burning,
And learning moreover that dropping one's pants
And telephone wires are linked by more than chance.
One wants to shield children from knowledge like this,
But if they watch TV, it's a futile wish.
"Is lying OK?" they ask from afar.
"And why do they keep talking 'bout a cigar?"
You can try to explain, but if telling offends,
You can just let them watch some old reruns of "Friends."

Z is for Zero, as in continuing interest
I have in chronicling this modern-day inquest.
Whether ending for Clinton in triumph or sadness,
I wish they'd do something and end all this madness.
But it will stagger on for weeks and for months,
And I will watch no more forever. To be blunt:
I'm canceling my newspapers, turning off TV stations,
And undergoing Monica detoxification.

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