Friday Funnies-Bill Clinton: it's summer but he's in winter...

My Princeton classmate Todd Purdum, whom we're lining up to help grace our happy crew at the nascent Hoya Journalism Department with some wisdom in return for grossly underfunded honoraria, stirs the pot again vis. his wifey's ex-boss. Yep Todd's married to former Bubba White House Press Secretary Dee Dee Myers. Digression/explanation/boasting here, fanboys & girls: Todd is part of my class's Legion of Super Heroes/Mt Olympus/'36 Yankees/'70 Orioles line up of journalistic cool m-fs: Barton Gellman, Joel Achenbach, Liza Mundy, Lisa Belkin Gelb, Michael (Money Ball) Lewis, and let us not forget Martha McCully, HGTV celeb and former Editor-in Chief of every woman's favorite waiting room at the OB-GYN's office magazine, InStyle.

Getting back to it, in his new gig as Vanity Fair gadfly and general pundit (note I did not say public intellectual), Todd has been de-constructing the deconstruction (demolition?) of the Clinton dual monarchy. Here's one piece: click. You decide. What's the 411 on Bill's albatross-like drag on his equally bizarre-acting wife? Goes back, as always, to that Twilight Zone above his neck, not what's in his pants. Explains everything: the mental toll of the bypass surgery, to his Lucifer the Morning Star-like tumble from Soul Brother Numero Uno to the level of Hell just above Karl Rove's. The E! and Fox newsie element is Todd's whispering over Bill's supposed penchant for Gina Gershon. Gina is of course the vampire-mouthed actress who made stylized lezbo scenes a mainstream, hetero male fantasy in Bound and Show Girls (as opposed to reality: think the LPGA Tour and WNBA). Of course Gina's lawyers are sending letters and Bill has blown yet another gasket, though keeping on the pointless message that somehow Hillary was subject to a vast anti-woman conspiracy. Um...it's called "malice," and "damages" Gina, Bill. If you are a public figure, you have to show reckless disregard for the truth, and damages. Which is why seldom do libel suits go forward. The damages part always tickle me when a jury says yeah, you've been libeled, defamed, but based on your rep we award you $1 plus a few grand in attorneys fees. Ha! I have no doubt what Todd plumbed and Vanity Fair printed is true...somewhat true. Sorry.

Here's something else instructive from the piece...and well, almost banal: "Yes, Obama is a daring opponent who thinks he is hot shit and has benefited from the same enthusiasm, energy, and fresh-faced appeal that a fella named Bill Clinton once elicited (but he has suffered from some of the same skepticism, too). It is Clinton’s invariable insistence that his problems are someone else’s fault, and that questions or criticisms of him, his methods, motives, or means are invariably unfair, that is his unforgivable flaw."

My take: the underlying reasons mined by Todd for Bubba's meltdowns, continued geriatric HBO's Entourage-like behavior and paranoia might be groundbreaking to some NYC/DC/LA literatti and journalism snobs. To me? Meh... I see it all the time. It's the "old playa at the club." Not something so regal as the Lion in Winter. Nope, merely old playa who cannot play on. A tragedy only R Kelly or Eurpides and Aeshylus could love. Todd's just putting the usual uber-serious whiteboy over-gloss on it. I'd like to chronicle the Winter of about 75% of the Congressional Black Caucus myself...Vote Kevin Powell!