At Kramerbooks & Afterwords, a popular combination bookstore, restaurant and coffeehouse in Washington’s trendy DuPont Circle neighborhood, the waiters are wearing new black T-shirts that say in white letters on the back, “Subpoenaed for Book Selling.”
The shirts commemorate the subpoenaing by Kenneth Starr of the World’s Most Famous Ex-Intern’s book-buying records. Kramerbooks, following time-honored American tradition, is fighting the subpoena on privacy and 1st Amendment grounds and milking it for all the publicity it can get.
Good for them. Ridicule is a thoroughly appropriate way to expose the wretched excesses of the independent counsel’s inquiry into the World’s Most Famous Ex-Intern’s reading tastes.
After having questioned her friends, fellow workers and her mother, Starr’s deputies say they need the records of Monica Lewinsky’s book purchases to determine the nature of her relationship with President Clinton.
Oh? They belong to the same book club?
Clinton said in a Jan. 17 deposition that Lewinsky had given him “a book or two,” although he did not identify any specific titles.
On March 23, the Starr chamber subpoenaed Kramerbooks demanding “all documents and things relating to purchase by Monica Lewinsky ” after November 1995. A week later, Barnes and Noble received a similar subpoena for purchases the World’s Most Famous Ex-Intern made in the chain’s Georgetown neighborhood store. Barnes and Noble’s New York headquarters announced they, too, would fight the subpoenas.
One beneficiary of the controversy has been Nicholson Baker’s novel about phone sex, “Vox.” It was identified as one title Lewinsky bought at Kramerbooks. Since then, the publisher told The Washington Post, orders have been large enough to require a new printing of 2,500 copies.
If you thought a person who buys a book has a reasonable expectation of privacy, think again.
Arguing before Chief U.S. District Judge Norma Holloway Johnson, a Starr deputy pointed out that federal investigators have pursued similarly the reading habits of “Unabomber” Theodore J. Kaczynski, Oklahoma City bomber Timothy J. McVeigh and the World Trade Center bombers.
How about that for overkill. Whether you love Clinton or hate him, the case of the World’s Most Famous Ex-Intern is not about bombing. It is not even analogous, outside of a few bloated imaginations, to Watergate. President Nixon conspired to use government tax collection and law enforcement agencies to subvert the constitutional rights of his political enemies. In the Lewinsky case, Clinton is accused of having sex and lying about it.
Yup. This case is about Clinton’s sex life.
I know, I know you will hear elsewhere, especially from the “Get Clinton” crowd, that it is really about whether the president lied (committed perjury) or encouraged others to lie (suborned perjury) or used the White House office to subvert the Constitution, blah, blah, blah.
But, think about it: What is the president alleged to have lied about?
Answer: About whether he had an affair with Monica Lewinsky.
Even the famous “talking points” that Lewinsky supplied to Linda Tripp, while Tripp’s tape recorder hummed, concern questions about Clinton’s alleged sex life and his alleged attempts to keep it private. Leakers from the Starr chamber have implied that the talking points are instructions to lie. But lawyers give their clients talking points quite routinely before a grand jury. The Lewinsky case is about something else, spelled S-E-X.
If you think the president ought to be impeached over sexual impropriety, that’s your right. But, at least let’s be honest about it. Let’s not pretend we’re pursuing something that threatens national security or even involves the national interest.
So far, estimates of Kenneth Starr’s expenditures top $30 million of taxpyayers’ money and still rising.
Across town, there are major crack suppliers who are being pursued with less zeal and at far less cost than Kenneth Starr is pursuing the president’s sex life.
Small wonder that the polls show a reluctance by so many Americans to call for Clinton’s head, even if he is guilty as charged. It is not that most Americans approve of extramarital sex by the president.
It is just that they find many other matters to be more important. They also question whether that alone justifies his impeachment.
So, what has happened? Have I joined the Clinton spinners?
Nah, not me. I just want to give you an idea of what life is like in the capital city of the free world these days.
Just be careful if you buy a book here. Pay cash. You won’t have to leave a paper trail.
