Be Very Afraid
Clinton’s legacy.

Mr. Derbyshire is also an NR contributing editor
February 15, 2001 10:10 a.m.

specter is haunting America — the specter of Clintonism. Yes, the man is gone, off to a lifetime of golfing at all-white clubs, biting his lip in the pulpits of black churches while the hallelujahs soar, goosing waitresses, slithering in and out of shady business deals, being collared by showbiz bores at Barbra Streisand's parties, and defending himself in court. And yes, his lady has no future beyond the U.S. Senate. The people of New York, trapped in their little Stalinist time-warp, still fretting about why that nice Mr. Adlai Stevenson didn't get in in '52 (my explanation: WE NEED ADLAI BADLY! was the worst campaign slogan ever) will probably go on voting for her until, like Gagoola the hag in King Solomon's Mines, "She has lived so long that none can remember when she was not old, and always she it is who has trained the witch hunters, and made the land evil in the sight of the heavens above." But given her far-left paper trail and her amazing capacity to make people detest her where'er she treads, Hillary's maxed out: She has no real future.

Yet still the presence of that specter can be felt, an icy wind blowing to us from the unseeable future, disturbing our sleep, arresting us in the midst of our daily tasks, chilling and warning us. Bill and Hill are history, but Clintonism may yet rise again, like Glenn Close from that bathtub. For, ladies and gentlemen, the tworch has been paaahssed to a noooh genewation of Clintons. On February 27th, Chelsea Clinton will turn 21.

At this point I had better make a confession. It's a bad one, I know it. It is low, contemptible and — yes! — mean-spirited. It may very well place me beyond the pale of civilized society. I don't care. Truth will out, I will be heard. Brace yourself: I hate Chelsea Clinton.

I admit it's not easy to justify my loathing of this person. I can pick out causes, but none of them is one hundred per cent rational. As an Englishmen, I naturally start from a base of resentment against anyone with perfect dentition. This whole area is mildly radioactive for me right now, though, having just dug myself out (metaphorically speaking) from under a heap of e-mails I got in reaction to my "double-bagger" piece the other day. So let's leave the young lady's looks altogether out of it. I am myself, as numerous correspondents felt moved to observe, no oil painting. (Note to webmaster: Whose damn fool idea was it to put our photographs on the site?)

Nor does Chelsea have much of a track record to scrutinize. How could she have? There are some pretty clear indicators, which I shall get to in a moment; but she has not looted the White House, lied under oath, bombed an aspirin factory in Africa to get her personal legal problems off the front pages, raped anybody, used public employees to pimp for her, sold the Department of Defense to the Chinese Communist Party for cold cash, taken a fat bribe dressed up as a "commodities trade," or written a book arguing that parents cannot be trusted to raise their children. I note, however, that she doesn't deserve any credit for not having done these things; she just hasn't had time yet.

So what's my beef? Well, first there is the Willie Mufferson factor. You may recall that Tom Sawyer had a schoolmate named Willie Mufferson, the town's Model Boy.

He always brought his mother to church, and was the pride of all the matrons. The boys all hated him, he was so good. And besides, he had been "thrown up to them" so much. His white handkerchief was hanging out of his pocket behind, as usual on Sundays — accidentally. Tom had no handkerchief, and he looked upon boys who had, as snobs.

Who, in current public life, has been "thrown up to us" so much as Chelsea? As originally presented to us in the 1992 campaign, she was a shy pre-teen whose parents were determined to keep her out of the public eye. This lasted until the until the focus groups started reporting that the public saw the Clintons as a cold, self-obsessed power couple (imagine!), at which point People magazine was called in for a photo-shoot of Hillary and Chelsea in a hammock. Fair enough; and once they had got the White House, Chelsea was indeed kept out of view for the first five years or so of the Clinton presidency. Then the gush started.

For one thing, Chelsea had now reached the age at which it is acceptable to pass public comment on a woman's physical appearance. I'm not going there myself, for reasons I have already made clear, but by 1997 we had had a slew of feature stories about how Chelsea had "blossomed" into a "beautiful" and "poised" young woman. ("Poised" is one of those words that are inescapable in this context, but appear practically nowhere else — rather like the special language, incomprehensible to commoners, by which Japanese emperors had to be addressed.) Well, fa-di-la. If my parents had had as much money as hers have — by stealing it, never let it be forgotten, or by bribing and lying their way into well-paid public offices — I'd be pretty damn "poised," too. Class envy? Mmm, not altogether. Sure, my parents lived in public housing (the other kind, not executive mansions), but I don't recall that they stole things, or lied under oath, or raped anybody.

And then there was the Lewinsky scandal, impeachment, and that famous shot of the three Clintons walking to the helicopter, Chelsea in the middle, holding hands with her parents. The buzz at the time was that Chelsea did it for Mom; was furious with Dad but was begged by Hillary — presumably to protect her "political viability" — to stage the whole phony performance. The public went Aaaaaah! I had a different take on it. Chelsea was 18 at this point, coming on 19, certainly old enough to make decisions. (Hey, Henry the Fifth was governing Wales at 16.) This was the point at which she decided to sign on to the Great Clinton Project. Which is, has always been, and forever will be, to enrich the family from the public fisc, and to lie, bomb, bribe, and intimidate your way out of trouble when necessary. At that point my hatred of Chelsea found its feet.

Now, you may say: Come on, Derb, the girl was just being loyal to her folks. What would you have her do — publicly denounce them, like some Stalinist brat? No — though I think a really well-"poised" young lady might very well have said: "Dad, I'm with you. You're my Dad, and I'll love and support you any decent way I can. But the right thing at this point is for you to resign the presidency, because you have done things a president ought not do. I will not do anything that helps you stay president." Look, if my Dad was a Mafioso, I might indeed be loyal to him, and defend him, and help keep him out of jail. But then, any decent person would hate me as much as he hated my Dad, and rightly so. I would be an accessory to his crimes, certainly in morality, if not in law.

But this is all rationalization. More than anything, I admit, I hate Chelsea because she is a Clinton. Not just genetically a Clinton, but in spirit and habit and manner. The evidence for this is now, I think, sufficient to indict.

Item: Last Christmas Eve, the Clintons attended Midnight Holy Communion at the National Cathedral in Washington. Chelsea was the first Clinton to show up…seven minutes into the introit! Mom and Dad were even later, of course. But why did Chelsea have to be late at all? To Holy Communion! It's just so…Clintonian, the utter lack of regard for other people. If you are a Clinton, other people don't exist, except for the few seconds they are handing over money to you or…well, you know.

Item: At the Middle East peace talks in Camp David last year, Chelsea took dinner with her father and Ehud Barak, and so monopolized the conversation, the Israelis are said to have been offended. Excuse me, but what the hell is Chelsea doing inserting herself into extremely delicate diplomatic negotiations? What position does she hold in the diplomatic corps? Who appointed her? We are told that Chelsea is by far the most traveled presidential offspring in history. On whose tab? To what purpose? Did she turn down any of these junkets? Of course not. Again, it's so Clintonian — the sense of entitlement, of sneering, lofty indifference to the fact that this money I am spending has been ripped from the pockets of hard-working Americans, most of them much poorer than me, by force of law. The apple does not fall far from the tree.

Item: When Chelsea went off to Stanford, we were told that she planned to study to become a pediatric cardiologist. How noble! — to give over one's life to curing the heart problems of little kiddies! Yeah, right. A Clinton, giving over her life for anything at all other than…herself. Now that there is no need for spin, we hear that her next stop is at Oxford University to study economics. That's about m-o-n-e-y. Much more interesting than those damn kids and their stupid messed-up hearts.

Chelsea is a Clinton. She bears the taint; and though not prosecutable in law, in custom and nature the taint cannot be ignored. All the great despotisms of the past — I'm not arguing for despotism as a principle, but they sure knew how to deal with potential trouble — recognized that the families of objectionable citizens were a continuing threat. In Stalin's penal code it was a crime to be the wife or child of an "enemy of the people". The Nazis used the same principle, which they called Sippenhaft, "clan liability". In Imperial China, enemies of the state were punished "to the ninth degree": that is, everyone in the offender's own generation would be killed, and everyone related via four generations up, to the great-great-grandparents, and four generations down, to the great-great-grandchildren, would also be killed. (This sounds complicated, but in practice what usually happened was that a battalion of soldiers was sent to the offender's home town, where they killed everyone they could find, on the principle neca eos omnes, deus suos agnoscet — "let God sort 'em out".)

We don't, of course, institutionalize such principles in our society, and a good thing too. Our humanity and forbearance, however, has a cost. The cost is, that the vile genetic inheritance of Bill and Hillary Clinton may live on to plague us in the future. It isn't over, folks. Dr. Nancy Snyderman, a "friend of the family" (how much money did she give them?) is quoted as saying that Chelsea shows every sign of following her parents into politics. "She's been bred for it," avers Dr. Snyderman. Be afraid: be very afraid.

-- Cherri (jessam5@home.com), February 22, 2001

Answers

Chelsea is a Clinton. She bears the taint; and though not prosecutable in law, in custom and nature the taint cannot be ignored. All the great despotisms of the past — I'm not arguing for despotism as a principle, but they sure knew how to deal with potential trouble — recognized that the families of objectionable citizens were a continuing threat. In Stalin's penal code it was a crime to be the wife or child of an "enemy of the people". The Nazis used the same principle, which they called Sippenhaft, "clan liability". In Imperial China, enemies of the state were punished "to the ninth degree": that is, everyone in the offender's own generation would be killed, and everyone related via four generations up, to the great-great-grandparents, and four generations down, to the great- great-grandchildren, would also be killed. (This sounds complicated, but in practice what usually happened was that a battalion of soldiers was sent to the offender's home town, where they killed everyone they could find, on the principle neca eos omnes, deus suos agnoscet — "let God sort 'em out".)

And this creep has the gall to talk about "humanity" and "forebearance." He ought to be investigated by the Secret Service for making death threats against Chelsea Clinton.

Incredible slime and smear from the GOP, just par for their loathsome course.

-- Derbyshire is TRULY SICK (sic@FBI.on.him), February 22, 2001.

Cherri,

They're enough sickos visiting here w/o importing Snyderman & Derbyshire. As for Chelsea, her best bet is to fall in love, get knocked up and got to work in a bookstore.

-- Carlos (riffraff@cybertime.net), February 22, 2001.

“her best bet is to fall in love, get knocked up and got to work in a bookstore.”

Not necessarily in that order:>)

-- Barry (bchbear863@cs.com), February 22, 2001.

Cherri--

Curious about why you published this? Occasionally I publish something from The Nation or The Village Voice or some other Lefty journal. Usually my motivation is to show how open-minded I am and/or to publish a Left piece that is in some way critical of the Left (not hard to find) and/or to publish a Left piece that is so poorly written that it shames its own base and/or to publish a Left opinion with which I actually agree.

Are any of these true for you in this case? Do you actually agree with this Tory's harsh judgements of the poor Clintons?

-- Lars (larsguy@yahoo.com), February 22, 2001.

Nope, she's just trying to scare you Lars. You wimpy Repugs will be so paranoid of all these Clintons hanging around that it will occupy all of your time. While you are preoccupied with whining and bitching we will be able to advance our socialist agenda. Bwaaahahaahaahahaha!! I hope Chelsea has at least 10 kids, soon!

-- bwahahaha!! (repugs@love.clintons), February 22, 2001.

"bwahahaha"--

Cherri may want to respond, don't embarass her.

-- Lars (larsguy@yahoo.com), February 23, 2001.

Cherri isn't stupid Lars, she doesn't respond to trolls.

-- bwaahaha (try@again.fool), February 23, 2001.

Lars, I thought it would speak for itself. The single-mindedness of some conservatives in their constant degradation of the Clintons looks a lot like what is written above. It has gone to ridiculous extremes. Clinton saying he did not have sex with monica has been built up to where every move he makes is twisted into some act that is defined in words illegal, immoral, or fattening. I thought people in this country are considered innocent until proven guilty. Most of the things said about Clinton in the media are slander.

The media today not only make up things and/or exaggerate the truth, they print out-right lies without any possibility of being held responsible for their actions.

The claims that Hillary had registered at that high priced store was an out and out lie, written by one person in the press which was picked up and built up even more by other members of the press. Not one of them printed a retraction or wrote the truth after it was told to them by the representatives of the store. "The News" is no longer the news as it once was. They are nothing more than scandal rags.

-- Cherri (jessam5@home.com), February 23, 2001.

I like the one about "the Clinton's looted the White House!"

Then it turns out that when official records were checked, Daddy-o George Bush ( took MORE than the Clintons.

-- LOL (at@republican.morons), February 23, 2001.

Lars,

...and/or to publish a Left piece that is so poorly written that it shames its own base... Are any of these true for you in this case?

The motivation to post this seems closest to that example you gave for one of your reasons, but instead of "poorly written" insert "expositional".

This really fleshes out what I've been noticing, the last couple years especially - that it doesn't matter what the circumstances are, if a Clinton is involved in any way, there is an outpouring of right-wing hatred, absolute hatred. Limbaugh-lovers have probably always hated Chelsea, because she is Clinton, but have supressed their true feelings because even they knew, deep down, that it was irrational to hate the daughter of someone you hate just because they were their daughter.

Now that the Clinton-hatred is reaching a boiling point, the worms are coming out of the woodwork and finding what they consider legitimate excuses to rant publicly about their hatred. It's not pretty, but no-one should be surprised.

-- Bemused (and_amazed@you.people), February 23, 2001.

National Review columnist calls for genetic cleansing, starting with Chelsea Clinton

By Bev Conover February 23, 2001—If the National Review, that icon of the right, ever had any respectability, it is gone with columnist and contributing editor John Derbyshire's veiled call for and justification of killing Bill and Hillary Clinton's daughter, Chelsea.

We thank BuzzFlash.com for clueing us about Derbyshire's appalling column, "Be Very Afraid," in the Feb. 15 National Review Online, in which Derbyshire stated, "I hate Chelsea Clinton."

And what it is this Brit, who has gone around the bend with his fellow countryman Christopher Hitchens, hates about Chelsea, aside from her looks—something he says he won't discuss, then snidely discusses them at great length? He hates her genes.

Chelsea has the "dreaded" genes of her parents. And you know what that means: she might some day run for public office. Shudder.

Of course, the corrupted genes of the Bush Crime Clan are just fine with Derbyshire. It is those Clinton genes that must be stamped out. So let us embark on a course of genetic cleansing by reviving how kings and despots dealt with "corruption of the blood" in the past. Today, it's cleansing the Clinton genes and tomorrow it's anyone else whose genes don't come up to the rabid right's standards.

To make his case—all in good fun, of course, ha-ha NOT—Derbyshire repeats a litany of lies about the Clintons—perjury, rape, selling secrets to the Chinese, Hillary's commodities trade and Hillary's first book (all of whose profits were donated for the upkeep of the White House). Golly gee, he left out all the lies put out by the Bushistas' propagandists, then denied by George W. when maximum damage had been done and the lies had forever been burned into the empty heads of the Rabid Reich's followers, about how those "evil" Clintons trashed the White House and made off with the silverware and glassware from Air Force One. By gummy, he even left out Bill's "slimy" last minute pardons, not to mention the gifts he and Hillary made off with. Then "the man is gone, off to a lifetime of golfing at all-white clubs, biting his lip in the pulpits of black churches while the hallelujahs soar, goosing waitresses, slithering in and out of shady business deals, being collared by showbiz bores at Barbra Streisand's parties, and defending himself in court." As for Hillary, "his lady has no future beyond the U.S. Senate. The people of New York, trapped in their little Stalinist time-warp, still fretting about why that nice Mr. Adlai Stevenson didn't get in in '52 (my explanation: WE NEED ADLAI BADLY! was the worst campaign slogan ever) will probably go on voting for her until, like Gagoola the hag in King Solomon's Mines, "She has lived so long that none can remember when she was not old, and always she it is who has trained the witch hunters, and made the land evil in the sight of the heavens above." But given her far-left paper trail and her amazing capacity to make people detest her where'er she treads, Hillary's maxed out: She has no real future."

So, you can forget about Mom and Dad, because Chelsea is the target here. After all, "Clintonism may yet rise again, like Glenn Close from that bathtub. For, ladies and gentlemen, the tworch has been paaahssed to a noooh genewation of Clintons. On February 27th, Chelsea Clinton will turn 21." Then Derbyshire offered this prescription for dealing with Chelsea:

"Chelsea is a Clinton. She bears the taint; and though not prosecutable in law, in custom and nature the taint cannot be ignored. All the great despotisms of the past—I'm not arguing for despotism as a principle, but they sure knew how to deal with potential trouble—recognized that the families of objectionable citizens were a continuing threat. In Stalin's penal code it was a crime to be the wife or child of an "enemy of the people." The Nazis used the same principle, which they called Sippenhaft, "clan liability." In Imperial China, enemies of the state were punished "to the ninth degree": that is, everyone in the offender's own generation would be killed, and everyone related via four generations up, to the great-great-grandparents, and four generations down, to the great- great-grandchildren, would also be killed. (This sounds complicated, but in practice what usually happened was that a battalion of soldiers was sent to the offender's home town, where they killed everyone they could find, on the principle neca eos omnes, deus suos agnoscet—"let God sort 'em out.")

In an attempt to cover his butt, he ended with this disclaimer of sorts—a weak "hey, don't blame me if some nutcase takes me seriously and snuffs Chelsea:"

"We don't, of course, institutionalize such principles in our society, and a good thing too. Our humanity and forbearance, however, has a cost. The cost is, that the vile genetic inheritance of Bill and Hillary Clinton may live on to plague us in the future. It isn't over, folks. Dr. Nancy Snyderman, a "friend of the family" (how much money did she give them?) is quoted as saying that Chelsea shows every sign of following her parents into politics. "She's been bred for it," avers Dr. Snyderman. Be afraid: be very afraid."

Given some of Derbyshire's other columns, this one cannot be brushed off as the ravings of a lunatic. He has twice defended racial profiling, has spewed invective about Hillary and all those other "ugly" Democratic women, bashed on the Chinese because they resent being called "Chinamen," thinks all those red states and counties on the 2000 election maps—the ones that comprise acreage, sagebrush and tumbleweed—counted for more than the will of the far greater number of people crowded into the blue states and counties, and has an insatiable appetite for all lies fed to him about the Clintons—whom he depicted as roaches in his Feb. 20 column. Now we have his Final Solution to the Clinton genes problem: Make gone with Chelsea as you would any other roach.

People have received visits from the Secret Service for far less. Some have even wound up with stiff prison terms. Are Mr. Derbyshire and his bosses about to receive such a visit? Is Mr. Derbyshire ripe for an orange jump suit, a room next to John Hinckley's or would deportation solve the problem?

According to BuzzFlash, "The 'venerable' National Review has refused to remove an unconscionable article that suggests Chelsea Clinton should be murdered." Why are we not surprised?

The level of hatred for all things Clinton and Democratic in this country has reached the boiling point. Every day is a piling on by not just the right-wing media, but also the so-called "mainstream" media. What will it take to stop it? Certainly not the Bushistas who illegally occupy the White House. In their twisted minds, anything that keeps the people's attention diverted from what they and their puppet, George W., are doing is good, despite their mild protestations to the contrary.

Does anyone want to partner in a body bag concession? The way things are going, they are going to be in great demand.

-- You GOP People are Sickening (genetic@cleansing.com), February 23, 2001.

"Chelsea is a Clinton. She bears the taint;"

But this is true! Chelsea does have a t'aint. Her boyfriend adores her t'aint. He often talks abouts it in AOL chatrooms.

-- (nemesis@awol.com), February 23, 2001.