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1998!

George Orwell’s brilliant book “Nineteen Eighty-Four” was published in 1949. In Orwell’s nightmarish vision of the totalitarian future, political leaders literally rewrite history. If a fact was inconvenient, or proved that the leaders had been wrong, books and newspapers were revised to show the “new” truth.

Orwell was prescient, but he didn’t realize that the peak of revisionism would not be reached until 1998. The current presidential sex scandal is giving both Democrats and Republicans a chance to say what really happened, even if the new “truth” happens to directly contradict previous statements.

On March 15 President Bill Clinton said he had a “very clear memory” of his meeting with Kathleen Willey, during which she alleges that the president sexually molested her. Earlier the president had said that he had “no specific recollection” of the meeting. We guess some people’s memory improves with age.

Meanwhile, White House Communications Director Ann Lewis spoke on two network news shows in an attempt to discredit the president’s most recent accuser. In 1991 Lewis was one of those who accused Republicans of “attacking the victim” when they noted that Anita Hill continued to stay in touch with Clarence Thomas after she had allegedly been harassed by Thomas. Lewis is now trying to discredit Willey on the basis that Willey continued to stay in touch with Bill Clinton after allegedly being harassed by Clinton. Hmmm…

Republicans also have their share of revisionists. Senate Republican leader Trent Lott told CNN that presidential investigator Kenneth Starr should “show his cards” or “close it (the investigation) out.” After a barrage of criticism by other Republicans, Lott later said that the media “distorted” his comments and that Starr was “doing a great job.”

Monica Lewinsky is one of the best at the revisionist game. She gave a sworn deposition that she did not have a sexual relationship with President Clinton. After the deposition tapes were released in which she is heard telling her friend that, in fact, she had an extended sexual relationship with the president.

What people have said and done is so flexible that Lewinsky’s attorney, William Ginsburg, said at one point that his client was standing by her affidavit “at this time.” Of course she reserves the right to change her version of past events next week.

Conservative author David Brock has also had a change of heart. He helped start the whole scandal more than four years ago with an article in “American Spectator” in which he wrote about the ways in which Arkansas state troopers helped then-governor Clinton procure women. At the time, Brock said “the public’s right to know outweighs a public figure’s claim to privacy or journalistic discretion.” But now we’re in 1998, and Brock has changed his tune. Different year, different magazine, different opinion: Brock, writing in “Esquire”, recently said the private lives of public figures should be off-limits.

Lawyers are pros at the revisionist game. This is what Robert Bennett, Clinton’s lawyer, has to say about Willey’s accusations: “What you’ve got to do is wait for all the facts.” Even, perhaps, if they don’t actually exist. “All the facts” is supposedly a reference to various as-yet-unrevealed documents which will undercut Willey’s story. But, in fact, there is no evidence that such documents really exist.

Of course, in 1998 not just politicians and lawyers revise the past. Anyone can play the revisionist game. Regret some aspect of your past? No problem – just make up a new version.

Our very favorite revisionist is former football and broadcasting star O.J. Simpson. After insisting, at least 10,000 times, that he was not the murderer of his ex-wife, Simpson may have a different version of the past now. Perhaps he really did pump a knife in and out of her body, but it was only to show how much he cared. Here is what Simpson said recently: “Even if I did do this (murder his ex-wife), it would have to have been because I loved her very much, right?”


READ MORE ABOUT IT

Read more about revisionism in the Howard Kurtz essay.

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0 thoughts on “1998!

  1. Just a thought for everyone to mull over…

    What is the ONLY group in this country to profit from good times and bad times, disasters, miracles, etc etc.

    Lawyers. No matter what happens, they make out.

    WHO CARES??!! Maybe if we ignore all the BS about the president and his “supposed” sexual escapades, they will quit reporting it.

    Also, why did these women wait until he was president to accuse him or report it? Maybe he wasn’t making enough money at that time.

    As one of the young people being influenced by the liberal media I have to respond to GearHead. We do NOT believe that everthing is okay for everybody. We do believe however, that what people do in the privacy of their own home/office is their own damn business as long as it’s between consenting adults who aren’t looknig for a book deal. And some of us even serve in the armed forces to support and defend the constitution that mushroom heads such as yourself tend to conveniently re-write or ignore.

    Good Web Site Sirs! My comment is Clinton & his criminal cronies deserve to be hanged for treason (after trial by REAL Americans not clinton APPOINTEES!) by the neck until dead, and all reference to them banned from American vocabulary, and all the queers and sex wierdos and socialists and one sided journalists in this country can just line up at the gallows too. Im sick as hell of the liberal media machine and the overwelming socialist attitudes being developed in this country by the liberals who influence the young people and the un-informed voting crowd (the few that do vote that is) into thinking that EVERYTHING is OK for EVERYBODY at ANY TIME at ANY PLACE-things are NOT ok in this country and wont be until our elected officials start acting like ABOVE AVERAGE citizens and own up to their mistakes like we have to. By the way how do you get one of these polls to ask your opinion anyway and do they poll anyway?

    I have never been asked my opinion.(imagine that!)

    One has to consider where Brock is comming from. Since he is heomsexual, he doesn’t want anyone meddleing. It gives him the incentive to back-track to cover his own inconsistencies.

    Here is an outsideer’s view.

    1)It seems that you have decided Clinton is guilty before the trial. What about innocent until proven.

    2) What has his sex life got to do with his ability to run the country. Johjn Kennedy was probably a stud par exellence yet is still revered.

    Speaking of revisionism, I can’t think of a more blatant exponent of the art than Afrocentrism, Black Studies, or whatever other euphemism this pack of lies is known as.

    One of the most laughable theories put forth by these intellectually-challenged loonies is that blacks built the pyramids of ancient Egypt!

    Of course, they’re assuming that just because the Egyptians lived in Afica they were black. (I learned that this wasn’t so in third grade geography, if my memory serves correctly.) Haven’t they ever heard of that humongous expanse of land known as the Sahara Desert? It separates black Africans from the inhabitants of Northern Africa who are essentially of the Caucasian race. And honestly, I’m sure these Afrocentrists have seen photos of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Now I ask you: does Mr. Mubarak even remotely resemble Jesse Jackson, Oprah Winfrey, Idi Amin or Don King??

    But getting back to these Afrocentric theorists (who, by the way, are exclusively African-Americans — I don’t know of anyone in black Africa itself who buys their nonsense): Not only do they believe that their ancestors constructed such engineering marvels as the pyramids; they also claim to have invented philosophy, only to have it stolen away from them by such nefarious Greeks as Socrates, Plato and Aristotle!

    Okay, you Afrocentrists and assorted professors of Black Studies — solve this conundrum for me:

    If black Africans were so damn smart as to practically invent ancient civilization, how did their collective level of intelligence sink so abysmally low that by the 19th century, at a time when the white man of America and Europe was making use of such inventions as the telephone, telegraph, typewriter, and electric light bulb — well, why were your progenitors running around in the jungle half-naked and living a lifestyle little removed from that of the Neanderthal age? I mean, such an unprecedented anthropological retrogression as this would destroy the entire theory of evolution!

    And even today, with the new millennium peeking over our cosmological horizon, you’ll have to admit that black Africa remains the hub of slavery, cannibalism, polygamy, and 1001 supersttions so idiotic as to make an average junior high school graduate blush…

    Outrage do you know that the people have spoken Willy has a 60% more like 70% of the people behind him. I thought the majority rules was the way it was suppose to be and with that many people behind him if the law was not changed he could go for a third time. If the few keep it up we could have some body who would have fit in well in Hitler’s Germany he all ready thinks he is a god as speaker what would he do in the oval office. Roll out the disabled on the lawn and have public mercy killing of any one he thinks is not normal. But keeping the preasure on the prez does keep people from looking into his family you know the sis who doesn’t know what she is….

    When did Clinton meet with the Pope? He must have learned from Clinton how to revise History. In the official apology for WWII, the Pope accused Christians of fostering the holocast on the Jews. Well, in the early 40’s the Pope signed an agreement with the Nazis to push Catholic Religion in the world. In fact, the priests in Croatia took off their “priestly robes” and put on Uniforms and then pushed their religion on the protestant Serbs, but they must not have had much success, because they killed over 1 million of them. Did the “Church” forget about “Love your enemies?”, or was the “agreement” stronger than the Word of God. Revising the Historical is something that goes on and on, no matter who wants to stay in power. Clinton says he has a Perfect Memory, and now says he doesn’t remember somethings, when they would be detrimental to his presidency. The Vatican doesn’t remember that Pope Pious VI ever sinned. He wasn’t responsible for the holocast, or anything. Wow! that’s not what History said, and there is documented evidence to his shame.

    Why in the world would people try to change the History that is know to be? What do they gain by revising the course of knowledge of these events. Did you know that the Vatican apologized for the St Bartholamow Massucure, that happened over 400 years ago–just this past year? We’ll probably have to wait 400 more years for the apology of the Vatican for WWII and wait for Clinton’s death before we get the truth about all the unlawlessness of his presidency.

    It’s a shame that shame reigns in the news of each responsible person. And who is duped?

    No rage. I like your website. I just wanted to tell you that if you want an outrage to talk about, and one that is TOTALLY being ignored, check into the year 2000 computer problems, also known as y2k. Talk about something that folks are starting to get really uptight about, but the major liberal and conservative newsmakers refuse to talk about. You can find much to be outraged about with a few web searches on the matter.

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