Blumen' Idiot

In Sidney Blumenthal's memoir of President Clinton's second term, you'll find…

retarded overstatements:

Many on the staff had extraordinary political histories; almost all of them had come from working- or middle-class backgrounds, having accomplished much professionally, and having wended their way up on Capitol Hill, in campaigns and public interest groups. They were like the classic cast in a war movie about a platoon on the Western Front. I worked every day with people from West Virginia, Iowa, Idaho, Brooklyn, North Carolina, Texas, Vermont, and California.

hateful cheap shots:

Blacks held positions of responsibility throughout the staff. They were anything but token figures, as they had been in Republican administrations.

absurd multicultural braggadocio in the My Big Fat Greek Whitehouse vein:

At many meetings there would be none [no White Anglo-Saxon Protestants]—only conglomerations of Catholics, Greek Orthodox, Jews, Hispanics, and blacks. At one such meeting, Clinton joked that he was the only WASP present.

Commander McBragg reminiscences by a roaring fire:

If a speech was settled, the mood would become relaxed before it was time for him to deliver it, and he might launch into a rambling political tale from Arkansas—like the time he faced down a lobbyist from the National Rifle Association and challenged him to a shootout.

And so much more. We haven't even gotten to the VRW Conspiracy and Clinton's efforts to "help" Monica, wherein the President comes off as a passive sexual functionary in the manner of Byron's Don Juan. ("I feel like a character in a novel, Clinton said.") Sadly, dipsomaniacal gadfly Christopher Hitchens does not make an appearance in the excerpted passages. Highly recommended nonetheless.