Abstract

Don't Ask, Don't Tell

U.S. President Bill Clinton's administration by the time the final gavel fell on the first seven days of Congressional hearings into the affair now known as Whitewater. Even the Inside-the-Bekway mediocracy's liberal Bubbaphiles-in-denial, who prematurely dismissed the inquiries as Wastewater, Still-water, a boring farce or a Republican hatchet job, could not explain away the voluminous evidence that the President's closest aides and the top officials at the Treasury Department had lied about their role in the cover-up of a bungled attempt to interfere with the investigation of Billary Inc.'s favorite bank, the Madison Guaranty Savings & Loan. For anyone hardy enough to watch all 114 televised hours of the convoluted questions and answers, the list of ruined reputations is as long as the Arkansas River. It's sad that House Banking Committee chairman, Henry Gonzalez, the Texas populist who became a hero to progressives for doggedly and single-handedly forcing a tame national press corps to pay attention to the lraq ate scandal, will now be forever remembered as a dictatorial dinosaur of the seniority system.