No More Coincidences: Big Bill’s Zipper Strikes Again

December 16, 1998

Back in Feb­ru­ary, I con­clud­ed my “Stop the Zip­per War Before it Starts” with the following:

Noth­ing’s real­ly changed now except U.S. polit­i­cal inter­ests. Hus­sein is still a tyrant. He’s still stock­pil­ing chem­i­cal weapons. Why are U.S. polit­i­cal inter­ests dif­fer­ent now? Why does Bill Clin­ton want U.S. media atten­tion focused on Iraq? Look no fur­ther than Big Bil­l’s zip­per. Stop the next war before it starts. Abol­ish every­one’s weapons of mass destruc­tion and let’s get a Pres­i­dent who does­n’t need a war to clear his name.

I put this at the bot­tom of the piece because then the idea that Clin­ton might have done this was still way out there.

Since then most every major turn­ing point in the Pres­i­den­t’s scan­dals has been echoed by mil­i­tary maneuverings.

On August 17th Clin­ton gave a tele­vised address which was wide­ly crit­i­cized as being “too lit­tle, too late” and non-repentant enough. Pub­lic opin­ion turned sharply against him. Three days lat­er Big Bill sent 100 cruise mis­siles into Afghanistan and Sudan in order to assas­si­nate Osama bin Laden, the pre­vi­ous­ly unknown arch­en­e­my of the Unit­ed States.

And now, on the after­noon before the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives was sched­uled to begin pro­ceed­ings on his Impeach­ment, Clin­ton has ordered an attack on Iraq. Con­gress will of course delay the vote. Rumors are that this new bomb­ing cam­paign might last more than a few days, and come Jan­u­ary’s new Con­gres­sion­al term there will be five less Republicans.

Each time these coin­ci­dences hap­pen, a few pun­dits that mut­ter about “Wag the Dog” sce­nar­ios before assur­ing the audi­ence that Clin­ton would nev­er do that. Every­one talks about coin­ci­dence and then moves on.

But coin­ci­dence has been Clin­ton’s friend through­out his scan­dals. Remem­ber the long-lost White­wa­ter doc­u­ments that mys­te­ri­ous­ly appeared on Hillary Clin­ton’s coffee-table when inves­ti­ga­tors were threat­en­ing to issue here a sub­poe­na? Remem­ber the job offers that Clin­ton cronies arranged for key wit­ness­es just before they either recant­ed their sto­ries or lied under oath? All of Clin­ton’s scan­dals have been of the “who cares” variety-shady land deal­ings twen­ty years ago in Arkansas, his hav­ing sex with an intern in the Oval Office. They dis­played a lack of judg­ment and char­ac­ter, but were not Impeach­able. But his scan­dals have grown and tak­en a life of their own as Clin­ton and his wife have been vis­it­ed by an ever-growing amount of coincidences.

Enough is enough. How much more are we to believe? As I write this the mis­siles are scream­ing over Bagh­dad and Iraqis are dying hor­ri­ble deaths. This is real. This is not some polit­i­cal game. It is time for Amer­i­cans to stop deny­ing that these coin­ci­dences are real­ly coincidental.

It is time to demand Clin­ton’s resignation.

And if he refus­es, then it is time to sub­poe­na White House records on the last year of mil­i­tary actions. If they show that Clin­ton has mur­dered in his des­per­ate attempt to save his Pres­i­den­cy, then it is time not only to impeach him but to put him into jail.

Burnished Polaroids

January 28, 1997

Look­ing south from the Wal­nut Street Bridge, Philadel­phia. This is a favorite site of mine to pho­to­graph because of the right­ward sweep of the riv­er, rail­road tracks and highway. Fire hydrant, Walt Whit­man Cen­ter, Cam­den. I was wait­ing to ush­er for a Allen Gins­berg read­ing and combed the block look­ing for appropriately-phallic cel­e­bra­tion of the day. East side of the Wis­sahick­on Creek, Philadel­phia. A favorite place to walk and con­tem­plate life.

This is a style of pho­tog­ra­phy I got into a few years ago. It’s appeal is sim­ple: it takes lit­tle tech­ni­cal exper­tise and the process itself is lim­it­ed in time. Every­thing boils down to basic form: a suc­cess­ful pho­to depends on set­ting up a good shot and then bring­ing it’s poten­tial out in the burnishing.

HOW IT’S DONE:

Any­one who used Polaroids as a kid will remem­ber the wait. When the film comes out of the cam­era, it’s still black. With­in a few min­utes a ghost of the pho­to begins to appear, a image which is fleshed out in about ten min­utes time. Dur­ing this time, the pho­to is devel­op­ing inside of it’s plas­tic cas­ing. If you press hard on the plas­tic before the pho­to comes out, all sorts of effects can be achieved. Depend­ing on the pres­sure and tem­per­a­ture, you can get col­ors to bend, scratch­es to streak across the pho­to, etc. If done well, the bur­nish­ing can take on the effect of brush strokes and cre­ate an impres­sion­is­tis­tic photograph.


This is not a bur­nished Polaroid of course. I took this with more tra­di­tion­al pho­to­graph­ic equip­ment in the sum­mer of 1991. I was on British Columbia’s Gabri­o­la Island for the annu­al meet­ing of my employ­er, New Soci­ety Pub­lish­ers, a meet­ing place which allowed for won­der­ful out­door dis­trac­tions. One was sea kyack­ing through the pass­es around the island.

What we didn’t know was that one par­tic­u­lar chan­nel served as the take-off strip for the island’s sea­planes. I was safe­ly onboard a boat at the end of the pass when I saw the plane start out of the docks you see in the dis­tance. Two work­mates were leisure­ly pad­dling their way toward us when they heard the sound behind them. As Bar­bara relates, she knew if that plane didn’t get air­borne in time she’d be goners. Luck­i­ly it made it and so did they…
 Last updat­ed Jan­u­ary 28, 1997

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