Family Values Pornographers

Out here in the wilderness, there are many of us who believe that Bill Clinton was the proud heir to a series of liberal presidents who couldn't keep their wicks zipped. After all, from Thomas Jefferson through JFK, we've had ample examples.

So the morally pure gravitate to the Republican cause, the party of family values. Of marriage equaling one man + one woman, who do "it" in the missionary style.

But why then, do the paragons of the party of the pure seem to want to constantly write about doing the dirty deed? Spiro Agnew, Richard Nixon's disgraced vice president, may have started it with The Canfield Decision, a trashy potboiler (with lousily written sex scenes) about a disgraced vice president. (Well, the best writers always write about what they know.) There have been others, including William F. Buckley Jr., John Ehrlichman, and Bill O'Reilly. Even -- gasp! -- Lynn Cheney!

And the latest, according to journalist Lauren Collins, is Lewis I. "Scooter" Libby. If Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, who was indicted last week on five counts that included obstruction of justice, perjury, and giving false statements to the FBI, ever finds himself out of a government job, he can write the letters section for Penthouse or Hustler magazines. As Collins writes in the latest issue of The New Yorker, Libby has joined the ranks of GOP honchos who apparently take their fantasies to the printed page:

It took Libby more than twenty years to write Â?The Apprentice,Â? which is set in a remote Japanese province in the winter of 1903. The book is brimming with quasi-political intrigue and antique locutionsÂ?Â?The girl who wore the cloak of yellow furÂ?; Â?one wore backward a European hatÂ?Â?that make the phrase a Â?former Hill staffer,Â? by comparison, seem straightforward. (Read the entire article.)

According to the CBS news article about the book, the work earned favorable reviews.

The Boston Globe called "The Apprentice" an "alluring novel of intrigue," while the New York Times Book Review said Libby's "storytelling skill neatly mixes conspiratorial murmurs with a boy's emotional turmoil." (Read the entire article.)

But what kind of a book is it? Laura Collins says that frankly, it's filthy. And that is where this missive ends, dear reader. For details you will have to read Laura Collins' account. Because here in the wilderness, we have family values. And we don't want people in government who would dare to write about . . . those things!