Steyn on presidents gone bad

Mark conversed with Hugh Hewitt yesterday on an assortment of frauds and scoundrels who are, were, or (shudder) might have been, presidents of the United States:

Bill Clinton:

HH: . . . I showed them the picture out from TMZ earlier today of Bill Clinton in Monaco surrounded by porn stars, including Tasha Reign and Brooklyn Lee. I can’t tell you most of the movies they’ve been because of the titles, but Tasha was in Farm Girls Gone Bad, which I think is very appropriate.

MS: Right, you know, what I find odd about this is that the year of Monica, which was what, 1998, 1999 now? I wrote in the Telegraph in London, I thought let’s, I said pitch it on ten years down the road. Bill Clinton’s in retirement, or he’s had a midlife career change, and he’s running a porno house in Amsterdam showing, I don’t know whether it was Farm Girls Gone Bad or whatever. But what astonishes me, and which often happens, by the way with the left, is that you make a casual joke about them like that, and ten years later, it comes true.

HH: (laughing) Yeah.

MS: (laughing) Bill Clinton is living my throwaway gag from 1998. 

John Edwards:

Yeah, and I think this is what’s actually disgraceful about this story, is that John Edwards should not have been presented to America as a credible presidential candidate in 2008. The people who did that are all the respectable mainstream journalists. If it hadn’t been for, you know, the National Enquirer, who like to do the things that old fashioned journalists used to do, this absolutely repellent creature was actually, if you look at his results in Iowa, you know, a misstep by Obama and Hillary here and there, and he could very well have wound up as president. Where I part company with what’s going on now is that I don’t think there’s a crime here. Bunny Mellon and a couple of other fellows essentially gave money to John Edwards in the full knowledge that he was going to use it to take care of this particular problem of his. I don’t see that that, a guy should be looking at 30 years in jail for that. And I think John Edwards is the lowest of the low, but I’m very concerned at what is happening at the federal level to American justice.

Read Mark's column on the trial here, in case you missed it. The jury is still out.

Obama at the G-8:

…for a start, Obama is in no position to lecture even the Europeans, because on a lot of the numbers, the United States can reasonably be said to be actually in a worse situation than Greece, France, Spain, Portugal, whoever you want to talk about. So the idea that Angela Merkel, never mind Stephen Harper in Canada, has anything to learn from Obama, I think is ridiculous. And they should have laughed at him, by the way. You know, Stephen Harper should have brought along a piece of the Keystone Pipeline, held it up to his eye, and watched, and bellowed, he should have yelled at Obama through a piece of the Keystone Pipeline all summit long, I think.

Someone might as well have fun with it, because a piece of a pipeline isn't much good for anything else.

But that's all just build up to the most tantalizing item from the conversation:

HH: . . . Mark, you’ve been in an undisclosed location. I can only assume you’ve been recording the fall’s release of the latest in the Jessica Martin-Mark Steyn series of Christmas albums.

MS: You, oh, you’re getting worse. You usually don’t start hectoring me about the clues as to the Christmas release until, like, August or early September. It’s still May.

I have a confession to make. About a month ago a young friend of ours appeared in his high school's production of Anything Goes. It was vastly entertaining in places, and in the afterglow I felt compelled to crack out my recording of The Mark Steyn Christmas Show and listen to Mark and Jessica's extended version of It's De-Lovely. It's delightful! Since then, I've been listening to it more than I care to admit. It kinda grows on you, like a Christmas Glow Worm.

PS: I also recently revisited Mark's wonderful audio tribute to Johnny Mercer. Which reminds me: the beginning of the Sinatra centennial is a mere two and a half years away. Just sayin'.

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Thanks to Mark Steyn for linking in his follow up: Celeb Prez Gone Bad

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