#17: Whores: Why and How I Came to Fight the Establishment by Larry Klayman

Larry Klayman was the founder and director of Judicial Watch, which uncovered numerous Clinton Administration fund raising irregularities. "Chinagate", as it is known in some circles, basically amounted to Clinton and Janet Reno calling off SEC investigations into Chinese government contacts with US defense firms in exchange for campaign dollars.I agree completely with Klayman's assessment in the book that this was tossed under the semen-stained dress of the Lewinsky scandal by the "left-leaning mainstream media." Why? The Lewinsky bull shit actually helped Clinton. I don't know if I would go that far, but Klayman makes a good case in this text. It also made him a "pop culture figure", a term used multiple times

During the Bush Administration, Klayman sued Dick Cheney...for cooking books at Halliburton. Klayman writes well; very well, in fact. However, his claim that he is not interested in ideology or party is nonsense. This is not because of the bashing of Clinton that he engages in; I could give a fuck about that. I would engage in the same thing. Ask anyone! The two words that most commonly occur in sentences uttered by me about Bill Clinton are "letch" and "sleazebag". And, it is not because Klayman points out that "Hillary being a lesbian" was "common knowledge on the left." (95) He attributes this to Seymour Hersh. A common theme in this text is Klayman attributing the more scurrilous aspects of his tale to other people.

It is Klayman's constant use of the outdated and bullshit labels "left" and "right" that really started to piss me off. He labels the American Council of Churches as "leftist". Of the democratic senators mentioned, 90% of them are "leftist". NPR is of course "leftist". And President Obama gets the obligatory sobriquet of "socialist". In other words, the usual suspects. What are Republicans? A common trope in this text is that "I really liked (insert a dropped political name here) at first." When did Klayman stop liking them? Usually when they either

a) stopped listening to his bullshit, or
b) Klayman started to investigate them on their ethics.

The insinuation is that while Democrats are sleazy, Republicans are whores. Oh, and the judges we meet in this text are either drunks, too liberal or downright incompetent. While this strikes me as about right for the most part, Klayman misses the wider point in bashing the one of the Clintons for being a closeted lesbian and the other for not keeping his dick in his pants. It is the corporate influence on policy and government that most of these so called "conservatives" don't pay attention to. As this country attempts to go running back to the 1890s with a Soma-esque overlay of Facebook and Netflix, corporate influence in politics grows ever larger. This book was to be released by Harper Collins, who backed out of the deal at the last minute. Klayman maintains that this is because the "secrets" in the book were "too hot to handle". (The Clintons had Ron Brown and Vince Foster killed, Hillary and Bill date the same women, etc. Standard Limbaugh, circa 1997)

I think they really dropped it because it isn't that good. The sections on the Bush Admin and its corporate man pleasers strike me as added to support the "I am not an ideologue" stance. Why then is Dick Cheney not called a "rightist"? Or a "corporate stooge"? Klayman DOES at one point call Antonin Scalia to account for a duck hunting trip with Cheney and his son, but you get the feeling that he wouldn't have done so if the trip did not effect a case he was arguing. I'm sick of this B.S. idea that "I'm not beholden to ideology, 'cause I go after everyone equally". Let's stop going after these corporate candidates, empty suits with empty heads, men and women who will jump on a corporate cock for some cash. Stop electing these fuckers. Like the song said 60 years ago, "Our representatives are the finest men/And we elect them again and again." Klayman, along with the Limo Liberals that populate most of the democratic party and the "conservatives" who bitch and whine about government, care about money and fame. They don't care about working people, and have not for 30 years. Don't take what's mine, Mr. Government; the coming fight in this country is about urban vs. rural and the poor vs. rich. Try to put a left/right on those two things, and I'll give you $50.