View from abar

Washington, DC is a city known to have the social graces of a race-riot. Back-stabbing, undermining, and vast Constitutional conspiracies abound.

As National Lampoon's only Washington, DC-based correspondent, I have a tremendous responsibility to dig up what's "hot" on the political scene. Also, for this installment of Flashbacks, I respond to the requests of the governing elite, instead of you, the huddled masses.

TALK OF THE TOWN
Hillary Clinton's new book is generating a huge amount of talk in the cigar bar where I do most of my eavesdropping on Washington's fat cats (13th & F Streets - I'll have a Dewars on the rocks if you're buying). It was in this dimly-lit American tavern that I listened in on a conversation between Senator Clinton and her publisher.

Publisher: Senator, we are going to have to change the cover image. A photo of you standing on the Capitol steps in a navy-blue pantsuit with an American flag fluttering behind you as you gaze toward Heaven is a great idea, but you're a known lesbo-commie, so you're just giving your detractors ammunition.

Senator Clinton: So...what should I have on the cover?

Publisher: We just need a close-up photo of you resting your chin on your hand, it's what all the celebrities do for their autobiographies.

Senator Clinton: I don't know...

Publisher: We've got eight million bucks riding on your broadening pinko ass, so you better play along! Look at these examples.

Publisher: See?

Senator Clinton: Look, if I'm going to be president, I need to look strong.

Publisher: Yes, but you're also a woman...sort of...so you need to appear soft and feminine, too. If you don't sell books to the soccer-moms, you're not gonna sell books at all.

Look at these examples. The first printing of this book did squat in the bookstores.

But it was so...angry. So nationalistic. So we reworked the cover, and it sold like crazy all over Europe. It's still a best-seller in the Mid-West! After 60 years!

Senator Clinton: Oh, okay.

And so a cover was born.

Hillary then noticed me listening to her conversation, and asked me if I had a sister. She then asked me if I had any good bits from the dog-eard pages of National Lampoon about former first ladies that might take the heat off of her.
Sure do, Hill, link's at the bottom of the page.

CABLE NEWS NEWS
Also on the media front, there's a new talk show coming to all-news-all-the-time, no-viewers-at-any-time MSNBC. A drunken senior White House official dropped this promo while streaking out the door to avoid paying his tab.

The man himself asked me if we had any good bits about idiot spies that he could show the chronic fuck-up at the CIA who insisted he knew where Iraq's weather-machine was.
Scroll down for the link, Donnie.

POLITICS
Also this month, a former Senator tracked me down and said, "Y'know, boy, the funniest damn news I'd heard in a coon's age was that truck full of illegal aliens that was left cooking on the side of the road. Got any old Nat Lamp bits like that? Except with coloreds 'stead of Mexicans?"

You bet, Strom, I also added a presidential portrait you might like.

That's the news for now. Remember, Dewars on the rocks.

| A first lady, indeed | Spies like you | A former President's pin-up | Slave-Trade brochure | A Quick Presidential Quiz |

Jay Naughton
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