Joost Hensen

Russian Roulette, Bill Clinton's Libido Legacy... Joost Hensen

The idiom of "the tail wagging the dog" is an old one but made a big comeback during the time of President Bill Clinton and the major scandal that almost ended his presidency, the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal. Adding to the idiom's tingle, this was also the time when Hollywood had just released a particularly suggestive political comedy: "Wag the Dog", in which a fictional president, shortly before his reelection, gets caught making advances on an underage girl and inside the Oval Office. Trying to save his presidency, in comes a top spin doctor who fabricates a fake war in distant Albania, shifting the attention of the American public from a home-grown sex scandal to flag-waving foreign policy, and so saving the presidency of the above lecherous but fictional leader. Marvel of marvels, if anything marked the Bill Clinton presidency, it was, again, the story of an older president, engaging in sexual hanky-panky with a still very youngish intern, and right in the Oval Office. Should the movie producers have received a Prize for Prophecy? More to the point, there would be flag-waving, foreign policy cover-up consequences also in the case of this real U. S. president, in fact, a reckless turn into foreign with consequences right to the present.