cost upward of 100 million lives last centur)’. Today’s Renaissancenexperts expect the public to accept ever’ benighted proclamationnas absolute truth, defying us to question the statementsnmade or the motives behind the foolishness. With these newncognoscenti, what we see is idiotic enough, but what we get is farnworse: show-business megalomania and crackbrained New Agenpsychobabble dressed up as knowledge and reality.nThere exists—largely in academia but in danger of spreadingnlike a cloud of marauding Mediterranean fruit flies into thenpublic at large—what might be called the “determination to benweird.” Recent decades have brought ingenious new disciplinesnsuch as New Math, whereby two plus two equals 11 (exceptnon alternate rainy Thursday afternoons); a program calledn”Whole Language,” whose advocates seem to suggest that it isnnot so important for a youngster to be able to read, write, or spellnproperly, only that—for purposes of self-esteem—the little tykentake an honest crack at it; and a more recent enthusiasm, onlynnow gaining momentum in the clammy equatorial atmospheresnof college faculty lounges, that there is no such thing asnobjective knowledge. This newest breakthrough promises fabulousnpotential benefits for mankind down to the bottom quintilenof wage earners. Within this postmodern, free-floatingnstructure of reality, academics, lawyers, and other con artists willnbe able to reeducate the drooling, disoriented masses aboutnhow the United States—and specifically the state of Idahowasnresponsible for the Cold War, how the roots of modern civilizationnlie not in ancient Greece, Rome, or Egypt, but in Bangui,nsqualid river-town capital of the Central African Republic;nhow Teddy Kennedy really did “dive repeatedly” at Chappaquiddicknand Bill Clinton was truthful when he claimed tonhave “wept uncontrollably” in 1963 while watching MartinnLuther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech on TV. Suchntransparent faker)’ is neatiy defined by columnist Cindy Adams’nwitticism that “the hardest thing for me to believe about thenBible is that there were only 2 asses in the ark.”nLittle matters to the Renaissance experts except their ownnstature. Sadly, our recent leadership has contributednmightily to the blizzard of contrivances presented as reality andngood sense, and they have been boosted by the media who,nbarely into the first Clinton-Gore term, gushed with adolescentninfatuation while trumpeting the Clintons’ alleged Renaissancenqualities: she, a tireless supporter of childrens’ rights and “one ofnthe top hundred lawyers in the country”—a ranking certified,nno doubt, by the Associated Press Coaches’ Poll of top lawyers;nhe, the policy wonk, still conversant in German from hisnRhodes Scholar days and, class guy that he is, reputedly a collectornof rare Wedgwood. Thus, years later, the President feltncompletely free to spin out the canard that “even Presidentsnhave private lives”—and, therefore, they should be given the respect,nthe free rein, and (of course) the privacy to commit perjury,nobstruction of justice, character assassination, even treasonnas laws are broken, evidence suppressed, critics and opponentsnslandered, national security sabotaged, and defense secretsnpassed along to hostile foreign powers for campaign funds.nWhen writer Mary McCarthy, on Dick Cavett’s televisionnshow in 1980, said of rival Lillian Llellman that “ever}’ word shenwrites is a lie, including ‘and’ and ‘the,'” an intriguing precedentnwas established. Today, given the momentum l^uilt up by BillnClinton as he tweaked the public with falsehood after falsehoodnv’hile claiming that all has been forgiven and even demandingnapologies from otiiers, it may not be long before some wickedncommentator amends McCarthy’s provocative declaration to describenour former First Renaissance man as, follows: “Ever)’ wordnMr. Clinton speaks is a lie, including ‘Bill’ and ‘Clinton.'” His assertionsnon gun control, school reform, race relations, religion,nand partial-birth abortion were the epitome of flagrant duplicitynbeneafli only the flimsiest veneer of historical reality and bipartisanndebate. Similarly, Al Gore’s abusive demagoguer}’ over globalnwarming and the Kyoto Treaty—like his self-obsessed postelectionn”I’ll do anj’thing to win” rallying cr’—increasingly resemblesnthe hysteria of a zealot, and one wonders how completely out-ofhandnhis arguments may get. We must watch closely to see if henbegins blaming the dubious phenomenon for such sinister occurrencesnas the disorder in the Baltimore Orioles’ bullpen, thennear-total disappearance of frogs from the third floor of the OldnExecutive Office Building, and the recent pandemic of print-medianmisspellings of the words “glyptodont” and “fenugreek.”nNow, in the nuclear winter of his discontent, he can proceed innthe spirit of bipartisanship to talk up more right-wing conspiraciesnfor the likes of Jack Newfield, Eleanor Clift, Joe Conason, andntheir block-warden brethren to pursue with fangs bared.nYet one of flie most unpleasant things about modern Renaissancentypes is that it can be verj’ difficult to get rid of them; oncenestablished, they remain on hand, eager to foul the air with foolishnessnat the barest hint of an invitation. They pretend to masternaddifional disciplines in adjacent areas, assume newer andngreater levels of authority, even begin to contradict legitimatenscholars. Alan Alda, after his starring role in the hit Broadwaynplay Art, may suddenly turn up at New York City’s Wliitiiey Museumnto lecture the society crowd on the brushwork of Renaissancenmasters Van Dyck and van der Weyden, and visitors willnbe compelled to wear tiny buttons that read “I can’t imagine evernwanting to be Flemish.” Sen. Hillary Clinton, her customar)’nfever of hubris stoked even higher by the cleverness of her observationnthat the world must learn to discredit the concept of “anothernperson’s child,” has given signs that, politics and futurenself-congratulator)’ memoirs aside, child psychology may be herntrue calling. In her 1996 book. It Takes a Village—and OthernL£ssons We Learn From Children, she trotted out a laundr)’ list ofnspecious, pseudophilosophical platitudes while failing to acknowledge–andnthen tr)’ing to cheat—the Georgetown professornwho had done the writing for her. More recenfly, the formernFirst Lady has asked tiie nation to buy into allegations that ever)’onenis plotting against her (slavering right-wingers, treasonousnleft-wingers, the entire Washington Redskins’ defensive backfield,nall those renegades from the Wliite House’s 1996 “CommunicationnStream of Conspiracy Commerce” report), that onlynshe is qualified to make proper decisions about seriousnmatters, and—as revealed in an interview in NewYork magazinenlast year—that it is impossible to insult her. More ominous,nthough, is riie hint that there should be some sort of roving bandnof ombudsmen monitoring family life to make sure fliat America’snlittle ones are treated with due respect. This, tiien, is the truenaim of today’s Renaissance folks: to impose their views, witlessnand obnoxious though they may be, on everyone else, friend andnfoe alike. It is what we should learn to expect from flie likes ofnBill and Al, Ed and Alan, Diane and Rosie, Susan and The Dersh,nTeddy and Walter, and all the ofliers so eager to lecture us,ninterfere in our lives, and generally bore us to death—and particularlynfrom Hillary, whose book, afthough a best-seller, was inaccuratelyntifled. It should properly have been called It Takes anFraud—and Other Lessons We Learn From Phonies.nnnJUNE 2001/21n