Oh, boy, Bill Clinton didn't disappoint any of the 250 assorted well-fixed folk, jam packed into the Windsor arms Monday night in Toronto for the latest World Leaders forum--whose attendees included a clearly flabbergasted Shimon Peres, who gamely smiled and nodded his way through Big Bill's extended comments, after presciently agreeing to go first.
Nope, Mr. Peres was darned glad that he had tossed off his rather tame and cogent comments, a more linear speaker the Toronto Star said, before Mr. Clinton launched into his extended, fact filled, cheek puffing, eye rolling whirlwind of facts and figures, covering everything the Big He could think of.
according to published reports, Mr. Clinton covered, with intricately complicated asides, private business, the importance personal relationships, the failures of the Israeli Supreme Court in their consideration of mixed Israeli and Palestinian couples, the Canadian health care system, aIDS, aIDS testing, his entire book, the UN, Lesotho, Hurricane Katrina, and the upcoming Clinton Global Initiative and all of its planned iterations, and the type of stationery he personally designed.
But he reserved his most severe reproach for the US health care system, which he explained, "…is a nightmare, insane, a colossal waste of money."
Of course, Mr. Clinton, in his head rush to an immediate condemnation, forgot the earlier monument to neo-fascist governmental control of every element of medical care offered by his soft spoken spouse, who believes in centralized state planning for everything and lengthy jail terms for those seeking direct medical intervention outside her "system."
Unlike al Gore, who allows himself to get completely carried away when he launches into one of his shoe pounding philippics, becoming bathed in sweat while he punctuates his palaver with eye-popping upper body and head snapping gyrations, a suave Bill Clinton simply stupefies his listeners with an outpouring of facts so prodigious that they can simply wear down his listeners, breaking many of them utterly.
Well to do wives, it is often reported, gleefully drag their reluctant husbands to highly publicized Clinton allocutions in order to render them insensate and more malleable to suggestion after being subjected to the kettle drumming of his three or four hour bombardment of facts and figures.
and this sudden weakness often leads to the purchase of jewelry, new automobiles, fancy togs, trips to the Bahamas and St. Johns, and happier wives.
Other victims of Mr. Clinton's prodigious factual prowess have been known to withdraw into lengthy periods of seclusion, appearing only to get the newspaper and to walk the dogs, with meaningful work being out of the question for weeks.
and some are broken forever, wandering the halls of leading psychiatric institutions, the victims of mental overload, forced to remember the number of practicing doctors in Maseru, the cost of per capita aIDS research in Great Britain, the number of abandoned homes in Jefferson Parish, the power of personal interaction, the percentage of administrative costs in the Canadian health system and the importance of a donation to the Clinton Global Initiative, over and over again.
Mr. Clinton has become our leading feather merchant extraordinaire, bar none. and people just pack the house to hear his ceaseless spewing of statistics, the selling of his books and handshakes and to see this walking soap opera in the flesh.
He has become the world's Dr. Phil, with just the slightest touch of The Price is Right, sans the models with the signs.
and just to make sure that the boutique bazaar atmosphere, accompanied by recordings of finger cymbals and the braying of unhappy camels, reigned supreme in Toronto, an attendee, if they had any ready money left, could pony up $55,000 for a Bill Clinton autographed Cartier men's watch, and a mere $35,000 for a woman's model, weighted down with his name affixed to its posh pearly face.
For a few dollars more, you could have your picture taken with Mr. Clinton while you both downed bowls of tomato soup, little fingers held jauntily aloft, while wearing your new watch.
and I am reminded of an old saw about fast talking itinerant attorneys on the stump.
Do you know why they have rubber pockets in their suits?
So they can steal soup.
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