by Bob Fitrakis, Mar 4, 1998

Heard the latest Clintonian spin on the Columbus/CNN town hall meeting seen 'round the world? After the Slickster of Love's national security trinity -- Billy, Sandy and Maddy -- fumed, fidgeted and got flustered before 200 million viewers, the first major lie, sorry, spin, went like this: "President Clinton is the only President with the courage to have a town hall meeting on war."

Perversely absurd, but a nice populist touch. Make no mistake about it, Bill Clinton sent his less than terrific trio to Columbus to preside over a pep rally for war, not to hold a town meeting. This was right out of the Prez's political playbook. First, announce it at the last minute, so lawful demonstrators can't counter-organize. Second, keep the location a secret as long as possible. Third, let one director script the pageant: CNN. Fourth, carefully select and screen your extras: ROTC, League of Women Voters, active duty military, alumni, Young Dems, veterans, and "nice" student groups like the "Ohio Staters."

Big Bill's done it before in Columbus. Most recently at a silly little conference at the Fawcett Center where he staged a live TV event with hand-picked questioners lobbing softball questions to the likes of Al Gore.

At the 1992 Democratic Party platform hearing, shown live on C-SPAN, Clinton flaks coerced, bullied, and bought off all but sixteen hardcore delegates supporting Jerry Brown. When the Party approved my petition for a minority plank to abolish the death penalty, this did not fit into Bill's TV plan for his upcoming made-for-TV convention coronation. By the time I got back to Columbus, there were calls on my answering machine from the Boston Globe and the Atlanta Constitution demanding to know why I'd submitted "fraudulent signatures" on the petition and if I was a neo-fascist "LaRouche-ite."

Although they later backed down on the "fraud" claim, I was forced to sue Bill Clinton to include the anti-death penalty plank in convention debate. I lost.

Clinton's the linear descent of every negative, phony, staged predecessor in American politics. The TV glibness of Kennedy; Nixon's media manipulation; Reagan's stage presence; and Bush's Nintendo Gulf War videos. Clinton knows a good TV image is worth a thousand facts.

Clinton's spinmeisters' second lie following the "debacle" appeared in the New York Times on February 20. It reported that "better advance people 'wouldn't have given tickets to the Spartacus League' he [a Clinton aide] said referring to a Marxist group." I haven't seen a Spart in the eleven years I've been in Columbus, but they were indigenous to my hometown, Detroit. They once took time out from disrupting political meetings to accuse me of "exhuming the rotting corpse of social democracy." I was.

Local TV "news professionals," joined in Clinton's spin. They referred to those us demonstrating outside St. John's arena as "professional protesters." Admittedly, some of us are highly-skilled amateurs, but nobody sent paychecks for protesting to the assorted pastors, professors, social workers, Quakers, peaceniks, anti-racist activists, Muslim and Arab students, outspoken feminists, veterans and others who stood outside for two hours in a cold rain to call for peace.

Unlike CNN inside, our mic outside was open to everyone and no one had to have a "red ticket" and a "prescreened question" to speak. Clinton's orchestrated version of an Orwellian town hall meeting, with Stepford wives and their husbands cheering on Big Brother's Nuremberg-Rally-style cues, was inexcusable and embarrassing.

Female demonstrators who got into the town meeting were forced to remove any clothes containing and pictures, political slogans, or flags. That left one woman standing in her bra and another completely topless. Thank God, the security officers were chivalrous enough to turn their backs, which allowed those women to retrieve their garments. Another snuck the now-famous "No War" banner in under her skirt. And the only person arrested inside the arena committed the heinous crime of refusing to give up a small picture of an dead Iraqi child, a victim of the U.N. sanctions. The only person who was allowed to have a picture of dead children was Defense Secretary Cohen. Just another prop in the propaganda war.

The self-described "Hecklers for a Healthy Democracy" had "white tickets," this meant they weren't allowed to speak at the town hall meeting. They weren't "Friends of Bill" with red tickets. They were second-class citizens, bit players in Bill's war pageant, scripted to sit and remain silent.

But, answering to a power greater than Bernard Shaw, Bill Clinton, and Time-Warner-Turner, they became the voice of the voiceless. Upstaging the stage managers and scriptwriters, the demonstrators would "not be good Germans" or Clinton's "willing executioners" by their complicity to bomb Iraqi civilians. They made a joyous noise unto God. They wrecked Clinton's starring role in "The Chicken Hawk Who Bombed Baghdad."

Oh, did you hear this week's Clinton spin? You see, Bill used to be demonstrator himself, and he really staged the event in Columbus because he knew it'd be disrupted and we'd have peace. Ah, as the White House spins.

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