[187] in Humor
HUMOR: Whitewater Made Simple
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (abennett@MIT.EDU)
Fri Apr 8 11:11:42 1994
From: abennett@MIT.EDU
To: humor@MIT.EDU
Date: Fri, 08 Apr 94 10:55:28 EDT
Date: Mon, 4 Apr 94 13:09:47 PDT
From: ckleinja@Novell.COM (Connie Kleinjans)
Subject: HUMOR: Whitewater Made Simple
From jgp@rational.com
>From Art Hoppe's column in the March 18 San Francisco Chronicle:
Former Friends of Bill
With all the charts, graphs, chronologies, and genealogies printed in the
press lately, you'd think everyone would know what went on at Whitewater.
They obviously don't, or the press wouldn't be asking the Clintons for
explanations every chance they get.
So here for the benefit of confused readers is a concise history of the entire
scandal:
It all began in 1978, when Jim, a friend of Bill's and Hillary's, founded
Whitewater Rafting Adventures at the confluence of Crooked Creek and the White
River in the Ozarks to provide "jobs and fun" for local quilt makers,
moonshiners, and hardscrabble farmers.
Hillary and Bill put up $68,000, and Jim invested twice that much.
Unfortunately, the rafts went belly up, leaving the investors up Crooked Creek
without a paddle. "Live and learn," said Hillary.
Having lost $68,000, Bill and Hillary then filed a tax return showing a $1,000
capital gain. "Live and learn," said Hillary again.
Meanwhile, Jim, who had shown his financial acumen by losing or gaining twice
as much, opened the Madison Guaranty Savings & Loan, which was guaranteed to
loan more than it saved. It did.
When state and federal banking investigators told Bill that Jim was "unsafe
and unsound," Bill asked Jim to hire Hillary to tell Bill that Jim wasn't.
She did. And whom was Bill to listen to? If he knew what was good for him?
Beverly, the state securities commisioner, began sticking her nose into it.
So Jim rehired Hillary to persuade her friend Beverly, who had been appointed
by Bill, to ease up on Jim, for whom she (Beverly) used to work. She
(Beverly) did. This may or may not be significant.
It was later on that the Resolution Trust Corp. asked Janet, who had been
appointed attorney general by Bill, to investigate Jim, who was again defended
by Hillary, who was still married to Bill. Janet was to see if Jim had
engaged in illegal activities that benefited his friends Bill and Hillary.
That's when Janet's aides, Jean and Roger, began meeting with Bill's friends,
Bernard and Josh and Jack and Lloyd and Harold and Margaret et al. They
talked about this and that and who was going to get investigated for what.
Bob and Newt and other Republicans naturally demanded that they get to
investigate the whole investigation into those previous investigations. But
Robert, the special prosecutor appointed by Janet, said that any other
investigation of Janet's aides and Bill's friends would impede his
investigation of the investigations. And that's where the matter now rests.
Because of all this, Bill's friends and Janet's aides have been shredding,
resigning, or both in droves. The latest was Bill's friend Webster Hubbell,
who used to work with Hillary until he was appointed by Janet. He said his
resignation had nothing to do with Whitewater. Critics said Hubbell lacked
vision.
Bill and Hillary now tacitly admit they shouldn't have tried to cover up the
fact that they did nothing wrong.
Nevertheless, the public has already found them guilty of felonious fudging
and sentenced them to 25 years to a lifetime of explaining the whole mess. We
should all live so long.
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