So, how should we commemorate the day?

[yesthattom]

Wednesday (I'm told) is the 5th anniversary of Bill Clinton saying, "I did not sleep with that woman." I'm not sure how to celebrate.... or mourn.

On one hand, I completely support Bill Clinton. I campaigned for him, twice. While I don't think he was very effective, I support him a hell of a lot more than da other guy. I think what the Republicans did to him was a travesty of justice. On the other hand, he handled it badly. On the other, other hand, he handled it really well if you consider that he did complete all 8 years in office.

I have to imagine that Poly people of the world, if we had been politically organized 5 years ago, could have made this the watershed event that put poly on the map. We could have taken the big leap and "come out of the closet", embraced him, and used it to publicize that poly exists, is normal, and usually doesn't go by the name "poly" but its time people woke up and recognized how unbelievably common it is. We would have made statements to the press like, "My wife and I have a similar situation and we want the Clintons to know that the poly community is ready for them, if they're ready for us."

Obviously, we weren't and neither were they.

So, how should we commemorate the day?

Comments

[kimuchi.livejournal.com]

I remember back when all this was happening I drove a coworker to get his tongue pierced. While were in the car we ended up talking about Clinton, and coworker said "I think he should come out as poly," presumably parroting something he'd read online as this coworker was not prone to independent thought. This statement really irritated me at the time. Clinton was _not_ poly, he was (still is, I assume) a hypocritical monogamist. Simply fucking around is _not_ the same as making the conscious choice to structure your relationships in an open, honest, non-exclusive fashion. Saying "oops, I've been fucking around, honey let's declare our marriage 'poly'" is a pretty damn low thing to spring on someone as well.

I don't think it does anyone looking to further polyamory's reputation any good to claim hypocritical monogamists as your own, either. Ooh, what a good example _they_ set.

All that said, I don't think it's anyone's business who the president is fucking, whether his wife knows/cares, what he himself thinks about it, etc. Plenty of past presidents seem to have gotten laid in office without it becoming a matter of public concern (at least until later), I'd like to see us go back to that. But I don't see how we could accomplish it aside from just keeping Republicans that the self-righteous social conservatives support in office. :P