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The F-Word Litmus Test

By Ellen Willis
Posted Wednesday, Aug. 18, 1999, at 5:57 PM ET

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It's not that I'm uninterested in electoral politics. For one thing elections are an important form of popular culture; they always have something to say about what's going on with us. But my view of the electoral scene is always filtered through a layer of irony since there's almost never anyone I'm really for, and it's usually an issue of who I'm more afraid of. Even third-party candidates are generally lame. I did vote for Nader in 1996, but as a protest against Clinton's policies, not because I like Nader. Warren Beatty running for president would be fun, but on the other hand he blew it by crossing the picket line at that PEN event at Cipriani's. Dowd's column on Bush missed the point. Bush has every right not to talk about his past drug use. In fact, silence is a lot more seemly than all the blather he would feel forced to put out if he owned up, to the effect of what a terrible mistake he had made in the feckless days of his youth. No, what's truly objectionable is his declaration of fidelity to his wife. Enough, already, with monogamy-mongering. Even more ridiculous is the controversy over Bush saying "fuck," apropos of which Garry Wills, in the course of defending Bush in his New York Post column today, saw fit to lay on us the information that he himself never uses the word. What's next? Sidney Zion confessing that he himself doesn't do oral sex?

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Meanwhile, Lars Erik Nelson in his New York Daily News column suggests that Elizabeth Dole should come clean about whether she believes in creationism. Since she is "seeking to lead this country into the 21^st century," we need to know. Well, OK, since the Republicans, with their usual respect for women, may nominate her as vice president on the theory that women will vote for any warm female body. (Not that Bush seems to have gender-gap problems so far, at least vis-à-vis Al Gore.) But does she say "fuck"? And was she ever unfaithful to Bob in those dark times before Viagra?

I notice that Giuliani, also according to the News, has declined to backtrack on his opposition to a law banning so-called "partial birth" abortion. Will the Conservative Party swallow that and his position on gay rights? And if they don't--do you really think he can win a three-way race?