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Arianna Huffington and Harry Shearer

Clinton and Sinatra

Posted Tuesday, May 19, 1998, at 4:48 PM ET

No, Kennedy didn't lecture us about teen smoking, he lectured us about Communists in Laos. My favorite spectacle relative to the attacks on Clinton involves all the Republicans solemnly intoning that if Clinton "looked into that camera and lied to the American people" about his relationship with Monica, he's unfit to be President. Nobody asks them what they make of Lyndon Johnson looking "into that camera" and lying about the Gulf of Tonkin incident, a little fib that cost 55,000 American boys their lives.

But you're right about Sinatra not dying before the Seinfeld hype had reached its peak. That, for those not versed in the niceties of show business, is called "timing."

Harry Shearer

Clinton and Sinatra

Posted Tuesday, May 19, 1998, at 4:48 PM ET
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Arianna Huffington is a nationally syndicated columnist. Harry Shearer is host of radio's Le Show, a screenwriter, an actor, and provider of several voices on The Simpsons.
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