Bill Clinton Seems to Be a Natural on Latest Cover of Rolling Stone

Sax on Arsenio aside, there’s something, like, unreal about a presidential candidate who lands on the cover of Rolling Stone and looks like he belongs.

But there he is, the potential Baby Boom President, not only posing head-high to a Lollapalooza Tour cover line, but almost-- almost --actually hangin’ out in an Arkansas eatery with the likes of Gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson, Republican party animal P. J. O’Rourke and Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner.

The meeting, reported in the Sept. 17 Stone, holds promise of relaxing into the sort of dorm room rap session producing headlines such as “CLINTON INJURED IN WILD BRAWL WITH DOPE FIENDS: CANDIDATE DENIES DRUNKENNESS, CANCELS BUS TRIP, FLEES.”

But that scenario, the product of Hunter S. Thompson’s Percodan-addled imagination, never comes to pass.

Clinton does reveal that his favorite Beatle was Paul and that he voted for the young Elvis. He even says, “I was just blown away,” once. And Thompson lets out a “Wow.”

But for the most part, the interview is standard-issue political brain picking, with Wenner, O’Rourke and Thompson sitting back and letting big dog William Greider, Rolling Stone’s national editor, put the candidate through his paces.

Aggressively questioned by the knowledgeable Greider on the S&L; and banking apocalypse, Clinton parries with a solid suggestion for a community banking program. And he’s not only aware of the South Shore Development Bank in Chicago’s ghetto, he has actually met Muhammad Yunus and seems to understand his progressive Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, upon which Chicago’s is partially based.

On crime, Clinton stands up to Thompson: “If you want less police brutality, you should have more police on the street, walking the streets, doing community policing.”

More entertaining, and about as enlightening as the Q&A;, are the three writers’ impressions.

Thompson alone reports the single most memorable--though utterly dubious--scene of the meeting. Thompson gives Clinton a reed for his saxophone and then watches the candidate.

“He seemed unhappy, almost angry as he fondled the reed distractedly, saying nothing . . .” Thompson says. “Then he rolled his eyes back in his head and uttered a wild quavering cry that made my blood run cold.”

Greider says Clinton had to tell O’Rourke to take the wrapper off the tamale he was gnawing.

But O’Rourke, the contrarian, scores some of the best points. Thinking of all the civilian conservation corps, job corps, and first-offender boot camps Clinton has suggested, he observes: “This is a lot of paramilitary organizations for a guy who dodged military service.”

But even O’Rourke concedes that something distinguishes this candidate from the other Democratic aspirants.

Clinton, he says, “really believes government, business, labor, schools, communities and--I don’t know--the Elks, Club Med and My Little Pony can cooperate in perfect harmony to create a better America.”

Clinton’s earlier self-description as “a peddler of hope” comes through here, too. He seems to truly understand how disgusted voters are with the same ol’, same ol’ in politics--or at least he’s got the issue nicely spin-doctored.

He says, “our ability to re-create ourselves at critical junctures is why we’re still around after all this time.”

That’s the sort of spiel Rolling Stone and the generation it represents still applauds, 25 years after the countercultural revolution.

In light of all that, though, there is one aspect of the interview that evokes a “What’s Wrong With This Picture?” squint:

This is supposed to be some sort of high-water mark for the change-the-world generation, right? Here we go into the ‘90s, right?

So, in the photo of the interview, how come there aren’t any women or blacks or Asians or Latinos anywhere in sight?

REQUIRED READING

* Africa profited from the Cold War, as the Soviet Union and United States battled to be the continent’s best-loved benefactor. Now, as a powerful cover story in this week’s Time explains, Africa has become “the basket case of the planet, the ‘Third World of the Third World,’ a vast continent in free fall.”

Because European colonialism shattered Africa’s “inner rhythms of development” 400 years ago, few of its nations are well prepared to pull themselves out of their nose dive. And, now countries that used to help Africa are receiving aid themselves.

But an American statesman told Time: “What the Africans really have to worry about is not competition for our (U. S.) resources from the former Soviet Union but from Los Angeles and the Third World that lives in the U.S.”

In a companion story, Times correspondent Jack E. White, who is black, suggests America’s Afro-centricists are important to the continent, but are destined to remain tourists in their motherland.

* The September Consumer Reports features the last in its excellent three-part series “Health Care in Crisis.”

This installment focuses on Canada’s “good but not perfect” health care system, which the magazine’s executive director argues is being slandered by the U. S. medical establishment’s PR machine. Judging from his remarks in Rolling Stone, it seems Clinton may well have used the series as a briefing paper.

* Talk about fascinating womanhood. James Wolcott’s profile of Camille Paglia in the September issue of Vanity Fair portrays the neo-feminist fatale as a complex intellectual scrapper, eager and able to sink her nails into a whole stable of sacred cows: Susan Sontag, Naomi Wolf, Susan Faludi, Gloria Steinem, Jacques Lacan, Michael Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Paul de Man, Stanley Fish . . .

But Wolcott’s no wimp either. For example, when Paglia takes a swipe at her own pop-cult icon, Madonna, and then tries to weasel away from the remarks, Wolcott lets her hang on her own celebrity worship: “If you quote something negative about Madonna,” she says, “make sure you (quote something positive), so you don’t get me in Dutch with Madonna, OK? Because then I’ll never meet her, OK?”

MAGAZINE VS. MAGAZINE

The September Interview asks Rappers to rate the Hip Hop zines: Rap Sheet, Rap Pages, Word Up!, Right on!, Spice! Rap Masters, Black Beat, Hype, the Source, and the soon-to-launch super-slick Vibe.

The reviews are mixed. But Michelle, of Bytches with Problems, makes the most interesting point:

“When I see Demi Moore on the cover of Vanity Fair in her birthday suit, the painted-on-suit, I know I would never do that. If it was Queen Latifah, or any other female rapper, it would be like, ‘Oh, my God, what are these rappers doing now, telling our children to go out and pose nude?’ ”