Crying Like a Baby . . . Brother : Through Tears of Sorrow and Joy, Roger Clinton Tells of Life as a ‘Mama’s Boy’--and in Bill’s ‘Light’

So he’s no Robert Kennedy. Then again, he’s no Ted.

But he is the product of a dysfunctional family--a famous dysfunctional family--and sometimes that’s enough.

“Roger Clinton,” as Roger Clinton likes to refer to himself, “is happier and stronger today than he’s ever been in his life. And doggone it, Roger Clinton is gonna share that good feelin’ with just as many folks out there as he can.”

And share he has.

With tears, with songs, with horrific stories of a real bad dad, this sweet-faced, sweet-voiced “mama’s boy” has taken his show--in this case, his life--on the road.

Tuesday night, he took it and a stack of his new book, “Growing Up Clinton” (Summit), to the Learning Annex--a free-spirited, self-help night school that also offers courses on ballroom dancing, getting your pet into show business and accessing your own inner urban goddess.

Oh, brother, you say?

What would you do if your next of kin were Leader of the Free World?

About 40 students gathered in West Hollywood to hear Professor Clinton discuss “Overcoming the Obstacles of Growing Up in a Dysfunctional Family.”

Surprisingly, sibling rivalry was one thing Clinton the Younger did not dwell on. “Rivalry? No, no, I just don’t see Big Brother that way. I never have felt I was growing up in his shadow. I was always growing up in his light.”

No feelings of inadequacy, no envy, no anger?

“Nope, never. He was 10 years older than me, after all, and we just never followed the same interests really.”

What about playing the saxophone?

“Wow! Yes, I did play for a few years,” concedes Roger, 38, an accomplished professional musician. “This is very interesting. Wow! I’ve never thought of this before. This may be the one thing I did put down because my brother was so good at it. Wow. Oh yes, I see this may have some meaning. . . .”

Roger Clinton seems to find Meaning in nearly everything. Many times, this makes him cry.

His tears, which flow freely on both joyous and sorrowful occasions, have become Clinton’s trademark, say some. The soap opera version of Bill.

But friends say Roger is emotional about life in a way that only one who nearly lost his life can be. Roger says his brother saved him from suicide, but makes little of the fact that his brother had something to do with why he wanted to kill himself.

“I have so much to be grateful for,” Clinton says, “so many blessings to count.”

Among those blessings, he counts his brother’s complicity in sending him to jail a decade ago for distributing drugs. As governor of Arkansas, the elder Clinton knew about and approved a sting operation that would snare his then-cocaine addicted brother.

“If I hadn’t hit bottom and been forced to go to prison, who knows where I’d be today. Very possibly dead. Instead, I am”--and he breaks down again--”the father of a beautiful baby boy. At last, I have the chance to be what I was denied--a good and loving father.”

*

No question life was tough for the Clinton boys. In his book, Roger recounts again, and in terrifying detail, how the future President of the United States rescued their long-suffering mother from a final brutal attack by his stepfather Roger Sr.

“He had her bent way back over the washing machine with a pair of scissors at her throat and she was just crying, ‘No, no,’ and I was only 6 and I just froze but somehow God intervened and I ran to get Big Brother and that’s when he said, ‘Daddy, you will never hurt Mother again.’ ”

Although Big Brother--”I call him that now instead of ‘Bubba’ ‘cause it sounds more mature, don’t you think?”--is the hero in most of the familial anecdotes Clinton shares, so is Roger in a ‘90s 12-step sort of way.

“I was a mama’s boy, I am a mama’s boy, and I’ll always be a mama’s boy, and when she told me I was a good person and when she told me I could sing, I believed her. But when she told me my father loved me, I never could believe it.”

But he knows he should try.

“Please forgive your father for what he did to you,” a fellow dysfunctional family survivor pleaded with Clinton on Tuesday night.

“I know what you are sayin’, ma’am. Yes, ma’am, I do. But I don’t think it makes much of a difference anymore whether he was a sick man or he was a mean man, we suffered all the same.”

But, still, Roger says, life goes on. And it gets better and better. Just the other day, for instance, Hillary Rodham Clinton called.

“She called direct, not with the White House operator or anything! But right through to me. And here’s the great thing--she called me for no reason! Hillary has never ever called me for no reason. In all these years I can count on both hands the times Hillary’s called me at all and here she was callin’ to say I love you and I am proud of how you handle being First Brother and how you represent the family.

“Oh boy, I’ll tell you I cried like a baby. I was cryin’ and runnin’ around the house sayin’ ‘Hillary called me! Hillary called me!’ ”

*

Bill called recently as well to tell Roger he’d seen the new book. “He called me with a laugh and a smile in his voice and said I’m almost through the book,” says Roger Clinton, who has yet to hear whether Big Brother likes it but nevertheless takes the call as a very good sign.

“My brother trusts me implicitly now. He’s proud of his brother and knows he’s back on track.”

Although promoting the book is Clinton’s priority today, it won’t be long before he’s back singing for his supper.

At the Learning Annex, with a voice as angelic as it was when he perched on his mother’s makeup bench and serenaded her as she applied her unforgettable eyebrows, he burst into a poignant rendition of a song he performed at the Democratic National Convention in 1992:

Let’s form a circle of friends . . . a circle that never ends. . . .

Although he may not sing it much, Roger Clinton probably also knows the words to “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother.”