Impeachment Politics

Re “Many Residents Glad Senate Trial Is History,” Feb. 13.

Opening this article on local opinions about the U.S. Senate’s decision not to remove Bill Clinton from office, two Times reporters wrote of “husbands scouting for last-minute Valentine’s Day gifts.” Obviously unintentional but still present was the implication that wives are somehow impervious to forgetting special days. It just goes to show how easily and nonchalantly stereotyping can occur.

Ironically enough, the very subject of this story was overwhelmingly tainted by such stereotyping.

The impeachment proceedings we all had to endure were never as simple as Republicans versus Democrats. Media stereotyping caused them to be viewed as overzealous conservatives pitted against sensible populists. People can say what they will about the motives of Ken Starr and the three-judge panel that gave him his authority, but the subsequent actions of the House of Representatives and Senate were obligations neither could constitutionally ignore once the Starr report hit their desks.

All in all, people seem happy this sad chapter of American history is now water under the bridge. Still, over the past year this saga ran quite an interesting course and life may get a little boring without it.

Talk shows will no longer be our fountains of astonishment. Gone will be the street-corner conversations in which the only thing people could agree on was that the whole thing should never have gone as far as it did. Neither side really thought dragging America through the slime would accomplish anything, but both sides were wrong.

Buena High School’s Steve Blum said it all: “Bill Clinton did not invent lying. People lied before him and they’ll lie after him.”

The American people have complained for as long as anyone can remember that politicians are nothing but a bunch of liars and thieves. Yet when they had the chance to punish one who all but admitted to being everything they complained about and despised, the people chose to keep the ultimate stereotype alive, and they punted.

Aesop would have been all over this one! His moral would surely have related politics to a computer: If all you ever put into the system is garbage, then that’s all you’re ever going to get out of it.

BRUCE ROLAND, Ojai