Word: pol
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...time swallowed those Asian sexual Shangri-las, and history, in the form of prudish colonialism, religious movements and puritanical social engineers such as Mao and Pol Pot, managed to drown the roots of those liberated notions. The Asia of the second half of the 20th century was a fundamentally conservative place, albeit with variations. In the largely Roman Catholic Philippines, men frequently had more than one wife. Few places were as straight-laced as Singapore, but its drag queens thrived. You could be gay in Java - if you liked isolation. "Homosexuality is tolerated in Indonesia," says Dede Oetomo, an anthropologist...
...fancy. Everything one says is wise, and everything one writes goes straight to the best-seller list. Ex-Presidents do good works, make the occasional peacemaking mission, oversee the construction of a shrine for their White House relics. The biggest payoff of all as a former President transubstantiates from pol to statesman is seeing the traits that annoyed and enraged people while he was in office--Harry Truman's commonness, George Bush's blandness, Jimmy Carter's righteousness--come to be regarded as virtues. To be a successful ex-President, Bill Clinton must first find...
...last night in the White House, Clinton was worried about how Bush would react to the timing of independent counsel Robert Ray's announcement of a Lewinsky settlement. Sure, Clinton had been bouncing around the country like Ricky Martin for two weeks, hogging the spotlight, but a natural-born pol like Bush could see that was fair game. Clinton turned to TV producer/director Thomason--an old friend who had got muddied in Travelgate and who with his wife Linda had spent the last Thanksgiving, the last Christmas and now the last two days in the White House--to back-channel...
...slacker go on road trip; hilarity, rabbit squashing ensue.) The gross-out humor misses more than it hits, but the show can surprise you, as when the dim duo visit Washington and ruins the life-work of an earnest Senator, turning a pat setup on its head: the pol is betrayed by the people. It's worth seeing where this ride goes...
...credit. Neither Freeh or Attorney General Janet Reno would showboat for the administration. Drug czar Barry McCaffrey would, but the retired general's too-hot-for-prime-time style sometimes provoked backlash. Ashcroft may serve that function for Bush, or he may be viewed as too much of a pol, in which case Bush would be well served to go for a more charismatic FBI director when Freeh bows...