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 Surprise! Tucson Is Rife With Rubes, As Bill Clinton's Pit Stop So Embarrassingly Demonstrated. By Emil Franzi OBVIOUSLY SLICK Willy is great at getting somebody else to pick up the tab. Bill Clinton's Tucson visit was nothing more than a giant, taxpayer-funded partisan political rally. From Air Force One to the freebee meeting hall with local cops providing security. Why was the President here?
But the real reason Clinton chose Tucson for what amounted to a Democratic Party pep rally was because this is a marginal congressional district the Democrats think they can win next time around. Furthermore, replacing Congressman Jim Kolbe, R-Dist. 5, is high on the President's impeachment payback list. Kolbe was the only Republican on the program, and the highly partisan crowd at the Tucson Convention Center booed him. The Congressman was used as a stage prop. But then, for Kolbe, being used by somebody is his life story. Don Diamond should have charged Clinton a rental fee. Democratic Board of Supervisors Chairwoman Sharon Bronson, in her introductory remarks, mentioned the "Fab Five"--the women holding Arizona's top offices. Bronson failed to mention that four of them are Republicans. Three were absent from the "big event." The only one dumb enough to show up was Secretary of State Betsey Bayless, who was ignored. Cowboy Mayor George Miller struck a new low in brown-nosing when he ended his maudlin remarks by telling the President, "We support those and all other proposals you have made." Yes, uncritical adoration of a sleazy national leader is a great way to run a nation. Just ask the Germans.
Meanwhile, all three local commercial TV news operations went "live" before Air Force One touched down at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, and stayed live through Clinton's arrival at TCC, and on and on even after his mostly boiler-plate speech, as he worked the crowds outside--more than two hours. Apparently the first rule of local television journalism is that all channels must carry exactly the same video and pointless blather whenever such an opportunity arises. Clinton's actual speech on Social Security took just under half an hour. There were demonstrators--four different flavors: peace advocates opposed to bombing Iraq or anybody else; some members of the Pima County Republican Club; some far-right types from Phoenix known as "Free Republic"; and some stray Libertarians with their own bitches. The media lumped them together and generally ignored them, probably because the sign-carrying brigade was corralled 200 yards from the President. The cops said they were concerned about the "risk of confrontation." Yes, God forbid that Americans, even the relatively well-behaved cow-town clowns from hereabouts, be allowed to confront their duly elected Ladies' Man in Chief. TPD was ostensibly in charge, but they quickly passed the buck to the Secret Service when anyone asked why the anti-Clinton sign-bearers were shunted away from the action, and the cameras. Bullhorns were also banned, again at the orders of the feds. Fortunately we all know that our federal officials would never consider abusing their police powers for merely political reasons. What the lack of media interest in the President's opponents seemed to typify is that current corporate journalism avoids what might offend--anybody.
Of course not. Nor did anyone in the establishment media mention that Clinton's big plans for Social Security's future are based on the belief that massive federal budget surpluses will continue indefinitely. The federal government can barely forecast economic conditions six months ahead, and yet Clinton's grand scheme for the next 20 years went unquestioned by the pliant local media. Only KUAT-TV, Channel 6, bothered with any real analysis of the President's speech on its Arizona Illustrated show. Even though the event was staged in the City of Tucson's Convention Center, it seems Pima County officials got the lion's share of the President's time. That was courtesy of the only Democrat in Arizona's congressional delegation, Ed Pastor. Democratic County supervisors Dan Eckstrom, Raul Grijalva and Bronson edged out hardcore Democrats like Councilman José Ibarra, who, we're told, is livid.
And the best joke of the visit: What do Bill Clinton and Ed Pastor
have in common? This was the first time either had been in Tucson.
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Some local establishment-type journalists reporting the "big
event" said last week's Clinton visit was due to the influence
of White House staffer and Tucsonan Fred DuVal.
The real embarrassment is how the local media fell all over themselves
to cover this public relations stunt. It was the biggest job of
over-reporting since Princess Di, starting with three days of
front-page headlines in The Arizona Daily Star, and including
most of the back page of the Star's Accent section, which
featured a cut-out mask of Clinton--with instructions on how to
clip it and wear it! Oddly, Star management didn't require
their reporters to wear this childish disguise as yet another
pointlessly ineffective means of boosting the paper's declining
penetration. Next time, guys, try improving the business section.
Oh, yeah. The speech. Besides Slick Willy's new emphasis on using
the budget surplus to pay off the national debt, he now advocates
that Social Security recipients be allowed to earn as much as
they want--the exact opposite of the "means testing"
some politicos sought earlier to salvage the program. In fact,
it's a position advocated by many conservatives for years. But
did the local media point this out?
