Two days before Kenneth Starr's report came to a . . . uh . . . head and guaranteed Bill Clinton the cover for the next issue of Cigar Aficionado magazine, South County Congressman Ron Packard (R-Oceanside) called on the president to resign. “The president should look within himself and realize that the nation is bigger than his legacy,” Packard said in a statement his office issued on Sept. 9. “He should resign and end this sad episode.” Packard also noted, “The nation should not tolerate a president who commits immoral acts with impunity.” Of course, those ground rules only cover immoral acts like extramarital sex between consenting adults, not secret wars, arms-for-hostages swaps, and propping up dictators in Third World countries. Why, one might ask, would Packard advise Clinton to step down before Starr's Penthouse Forum submission hit the streets? “I firmly believe that the transgressions already admitted to by the president demand his resignation. Regardless of what the contents of the independent counsel's report [are], Bill Clinton no longer has the moral authority necessary to lead and inspire the nation.” Clockwork will go out on a limb and assume the report's actual content didn't change Packard's opinion. WITH SPIRITUAL ADVISERS LIKE THIS, WHO NEEDS ENEMIES? The Reverend Robert Schuller, whom Clinton once introduced as his spiritual adviser, also called on the president to resign. The pastor of Garden Grove's shiny, happy Crystal Cathedral said in a Sept. 9 interview that calling it quits is the only way Clinton can repair the gaping breach of trust he's opened for his family and the nation. “He has to ask himself whether he will heal the breach through extended impeachment hearings or whether prolonging this will make it deeper and uglier,” Schuller told The Orange County Register. Then he mysteriously demanded all the grapes in first class. YOU FROM JERSEY? The Clinton scandal was on New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman's mind when she made a Sept. 9 campaign swing through OC on behalf of fellow Republicans “Disco” Dan Lungren, who's just itching to be our next governor, and Matt Fong, who's trying to swipe Barbara Boxer's U.S. Senate seat. Bubba is leaving “Americans with a presidency that is demoralized,” Whitman said at the birthplace of demoralized presidencies, the Richard Nixon Library and Birthplace in Yorba Linda. Ultraright dickwads in the Lincoln Club of Orange County whooped it up like an Arsenio Hall Show audience when Whitman expressed her “outrage” over Clinton's extra-credit assignments for intern Monica Lewinsky: “I think perhaps the most offensive thing to me, besides his personal behavior, is he admitted to going before the nation and lying to people.” Hell, at least Clinton admitted to lying; Nixon never did. The shit. Whitman, who is poised to someday become the first commander in chief without a penis since Calvin Coolidge, later toured the Nixon's Library's latest exhibit, “My Dearest Partner: Husbands and Wives in the White House.” She must've nearly peed her panties when she got to the Bill and Hill display. Library officials swear the exhibit's timing is purely coincidental.STAND BY YOUR MAN Among those who have not abandoned Clinton-well, not yet-is Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez (D-Garden Grove). The president gave her first election a much-needed credibility boost in 1996, and he's gone on to host star-studded fund-raisers in D.C. and LA for Capitol Hill's numero uno Latina. The peeps in Sanchez's central OC district support Clinton and “are not interested in this extracurricular garbage,” she told the Register on Sept. 11.WHAT ABOUT BOB? Packard, smackard. Robert “B-1 Bubblebutt” Dornan first called on Clinton to leave office about six years ago. Of course, that had nothing to do with the current Ejacugate scandal. That was just on general, right-wing-loon principle. Dornan is sinking his dentures into the latest brouhaha-natch. He called a Los Angeles Times reporter on Sept. 11 to declare himself “as sick over this as I was during Watergate.” Indeed, the Starr report's steamy details were enough to make Teddy Kennedy blush. Or was that from the Chivas? Fellow redface Dornan (his rouge ain't from liquor) is desperately trying to win his congressional seat back from Sanchez, so he directly linked his opponent to the Lewinsky affair. Which means that any day now, Dornan's Web site will have a grainy video and blow-by-blow description that purports to show Sanchez holding Slick Willie Jr. steady for the oncoming intern.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.