The Magazine

Sidney Blumenthal abridged.

Jun 2, 2003, Vol. 8, No. 37
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Annals of Sid

Sidney Blumenthal, the Erich von Stroheim of the Clinton administration, has published a memoir of his White House days--to generally poor reviews, most of them from newspapers and magazines ordinarily sympathetic to the author's politics. Of course, no such book should be assumed useless simply because its notices are stinko. Very often, in fact, it's the "worst" first-person accounts of recent political history that provide the best sort of fun: unintentionally embarrassing anecdotes that the clueless writer imagines are worth boasting about. Alas, however, even on these ironic terms, "The Clinton Wars" turns out to be an unusually nutritionless meal. And such large portions! Eight hundred-plus pages of mercilessly patronizing, tutelary prose the likes of which most grownups won't have seen since those lives-of-the-great-inventors library books they made us read in elementary school.

In sum, we can't recommend the thing.

Nevertheless, as a service to those of our readers who remain helplessly curious about Blumenthal's brand of political pathology, The Scrapbook offers the following, handy-dandy condensation of "The Clinton Wars." All quotations guaranteed accurate. No, really.

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