THE SCRAPBOOK is now going to reveal for the first time esoteric knowledge that is shared by all American conservatives, imparted to us during adolescence by our elders.
Here's the secret: There is no right-wing conspiracy in America. Sometimes right-wingers, including THE SCRAPBOOK, wish that there were such a conspiracy, especially one with the power to topple presidents. But it doesn't exist. We just enjoy watching liberals try to find it. When E. J. Dionne Jr. writes, as he did in his Washington Post column last week, that "Hillary Clinton didn't invent that 'secret clique'" -- that it really exists and is powerful -- we snicker, because we know that, yes, she did invent it. It was a paranoid fantasy of hers and Sid "Grassy Knoll" Blumenthal's. The fact that her words are taken seriously, and that liberal investigative reporters have devoted huge amounts of time to uncovering the non-existent conspiracy, only makes it more amusing. The voyeuristic thrill of watching liberal reporters claim to reveal the inner workings of American conservatism -- THE SCRAPBOOK can now reveal -- is one of the few guilty pleasures available to conservatives these days.
Dionne was taken in by a story that ran on the front page of the New York Times Sunday before last. And, to be fair, it was an impressive sounding story: The two reporters had uncovered "a small secret clique of lawyers" who "share a deep antipathy toward the President" and worked "quietly" on Paula Jones's sexual harassment lawsuit against the president, helping "push the case" into the office of the independent counsel.
But the narrative of the Times story is deeply confusing, as efforts to explain non-existent conspiracies tend to be. What the reporters actually seem to have uncovered, indirectly, is the sociological reality that elite American law firms have a suffocatingly liberal culture. The "cliquishness" and "secrecy" and "quietness" of the lawyers who helped Paula Jones's legal team reveal not a conspiracy but the facts that a) having anything to do with a lawsuit against Bill Clinton is a career killer at white-shoe law firms and b) there are so few top-drawer conservative lawyers in America, they all tend to know each other.
Meanwhile, THE SCRAPBOOK is still awaiting an explanation of how the Clinton-hating right-wingers managed to recruit Monica Lewinsky for her crucial role in the conspiracy.