Don’t forget First Daughter’s plight

Tuesday, February 3, 1998

Don’t forget First Daughter’s plight

SCANDAL Chelsea’s transition to college life gets added load of
stress

It was bound to happen sometime. My car radio, the final beacon
of hope in my otherwise lackluster commute, turned its traitorous
back to me.

After Commuter Services, the 405 Freeway, and stack parking in
Lot 8 slowly yet persistently chipped away at my driving bliss, I
always had 12 channels (24 if you count AM) of radio waves to fall
back on. Now, all I ever hear on all of the stations is that
annoying "Titanic" song, with scenes from the movie mixed in, and
President Clinton’s newest pet project, Zippergate.

Although I am a red-blooded American male, I never thought that
I would actually become quite sick and tired of hearing people talk
about sex.

When every imaginable anchor, from the ridiculous local news
broadcasts to the national level, considers the
Commander-in-Chief’s sex life to be a more pressing matter than any
other event, insanity begins to pervade my mind.

Surprisingly, wallowing in the manic-depressive shame of my
Dodge Neon, I took comfort in the fact that things could be far
worse.

As the bearded lady and the other freaks prepare to enter center
stage in this media circus, we should stop to think about one
person who we haven’t brought to our attention before – Chelsea
Clinton. We know what the president and First Lady think about this
subject, but how can we begin to imagine what the youngest Clinton
is thinking?

I can safely say that it would truly suck to be in Chelsea
Clinton’s shoes right now. She faces all the rigors that many
students face, and then some. Let’s start with what we know. She is
fully 3,000 miles away from the family unit that raised her;
although that may be a blessing for some, it would still qualify to
make her feel somewhat uncomfortable in a new setting. In addition,
she would probably have to suffer through the gossip about her on
campus. Those students who don’t talk about Chelsea riding into the
school on her father’s coattails would probably toy with a Time
magazine story about the boy (friend) who made the First Daughter
choose to attend Stanford in the first place.

After all of that, there would be the constant pointing and
whispering every time she walks by with her Secret Service agents
always in tow. Try as they may to look inconspicuous, two
middle-aged men with MIB shades and earpiece cords snaking into
their shirts wouldn’t exactly blend into the scenery. A certain
Olympic gold-medalist on our campus still gets these
pointing-and-whispering episodes even though she has already
accrued 13 seconds on the Andy Warhol fame-o-meter. Being the
president’s daughter for another 3 years (but not if the Republican
Congress has anything to say about it) would surely bring on stares
and fingers from new students throughout her Stanford
education.

I wouldn’t want to be Chelsea when midterms roll around.
Historically, the second quarter or semester of a student’s
freshman year is when the high school house of cards comes crashing
down. You realize that everyone around you is just as smart as you
used to be (now that they’ve gotten rid of affirmative action) just
as the registrar prints the first of many C’s on your transcript.
You are under pressure to do well in what are predominantly liberal
arts GE classes that you care nothing about.

Oh, did I forget to mention that everyone is speculating about
your father’s sex life? It’s bad enough that President Clinton must
defend himself against his moral shortcomings when a fearsome
despot is controlling an oil-producing country halfway around the
world, but how is Chelsea coping with the situation? The same
problem which plagues my car radio has probably infected her dorm
stereo. Unless she can constantly tolerate Leonardo DiCaprio and
Kate Winslet trying to survive a sinking ship while Celine Dion
shrieks in the background, she’ll have to settle either for
Zippergate or complete silence.

Presidents may be made of Teflon when it comes to scandal, but
their children don’t necessarily fit into the same category. Just
look at President Reagan and his daughter, Patti Davis. Should
President Clinton one day look forward to his daughter denouncing
his policies, only to follow her words with a nude photo shoot in
"Playboy" magazine? Chelsea is in a delicate stage right now (as
most students can relate to) where frat parties and bathtub gin are
closer than the parents and the security of the family.

We’ve all dreaded breaking the news to our parents about the
toll this "momentary irresponsibility" has taken on our grades, but
we don’t hear about lawyers and media reporters brainstorming about
distinguishing characteristics of our father’s member.

Then again, Chelsea may come out of this with only a few minor
scratches. Maybe I’m not giving her due credit for being resilient.
She would be, after all, the ideal combination of the underhanded
machinations and misdeeds of her politician father and attorney
mother, would she not? A friend of mine told me that President
Nixon’s daughters came out well from the Watergate scandal, so why
shouldn’t Chelsea survive Zippergate? Maybe.

Then again, maybe not.

There are several differences between the Watergate break-in in
the 70s and the intern affair in the 90s. First, people understand
Clinton’s scandal far less than they do Watergate. It amazes me how
many people think that the President should be impeached for having
an affair. We don’t impeach world leaders for breaking one of the
Commandments. We can, however, impeach the president for pressuring
Monica Lewinsky to lie about their affair under oath. Astonishing,
isn’t it, that the two greatest scandals of the late 20th century
essentially come down to breaking-and-entering and perjury. How
mundane.

Also, Watergate and Zippergate are on opposite ends of the
scandal spectrum. President Nixon looked at a few files in DNC
headquarters. President Clinton, after illegally looking at 800 FBI
files and allegedly swindling Whitewater investors out of millions
of dollars, bends the law which he is supposed to enforce by
arranging for the vehement denial of not one, not two, but (count
’em) three extramarital affairs. Frankly, the only things that
Watergate and Zippergate have in common are the words "deep
throat."

Finally, who is to say that Nixon’s girls came out of the battle
unscathed? The media in the 70s was not nearly as offensively
intrusive as they are today. Back then, people were actually
allowed to suffer in the privacy of their own homes. For those
young freshmen who have just joined us on our lovely campus,
victims didn’t always stage press conferences (with their lawyers
by their side) in their front yards in order to cry their eyes out
in front of 20 reporters and their camera crews. Right now, the
only thing preventing us from finding out what Chelsea Clinton is
really feeling is the unspoken, unofficial moratorium of stories
about the First Daughter (a moratorium which I don’t seem to be
honoring; oh, well).

I suggest that before we turn on the tabloid news shows or pick
up the latest issue of our favorite gossip magazines, before we egg
on the media frenzy and talk about the members of our heads of
state, we should try to imagine who the far-reaching consequences
will actually touch. Barring any talk of impeachment, Bill and
Hillary will come out of this just fine. But as the first round of
midterms rolls around, ask yourselves if you could use the extra
bit of pressure that a certain Stanford student is feeling at this
very moment.Paid for by Republicans for Balekian.
[email protected]