Infinite Monkeys

Bill Clinton's 'Black President' title renounced

Bill Clinton was dubbed in 1998 by Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison as America's honorary First Black President. Back then, you might remember, Clinton was suffering from his impeachment shame. And Democrats everywhere were rushing to his defense. Some defenders were especially effusive, including Morrison, who wrote for The New Yorker that Bill Clinton was:

Blacker than any actual black person who could ever be elected in our children's lifetime. After all, Clinton displays almost every trope of blackness: single-parent household, born poor, working-class, saxophone-playing, McDonald's-and-junk-food-loving boy from Arkansas.

All true. But, in Morrison's view, a little less true today. Since then — not only in our children's lifetimes, but in the 77-year-old Morrison's lifetime — an "actual black person" will be the Democratic presidential nominee. So the celebrated author has offered a revision to her 10-year-old effusive prose. Toni Morrison told Time Magazine in a public Q&A this week:

Do you regret referring to Bill Clinton as the first black President?—Justin Dews, Cambridge, Mass.

MORRISON: People misunderstood that phrase. I was deploring the way in which President Clinton was being treated, vis-à-vis the sex scandal that was surrounding him. I said he was being treated like a black on the street, already guilty, already a perp. I have no idea what his real instincts are, in terms of race.

Fine time to clarify that statement, a decade after she said it. Convenient, too, since she came out for Obama in January. How the difficult 1998 experience of Clinton — who is actually guilty of the crime of lying under oath in a deposition while being held to account for a sexual harassment law he signed, not to mention lying to his cabinet and the American people — equals the plight of "a black on the street" ... well ... I have to leave that to Morrison to elaborate on someday. Maybe, at her pace, we'll get an explanation in 2018.

Meantime, we are witnessing the continual crumbling of Clinton's legacy. He harmed his reputation with black Americans with his dismissal of Obama's victory in the South Carolina primary. And now Toni Morrison has turned her back. For a man who cares about his public perception more than anything, that's gotta hurt.

Posted by Dr. Zaius at May 10, 2008 01:12 AM