OK, George, let’s have a talk.

 Let’s talk about your daughter, Jenna.  She’s had a few scrapes with
the law lately, and while none of them are, in themselves, all that
serious, the fact that it’s been a continuing thing suggests that there
is a very serious underlying problem.

 First, there was that embarrassing picture of a tipsy Jenna spilling
over a friend and ending up in a tangle on the barroom floor.   The
tabloids had fun with that, and those of us who don’t like you or your
followers had fun making a few jokes here and there.  Granted, the
organized smear machine that is the backbone of the American right
doesn’t have its counterpart among Democrats, and we don’t have Roger
Ailes and Rupert Murdoch and Richard Scaife and Sun Myung Moon to hire
vicious partisan liars to propagandize and smear endlessly.  You ­ and
Jenna ­ are lucky there.  No bloated demagogues of the left are going to
get on TV and compare any 12-year-old girls to dogs.  Indeed, most of
the remarks made about Jenna are meant to discomfit some of those
insufferable and sanctimonious jerks who pompously lectured us on
morality for the past eight years.

 Granted, that picture should have made Jenna realize that being a
President’s daughter is a bit different from what most kids experience.
Most of us got tipsy and fell down at parties and in bars when we were
in college and even when we were in high school.  I know I did.  My
picture never showed up on the cover of the tabloids as a result.  And
I’m Celtic: by my sophomore year of college, I was an Olympic-class
get-drunk-and-fall-down expert.  I’m sure some of them were pretty
photogenic.  A pity I wasn’t there to record them.

 Of course, before 1993, a politician’s kid could screw up a bit and
nobody would say anything about it.  You had a few incidents back
when pops was holding office, and they didn’t get much air play.
But Limbaugh made President’s kids fair game, and so here we are.
And no, I don’t think it’s a good thing.

It isn’t your fault that Limbaugh is a pig, and it certainly isn’t Jenna’s.

 Chances are you corralled Jenna in after that incident and had a little
talk with her.  At least, I hope you did.  I know all about your reputation
for being shallow and disinterested, but I’m not prepared to assume that
this would extend to ignoring a daughter who is screwing up like that.

 The second time, a couple of months ago, got a lot of press attention.
And I mean a lot.  That picture was everywhere on the internet, and a
whole slew of cartoons came out about it, including one memorable one
just last week that showed Jenna and Chelsea Clinton, and under Chelsea,
it said, “Considering attending Oxford” and under Jenna it said,
“Considering Community Service”, emblazoned with the caption, “The apple
doesn’t fall very far from the tree.”  Ouch.  When the West Wing
finished its run this year, I made a remark about how if you were the
President in that series instead of Joshua Bartlett, you wouldn’t be
standing in a cathedral, smoking and shouting in Latin because a drunk
driver killed your executive secretary; you would simply ask Dick for a
new one, and suspend Jenna’s driving privs for a week.

 By then, Jenna was the butt of jokes.

 Now there’s been a third incident, and while it’s fun sticking pins in
some of your more vitriolic and insufferable followers by throwing the
incident in their collective faces, the time has come to look at the
situation and say, this poor girl has a very serious problem.

 You see, Jenna is at a point where she cannot be circumspect.  By now,
there’s absolutely no doubt in anyone’s mind that she’s a booze-hound,
and she’s doubtlessly suffered a hell of a lot of embarrassment over
it.  Any normal teen, thrust into a situation like that, would either
just stay away from booze and trouble in general for a few years, or at
least work on staying out of the eyes of the press and the law while
doing it.  Even a kid not thrust into the spotlight would be having
serious thoughts about quitting drinking after being busted once and
then getting popped again while still on probation and before even
performing community service from the first offence.

 I know I had a minor scrape with the law.  The cops found me peeing in
some bushes (nothing personal) after a festive night at a local bar, and
hauled me in for a night in the drunk tank.  The next morning, I was
released OR, and got a thing in the mail the next week informing me the
charges of drunk in public had been dropped, and that was the end of my
criminal career.  It was also the end of my getting drunk career, because it
was pretty embarrassing, and it caused me to stop and question my relationship
with alcohol.  There’s lots of stories about you in your younger years.
Maybe you know exactly what I’m talking about.

 But we stopped of our own accords.  Jenna apparently hasn’t, and at
this point, you have to wonder if she can.

 If the stories in the media are accurate, she flashed a borrowed ID to
try and convince a restaurant owner that she was 21.  By itself, this isn’t
an extraordinary event, but in this case, Jenna, being the President’s daughter,
is one of the best-known teenagers in the country.  Do you think Chelsea could
walk into any public place without being recognized, even without pictures of
her falling on her ass in the National Enquirer?  And of course, Jenna would be
a local celebrity, which means any national notoriety is multiplied a hundred fold.

By way of example, Patty Hearst has been pretty much out of the public eye
for twenty years.  But she lives up here in far Northern California at the
Wyntoon Estate, one of the Hearst properties, and she’s recognized
immediately whenever she comes into town.  Granted, nobody makes any
kind of a fuss or anything, but when she goes back, she goes back
covered in eye tracks.  I bet she could spend all day wandering about a
big city and not be recognized once.

 In short, the chances of Jenna successfully pulling off a fake ID in
Austin are about the same as those of Strom Thurmond trying to pass
himself off as the reigning Miss America.

 If she was thinking clearly, she would know that.  But she is pretty clearly letting
the booze do the thinking for her, and at this point, that’s a sign of serious trouble.

 How serious?  Go talk to former Senator George McGovern.  He is as fine
a man as America ever produced, a war hero, a deacon in his church,
married to the same woman for 55 years, a great career in Congress, and
ran on principle in a lost cause against Richard Nixon.  By all
accounts, his wife is a fine woman.

 But his daughter had a drinking problem, one that went on for 25
years.  It didn’t make the press, this being the pre-Limbaugh days, but
her problem just got worse and worse, despite interventions and
therapies and all of that, and one morning they found her, frozen in a
snowbank in South Dakota from where she had gotten drunk and wandered
out and died.  She was 42 or so.

 Talk to George.  Yes, his story ended unhappily, but he knows that it
doesn’t have to be that way, and I bet he knows in his heart that if he
had somehow been aware of the problem early enough, maybe she wouldn’t
have had her life destroyed and stolen by booze.  Maybe.  But nobody can
say he didn’t strive heroically to save her.

 It’s probably still early enough in Jenna’s case.  I certainly hope so.
You know what you have to do next.  It’s going to take every ounce
of wisdom and compassion you and your family have.

 We ­ that is, all of us, America and the world ­ will be watching.
We’ll be rooting for Jenna.  And we’ll be watching you, taking your
measure.  It won’t be based on whether Jenna succeeds or fails in her
struggle, but in what you do to try and help her.
 

 Talk to McGovern.  And I wish the best for Jenna.
 

Liberals are fearless, confident of humanity, outgoing and optimistic
because they believe most people are pretty much like themselves.

Conservatives are fearful, mistrusting, angry, bitter and afraid because
they, too,  believe most people are pretty much like themselves.

Not dead, in jail, or a slave?
Thank a liberal!

For the finest leftist/liberal commentary,
visit http://www.snowcrest.net/zepp/zeppol.htm

For a wide selection of leftist/liberal links
visit http://www.snowcrest.net/zepp/lynx.htm