Woke up, put on clothes, went to work.

Last night I went to a screening of The Hunting of the President, a documentary about the Republicans who were trying to bring down Bill Clinton. Afterwards, Clinton spoke. He said that the important message is that the Democratic way of running gov't was proven to be more successful than the Republican way, and so to take the debate off of social and economic policies, the right tries to "demonize" him and attack him personally. He also said that it's important that post-Cold War, we figure out which direction to take gov't in, and there's a real division in the country that the right wants to take advantage of.

The film, as Newsday reports today, spent too much time with trifles and interviewing Arkansas weirdos, but did show how the gov't tried to flummox Susan McDoogal into saying things about Whitewater that she didn't believe to be true. There were also some funny moments.

At one point during Clinton's after-film speech, he said, "I'm just a guy from Arkansas." That lawyerly device has been satirized on Saturday Night Live ("I'm just an unfrozen caveman" in the skit "Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer") and it was a tad irking to hear it after he was in office eight years.

On another note, Moby, Kurt Vonnegut, and Al Franken were in the audience. Thanks to my friend Matt for getting me in.