Managing his anxieties
A new Hulu documentary on former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that debuted Friday includes former President Bill Clinton giving an explanation on why he had a White House affair with 22-year-old intern Monica Lewinsky, according to the United Kingdom's Daily Mail.
"Bill reveals that at the time he met Lewinsky the pressure of the job made him feel like a boxer who had done 30 rounds," the newspaper reported, "and he looked at Lewinsky as 'something that will take your mind off it for a while'."
It was, the former president said, one of the "things I did to manage my anxieties."
Clinton also said his explanation doesn't excuse what he did.
"It's not a defense," he is said to say in the documentary, "it's an explanation. I feel awful."
Nevertheless, Clinton said, Lewinsky should move on. When things don't return to "normal," he is quoted as saying, you have "got to decide how to define normal."
Uninformed View-ers
Watching ABC's 'The View" for political intelligence makes as much sense as cooking eggs in a toaster. Last week, two of the hosts displayed their remarkable insight for knowing little about Dr. Jill Biden, the wife of the former vice president of the United States, and about the qualifications to be the vice president.
In the first instance, host Whoopi Goldberg touted Dr. Biden as a great doctor and suggested she'd be a great surgeon general in a potential Joe Biden presidential administration. Biden's degree, though, is in education and not medicine. And, during her husband's vice presidential term, she even taught for a time.
In the second instance, host Joy Behar was talking to former presidential contender - and co-host for a day - Andrew Yang. Once again, the conversation turned to Biden choices.
"Besides yourself," Behar asked, "who do you think would be a great VP?"
"Like you said," Yang answered, "there are a lot of great choices. I do think that if Joe is the front-runner, which he is right now, he needs to shore up his support among young people in particular, and I think his running mate might have a good opportunity to do that."
"AOC (U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez) would be a good choice except she's a Bernie person," Behar interrupted.
"She's also not old enough," co-host Meghan McCain said.
"She's not? As a VP?" Behar wondered.
"You have to be 34," McCain said.
Actually, it's 35, but who's counting? AOC is 30 and is hardly congresswoman material, much less vice president material.
Not a Bernie Bro
Establishment Democrats and Republicans both went crazy recently when singer Garth Brooks posted a photo of himself wearing a Sanders jersey after a recent sold-out show in Detroit.
The Democrats couldn't understand why the country singer, who entertained at an inaugural celebration prior to former President Barack Obama taking office in 2009 and chose not to perform at President Donald Trump's inaugural celebration in 2017, would not back Obama's vice president, Joe Biden, who is running for president this year.
Meanwhile, Republicans, who were sure Brooks was one of them like many country singers, couldn't understand why he would support a democratic socialist for president.
Turns out, they were both wrong. Brooks, appropriately in Detroit, was wearing the No. 20 jersey of former Detroit Lions running back and National Football League Hall of Famer Barry Sanders.
Fans at the concert probably got it, but online fans who saw the photo lost their lunch. They'd undoubtedly forgotten the football star, who retired in 1999, or never heard of him in the first place.
Not buying it
Former presidential candidate Tom Steyer, the billionaire California hedge fund investor who ended his bid after the South Carolina primary, put it all on the line in the Palmetto State.
In heavily courting the state's black vote, he poured funds into the state's black community, "supporting black businesses, vendors and the ads that have inundated," according to NPR.
In Georgetown a day before the vote, his campaign gave out T-shirts, including one that proclaimed "Reparations are Past Due" and another that said "Invest in HBCUs" (historically black colleges and universities).
At a rally at Allen University, a historically black college in Columbia, Grammy-winning gospel artist Yolanda Adam sang "America the Beautiful," and rapper Juvenile entertained. At one point, the 62-year-old candidate even jumped on stage and danced with Juvenile, the former member of the hip hop group the Hot Boys.
In the end, Steyer got 11.3% of the state's vote (including 13% of the black vote) and no delegates, and dropped out. His money couldn't buy him what he wanted.