Colby Cosh writes that Bill Clinton is suffering from an enormous case of what Alvin Toffler once dubbed Future Shock:
Readers will recall that Clinton’s presidential campaigns took place in 1993 and 1997–the age of steam-engines and chaste courtship, when the public obtained the news of the realm by means of telegraph, tintype, and whispered rumours passed along by drunken stagecoach drivers. In that vanished time, no one ever dreamed that a candidate would have to account for fleeting images and haunting “sound bites” blown up beyond all reasonable significance by as-yet-unimagined mediums like “tele-vision”. Indeed, little is known about the electoral methods of the period, but it is thought that chief magistrates were chosen by assemblies of eminent citizens who scrawled names on pieces of broken pottery that were then cast into giant ceremonial urns.
At the preternaturally advanced age of 61, Mr. Clinton is clearly no longer capable of participating in the new, unrecognizable democratic cyberprocess. He is obviously better suited to be exhibited publicly, in humane fashion, as a geriatric wonder who, by God’s grace, is still capable of gumming soft foods and forming the occasional coherent sentence.
Fortunately, there’s a new museum that’s perfect for both Bill, and the sclerotic medium of his all-too-fleeting glory days.
(Via 5’F)
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