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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWbNK5JvTb8 Arsenio: Did you ever think about playing professionally? Clinton: Yeah, and I liked it, tonight, being on the other side of the posse. Arsenio: Yeeaaaahhhh….. Clinton: Do you know what your drummer said? “If this music thing doesn’t work out you can always run for President ” Arsenio: [to drummer] Ahahahah, you’re twist’, Chuck  Arsenio: You carry a lot of people with you! You got more people than Hammer! Ahhahah, you know? A lot of guys in your posse today… but I’m glad you’re here. Clinton: Thank you Arsenio: Let’s get right down to things… what do you like: the old Elvis or the uhh… “Bootstamp”, you know, I know you’re an Elvis fan… Clinton: Hey, I lead a national crusade for the young Elvis Arsenio: Really? Clinton: Yeah… you know, when you get old… I mean, he got fat like me… oh, I have to think it has to be the young Elvis, that’s when he had all his energy and real raw, fresh power… Arsenio: You were here recently… I didn’t get to meet you… you went to my church Clinton: I sure did. Met your pastor. He’s a wonderful man. Arsenio: he is, he is. He has, guided me well… when I talk to kids at church, when I talk to kids in D.A.R.E. classrooms, there are a lot of young people who don’t think they should vote at all anymore. They feel that you’re all the same. Why are you not the same? Clinton: I’m not the same because.. … I’m talking about things in this election that I’ve been working on for years that I really care about. I was in South Central L.A. three years before the riots occurred. I came out here and all the politicians always go to Hollywood to meet the movie stars and the entertainers, to raise money, and I gave a speech here three years ago and I asked to go South Central L.A. and meet with people from UNO and SCOC, those community organizations, because I could see how terrible it was and how things could get out of hand.  I met with a dozen sixth graders about my daughter’s age who told me their biggest fear in life is being shot going to and from school. The reason those kids should vote is that this country has been around for more than two hundred years, because more than half the time the people have been right and have elected the kind of leadership we needed to move our country through crisis periods. And we’re in trouble now. We got a lot of problems. And the only way that people can have a say is when they’re in the driver’s seat. You’re in the driver’s seat at election time, you don’t get in a car you can’t drive. Arsenio: In South Central L.A. we had our riots, everybody knows about it, I’ve always said that that was just the spark, this Rodney King situation, that was the spark that lit the flame but, there’s a problem there. Do you understand what’s going on, do you understand why that happened? Clinton: I think I understand some of why it happened. A teacher told me after it occurred when I was here with your congresswoman Maxine Waters at her home, this teacher said to me “Now after we clean up this mess that the riots caused, let’s clean up the mess that caused the riots.” And I thought that was the best one liner to describe where we ought to be going. We have millions of people in this country today who just don’t feel connected to the life the rest of us want them to live. You tell them to register and vote, get an education and go to work, they say “Yeah, I have a job, but if I deal drugs I can make money.” You tell them that they ought to register to vote and they say “Why? I’ll still be unsafe on my streets.” You tell them to register to vote and they look at most people in South Central L.A… they obeyed the law, they didn’t loot, they didn’t burn, they didn’t riot, they didn’t steal… but a lot of them are still living below the poverty line even though they’re working forty hours a week.  So there are real problems there that have divorced a whole lot of Americans from the rest of us and I think what this elections about, in a way, is reconnecting more folks to the American Dream, making them feel they’re a part of our community, making them feel that tomorrow can be better than today. There are too many people that don’t feel a part of the community, and that are convinced that tomorrow won’t be better than today. I hardly ever meet an American who isn’t worried about something about the future. Arsenio: You know, when I think about racism, I always, as a black man, I always think about the racism that I experience. During the riots I realized that there’s a lot of kinds of racism we’re suffering from, racism against a lot of different peoples. We all hate each other for something… we noticed the Korean situation, we noticed the anger at white faces, no matter who they were. We noticed the hostility towards black faces no matter who they are. How do we deal with racism in America, because it’s getting out of hand. Clinton: We’ve got to do two things. First we’ve got to find ways for people to talk to each other again in a regular consistent basis, not just racial lines but across income lines. You and I could live in an integrated society, but it would be a very narrow strata. But if you go South Central L.A. or most places in America, most working people and low income people, they don’t have the kinds of interracial contacts that people who are in a stronger income group have. So you’ve got to have basic contacts.  Second thing we’ve got to realize is, a lot of the racism that was raging in Los Angles dealt with what people don’t do rather than what they do. People that feel like they don’t even exist to people of other races until they enter a department store and people follow them around to make sure they don’t steal anything. Day in and day out they get up, they trudge through their lives, they live in substandard housing in unsafe streets, they work their guts out, they fall further behind. Nobody even knows they’re there until there’s a riot. So I think that in the nineties this whole business of economic empowerment has got to be in the center of the civil rights movement. You’ve got to… a lot of the problems just relate to … like the tensions between the African American and the Korean community. I talk to a lot of black folks who are convinced that the Koreans get preferential treatment at the banks Arsenio: For loans and.. Clinton: For loans, but what they don’t know is those folks have an entrepreneurial culture, they work together, they loan each other money. They come out of a culture that favors small businesses. Most of the black families who moved to Los Angeles when they did came out of the South and came here for manufacturing jobs. When the manufacturing jobs went away there were only small businesses. Nobody stepped in and said “Here’s how you get a loan, we’re going to make sure that loans are made in this community, we’re gonna make sure you learn how to manage these businesses and create markets…” None of that was ever done. So I think a lot of this problem is that a lot of folks are just invisible to one another until they raise hell. And you can’t run a country that way, we’ve got to know we’re around all the time. Arsenio: Let’s take a quick commercial. We’ll be right back with Governor Bill Clinton  Arsenio: I’m sure you’re familiar with Ross Perot’s quote about unfaithful men, unfaithful people, and homosexuals. He’s been backpedaling a little bit… what do you think about the initial quote, or any element of it? Clinton; I thought it was wrong. I think there’s.. you know, he has the right to hold high standards of personal behavior and think what he will about right and wrong but, my whole idea is that we don’t have a person to waste in this country, and we should make maximum use of everyone’s talents. I don’t even know how he’s proposing to know about the private life of people he would hire in the Federal Government, is he gonna hire investigators and figure out what’s going on in their lives? I just thought it was something better left unsaid. And I also believe that this is a fundamentally tolerant, but not a permissive society. We’ve got to be tolerant… we’re very different people, this is the most diverse country on Earth. And we need everybody. We need everybody, we’re all in this together. Let me just give you an example. I think it’s terrible that that woman who won a Bronze Star in the Tet Offensive in Vietnam was kicked out of the National Guard, because she said she’s a lesbian. She gave a lot to this country and I think she should have been allowed to serve. Now I know my view may be unpopular but that’s the way I feel. I feel there ought to be a presumption in this country that we need everybody we can get to perform to the maximum of their God-given capacities. That’s why I’ve worked so hard on a good economic program, that’s why I believe so strongly in education. I come from this in a different way. I want to include people., I don’t want to exclude people. Arsenio: When I look at you on paper, it’s like the perfect guy… Rhodes Scholar, Governor… tell me about your flaws. What are your shortcomings?  Clinton: We don’t have enough time! We’d have to have a bunkin’ party [?!?] if you wanted to listen to all my flaws… I have a lot of shortcomings. One of them is even at this age, I was first elected Governor at your age… Arsenio: See, that’s embarrassing. He was Governor and I’m like (pumping fist circularly) “LET’S GET BU-SY!” Clinton: “Let’s Get Busy!” ought to be the motto of this country right now. But… even now after all these years I still sometimes work hard instead of smart. That is, I’m a workaholic, I’m always charming and doing things… and sometimes I lose the forest for the trees. Sometimes you do so many things you don’t do enough. I think at the end of this campaign a lot of people may not know exactly what I want to do as President, because I have so many ideas. My mind is always brimming. And I think I need to learn to focus my comments better so I can communicate better with people who don’t know me very well. And I always need to learn that you have so little time, there’s so precious little time, that you really have to be like a laser beam with your words and your actions. You’ve got to really focus. You’ve got to have that mental discipline that sometimes still my workaholic tendencies don’t permit me to have. I think that’s one problem. And I think sometimes I think everything can be worked out, you know. Sometimes you can’t work everything out. You just gotta cut it. And you got to know when to cut it, and when to work things out. And that’s something I’ve done a lot of work on, trying to make sure I overcome that weakness. Arsenio: Speaking of focusing and communicating, I know you’ve been through this a million times, but can we get into this smoking a joint thing again? Clinton: That’s why I play saxaphone. You blow into it, so you have to inhale or you die. Clinton: I’ve tried to do it. I just couldn’t! I wasn’t trying to get off the hook. Arsenio: Let’s.. because I’ve heard different people discuss it, I’ve done my jokes. Okay, you got the joint in your hand… somebody says that word, you all heard it in college, E-A-R… (miming passing a joint while holding a hit )“‘ere!” And then what do you do at that point? Clinton: I took it, and I tried to smoke it just like a cigarette. But I’d never smoked a cigarette before. Arsenio: You’re not a drinker either, right? Clinton: No. Well, I never had a drink until I was twenty two, I do now a little bit but not much… but anyway, I did my best, I mean I… I tried, but I just couldn’t inhale it. It’s another one of those things I’ve tried to do and failed at in life. I was twenty two, twenty three years old, I gave it my best shot… Arsenio: I know how it is dealing with the press. If you could explain it over again, would you do it any differently? Clinton: Yeah, I’d have just said “yes.” You know… here’s the deal. When a politician says something, if you’re in politics, the cynicism about politicians is so great people thought “Well, this guy calculated this whole answer, and he calculated ‘well, maybe you won’t burn me so bad if I say I didn’t inhale’”. That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard of! They asked me a question I didn’t know they were going to ask, and I gave an honest answer. And that “I didn’t inhale” was a nervous afterthought. I was sort of laughing about it after twenty two years. But I got beat up about it because everybody thought I calculated this answer. Maybe I should be more calculating than I am, but you folks will never get good politicians if all you want is somebody who calculates every word they say, every deed they do, and their whole life becomes like a robot, an automaton.  
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May 25, 2023 05:59
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I'd have voted for him
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May 25, 2023 11:59
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Prescott has issued a correction as of 11:20 on May 26, 2023 |
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May 26, 2023 11:16
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