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1994 Movies and Partisan Politics DIANE WALDMAN Two political cartoons by Mike Peters help to illustrate the year’s zeitgeist: in the first, a man in a voting booth stands poised before a ballot offering a choice between “Thief,” “Liar,” “Crook,” “Adulterer,” and “Psycho,” and in the second, labeled “Foreign Gump,” a Bill Clinton/ Forrest Gump composite sitting on a park bench proclaims to an onlooker, “My Haiti policy is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re going to get” (“1994 Perspectives,” 65, 70). Together they articulate something fundamental about the year’s mood: hostility toward politicians and politics as usual, and the use of popular movie figures for partisan political purposes. President Bill Clinton began the year with a radio address that spoke to his goals. The passage of legislation to guarantee health insurance for all Americans would be, he said, his number-one priority, but the plan stalled as critics decried administration proposals as “socialized medicine.” Although another Clinton goal, economic expansion, was achieved according to various measures—the gross domestic product grew modestly, inflation remained relatively low, and the unemployment rate fell—such successes masked other economic realities, such as increased reliance on part-time and temporary workers and a decline in real wages for many Americans (McDermott). In part, contending with two major scandals distracted the Clinton administration from its professed goals. The first became known as the Whitewater affair, which involved a series of financial and real estate deals made by Bill and Hillary Clinton in Arkansas in the 1980s. The second was a sexual harassment lawsuit filed against Clinton by Paula Corbin Jones, a former Arkansas state employee, the first civil suit ever brought against a sitting president. In November, Democrats suffered a crushing defeat in the midterm elections. Riding on voters’ concerns over crime, taxes, and a general antiincumbent sentiment, Republicans won control of both the House and the Senate for the first time in forty years. Led by Georgia congressman Newt Gingrich, the GOP promised increases in defense spending, cuts in taxes 115 and welfare benefits, and attacks on affirmative action and public funding of the arts, all enumerated in its preelection “Contract with America.” Both major parties focused on crime, leading to harsh new legislation passed in August. The issue was legitimated in part through extensive coverage of sensational criminal trials that mobilized fears around gender, sexuality , race, and class. Lorena Bobbitt was found not guilty by reason of temporary insanity for cutting off her husband’s penis. Lyle and Erik Menendez were accused of killing their parents (this court action first ended in a mistrial). Following a widely televised flight from police, actor and former football star O. J. Simpson was arrested for the murder of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ron Goldman. Susan Smith told the nation her missing children had been kidnapped at gunpoint “by a black man” only to confess several days later that she had drowned them herself. Xenophobia was evident in California’s passage of Proposition 187, an initiative denying undocumented immigrants most public benefits and ultimately blocked by a federal judge’s temporary restraining order. Fears of foreigners were also fueled by the trial and conviction of three Palestinians and one Egyptian national for their roles in the previous year’s bombing of the World Trade Center. Outside the United States, civil war and genocide raged in Rwanda, and Russia invaded Chechnya. After a threatened U.S. invasion, President JeanBertrand Aristide returned to power in Haiti. There were hopeful signs: South Africa held its first fully multiracial elections, and Nelson Mandela was inaugurated as president. Bosnian Serb forces withdrew heavy weapons from Sarajevo and signed a “cessation of hostilities” agreement. British officials and Sinn Fein representatives began formal peace negotiations in December. Although talks on Palestinian self-rule stalled after a Jewish settler shot twenty-nine Muslim worshipers inside the Tomb of the Patriarchs in February, Israel withdrew forces from the Gaza Strip and the West Bank town of Jericho in May, raising hopes for a resolution to this bloody conflict. Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat, Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, and Israeli foreign minister Shimon Peres were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, and Israel and Jordan formally ended the state of war that had existed between their countries since 1948. The deaths of former president Richard M. Nixon and former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis prompted recollections (and revisions...

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