BUNNY MONEY

Mark Steyn finds the Democrats making

fools of themselves as they try to launch a moral crusade in Hollywood

Los Angeles WELL, the torch has been passed. It was a piece of brush doused in kerosene handed from one rioter to another during the live- lier bits of the Rage Against the Machine demo outside the Democratic Convention this week. Rage Against the Machine is a techno-industrial-anarcho-satanic-goth band whose sharp, politically aware lyrics demanding radical social change are, hap- pily, completely unintelligible.

Inside the Staples Center itself, mean- while, the musical fare is somewhat jollier. On Tuesday, in keeping with the retro theme of the night — Jesse Jackson, Ted Kennedy — the national anthem was sung by the guy who played Al in Happy Days. If you don't remember Happy Days, it was a Seventies sitcom starring the Fonz, a cool guy who got all the chicks and who had an awkward, nerdy, uncool friend. There, in a nutshell, is the Democratic party in this week of transition: Happy Days is here again. So, while the rioters were breaking down the perimeter fences to the cheery sounds of Rage Against the Machine, inside the convention centre the Demo- cratic party was deeply immersed in its own Silent Rage Against the Machine, the machine being Albert Gore Jnr, the Android-American the party has contrived to lumber itself with this fall.

Looking forward to a week of Democrat- ic hedonism, I arrived in Los Angeles to find good news and bad news. The bad news was that Representative Loretta Sanchez had caved-in to Al Gore and moved her fundraiser for Hispanic Democrats from the Playboy Mansion to Universal Studios. Al had deemed the Play- boy gig 'inappropriate' and played hardball with Ms Sanchez: after weeks of tense negotiations, he cancelled her speaking slot at the convention, withdrew her accredita- tion, threatened to remove her as co-chair, and made her cry on TV. In Baghdad, Sad- dam must be dreading a Gore administra- tion. Presumably, this is part of his `distancing' himself from Clinton: like Bill, he trashes young women and destroys their reputations, but without getting oral sex from them first. Al, incidentally, is happy to take zillions of dollars from Hugh Hefner and the Playboy foundation, but you have to draw a line somewhere: show me the money, but don't show me the bunny.

So Ms Sanchez surrendered. But the good news was that Hef, a big-time Dem donor, had decided to throw a party anyway. Invita- tion only. Hah! As in Philadelphia, I was betting there'd be the usual heavy-handedly ineffectual security, and besides, by the time I'd gone the short $400 cab ride from the airport, the evening was late and the party was already breaking up. 'I'm with Barney Brannen,' I said, sailing past.

I got about five yards before the guy called after me. 'Who the fuck is Barney Brannen?' I turned round and shot him a look of withering pity. 'You're putting me on, right?' Barney is a neighbour of mine back in New Hampshire, a school board member now running for the Democratic nomination for the state's 2nd Congres- sional District. I was hoping he'd be out here in LA, but apparently he thinks it's more important to be seen at the ox-pulling and dairy exhibit back at the North Haver- hill Fair. It was a big blow to me, as he's my only contact in the Democratic party. So, in retaliation, I've been using his name all week long to crash the hottest parties in town. By Wednesday, they were saying, `Oh, yeah, Brannen. V-P, Development at Paramount, right?' If he can get me into Barbra Streisand's $25,000-per-ticket party Thursday night, I may even endorse him.

Anyway, up at Hefs, it was mostly media and bunnies. They both had the same vacant expression, though the media had smaller breasts. Hef must have been there because I saw him the following morning on the news, in his bathrobe, talking about how the D in Democratic party stood for Diversity and not, as one might have judged, his favourite cup-size (breast-wise, Hef has no interest in diversity). I thought I spotted the identical twins he's dating Mandy and Brandi? Brandi and Sandee? Sandee and Candiii? Candiii and Gandhi? Whatever. Funnily enough, the dozens of babes all looked like twin sisters, as does a large chunk of LA's womanhood. I thought I saw Candiii and Randdyy again on Sun- day, but apparently it was a couple of AI and Tipper's gorgeous go-go Gore gals.

A mutual friend told me that he hated being invited over during Hef's married phase. The kids' junk was everywhere: you'd be walking through the grotto and gash your foot open on Thomas the Tank Engine; Play-Do was clogging up the jacnzzi. Happi- ly, the Starr report and the House impeach- ment managers roused lief from his domestic torpor and persuaded him to step up to his responsibilities as America's iiber- swinger, fighting one last battle in the sexual revolution. Now, having ponied up zillions of dollars to the cause, he finds his party's vice- presidential nominee is a man who thinks Friends is unfit for broadcast, regards Holly- wood as a purveyor of toxic trash, hands out `Silver Sewer' awards to the most egregious examples and makes guest appearances on the TV show of his friend Pat Robertson. Joe Lieberman is not the kind of guy you wanna be sharing a hot tub with.

The last time the Dems were in town it was 1960 and Hef was still dating Randdyy and Xandhi's gran'ma. JFK was running with the Rat Pack. I'm not a great fan of the remorseless convergence of political muscle and Hollywood glamour, but, if I have to choose, I'll take Kennedy and Sina- tra over Clinton and Kenny G. Back in the Sixties, Bobby used to get Frank to set up sessions with Marilyn at Peter Lawford's beach house. Lawford was, of course, the Kennedys' brother-in-law. Similarly, Clin- ton's brother-in-law is married to a daugh- ter of Senator Barbara Boxer who used to work for Rob Fried, the producer of Godzilla and So I Married an Axe Murderer. Hollywood chic, you can't beat it.

But that, was before the celebrity squares — the Gores and Liebermans — moved in and decided to appropriate the Republi- cans' religiosity shtick. The Rat Pack days are over and the Mouseketeers have come to town — Al, Tipper, Joe, Hadassah (just sew a couple of big Mickey ears on the yarmulka). Alarmed by the GOP conven- tion, Al has decided that this is a `values'- driven election and he's not going to let the Republicans hang that Monica dress on him. Personally, I think Dubya's just wind- ing him up. The GOP has no intention of running on 'character'. Every time the Republicans make Clinton's character the issue, they lose, and the adulterer and for- nicator wins. So this time they've hit on the ingenious wheeze of panicking Gore into making Clinton's character the issue. Al is now trying to make the argument that the Clinton years have been good for America despite Clinton's lapses in a town where the big honchos believe that the Clinton years have been good for America because of Clinton's lapses. Who cares about bal- ancing the budget in a burg that greenlight- ed Waterworld? What counts about Clinton is that he got oral sex from his subordinates and resisted the efforts of that crazy hymn- singing prosecutor to nail him for it. One Hollywood contributor tells me that he takes Al's attempts to distance himself from Bill as a personal insult. 'Gore needs to get out of Clinton's shadow?' he scoffed. `That's a joke. Clinton's shadow is the best thing that ever happened to him.'

`But it's essentially the shadow of Clin- ton's penis.'

`That's what people love about the guy,' said my friend, articulating a theory that's fine as far as it goes, which would appear to be about as far east as Palm Springs. Just how insane does a presidential candi- date have to be to launch a moral renewal campaign in Los Angeles? This was a question I pondered all week at some of the most debauched soirees in town.

But, even at a Democratic Convention, one is obliged occasionally to look in on the convention. And, on the floor itself, it was the usual Democratic shambles. For a party so cosy with the showbiz types, they seem incapable of producing anything approxi- mating to 'good television'. The podium makes the speakers look squashed up against the rear video screen and flanks them with empty press-stands (no self- respecting hack wants to sit back there looking at Hillary's butt all night). And no one bothers paying any attention to the non-famous speakers, no matter how many fashionable minority groups they belong to. Jimmy Carter entered the room and the Hispanic single mom at the podium was lucky she wasn't trampled in the stampede. I hadn't the slightest desire to get up close and personal with the Peanut President, but he's what passes for a political heavyweight in the thin ranks of the Dems. Thrown for- ward by the deranged groupies behind me, I wound up thrust up against him like Clin- ton with Kathleen Willey. He took it well, flashing me the famously wan smile I haven't seen since the Iran hostage crisis. 'Haah,' he said. 'Haah,' I said. Recognising an obvious security risk, his aide tried to clear a path — or, as she kept putting it, `Please. I just need a small chute.' I believe these were the very words Monica was using to Bill by their third date.

On the other side of the floor, I got caught up in a much better class of melee and bumped into Barbra Streisand. She looked smaller than she does in The Mirror Has Two Faces, and much smaller than she does in Hello, Dolly!, but slightly bigger than in the cross-dressing scenes in Yentyl. As always when she's demonstrating her serious political side, she was dressed in the shapeless garb of a designer bag lady. I was looking forward to reminding her of the in-depth 14-second conversation we'd shared a few years back, but her security's much better than Carter's and I was swat- ted aside like a bug.

Mulling over these two encounters, I began to appreciate the poignancy of the Democratic party's predicament: they've got Barbra, Kim Basinger and Melissa Etheridge, the sapphic singer who opened the convention with her rendition of 'Amer- ica the Beautiful' (not all lesbians are crazy for Bush). But the party's political stars are back in the Happy Days era — Jimmy Carter, Jesse Jackson, the Kennedys. Bill Clinton turned the chaotic ensemble come- dy of the Democratic party into a star vehi- cle. But now the star is gone and they've turned the show over to a guy who's not box-office. The Democratic party of Barbra, Melissa, Hef, Harrison Ford, Stevie Won- der and all the rest is now an all-star sup- porting cast in search of a leading man. If Bill Clinton's problem is that he couldn't `complete', Al Gore's is that, as they say in Hollywood, he can't open.