There is no less excusable human being walking on the public stage than Kenneth Starr, the bed-sniffing yahoo who led the Great Penis Chase in 1998, and who then moved on to allegedly covering up sexual crimes on-campus at Baylor, where he lost his gig because he'd allowed the university to become universally despised. Now, it appears, he has a new book-like object out, a "memoir" of his days chasing Bill Clinton's penis all around the Beltway. Naturally, he's out shilling for his product in various friendly radio and television venues.

Ironically, of course, this comes at the same time as the nomination of one of his minions, Brett Kavanaugh, to a lifetime position on the United States Supreme Court. This has prompted a number of people to recall that Starr's investigation was a complete sieve and that Kavanaugh, who later became one of the principal leakers in the office, according to several people, was hired because he had something of a reputation for being a ruthless ratfcker, as David Brock remembers in this column for NBC Think:

Brett and I were part of a close circle of cold, cynical and ambitious hard-right operatives being groomed by GOP elders for much bigger roles in politics, government and media. And it’s those controversial associations that should give members of the Senate and the American public serious pause. Call it Kavanaugh's cabal: There was his colleague on the Starr investigation, Alex Azar, now the Secretary of Health and Human Services. Mark Paoletta is now chief counsel to Vice President Mike Pence; House anti-Clinton gumshoe Barbara Comstock is now a Republican member of Congress. Future Fox News personalities Laura Ingraham and Tucker Carlson were there with Ann Coulter, now a best-selling author, and internet provocateur Matt Drudge.

So, yes, we are all going to have to think about those glorious days one more time. (One of the worst things about the current media elite is that so many of them came of age during this extended kabuki and became convinced that this is the way things are supposed to work, an attitude many of them brought with them into their coverage of Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential campaign.) On Monday night, Starr dropped by the new hit show on Fox News, Tomorrow Belongs To Me With Tucker Carlson, to pump up his book's dismal sales numbers and to remind Americans why so many of us came to spit at the mention of his name.

Cooper Neill Getty Images

Starr brought the whole act, too. The smarmy self-righteousness. The smug, innuendo-laden description of what his investigation uncovered. The utter disrespect for the law and the truth. And the cowardly passive-aggressive "concern" about the "people around" Robert Mueller, who is an actual special counsel and not a jumped-up hack. And, for those of us who'd forgotten what an unforgivably indecent human this guy is, he managed to work poor, dead Vince Foster into the conversation as well.

"As I describe in the book we were trying to get to the bottom of how, among other things, how Hillary Clinton's billing records at the Rose law firm mysteriously disappeared which was theft from the Rose law firm, and then mysteriously reappeared, in the book room where Hillary was writing a book. Now how did that happen? How did records, in those preelectronic records day, wind their way, not just out of the Rose law firm offices in Little Rock Arkansas, but to the private residence of the president and the first lady? And my -- I was haunted by what did Vince Foster do as the deputy counsel to the president, he took his own life. We knew that he was depressed, we had very significant evidence that he was clinically depressed. Why was he clinically depressed? Complex question but that's why I was haunted, why did this very successful, very bright lawyer take his own life within six months of the administration taking power. And, that haunts me to this day."

My god, what a pissant. The Foster end of the investigation had been concluded by Robert Fiske, Starr's predecessor. In fact, that's part of the reason that some influential Republican senators, who saw political advantage in keeping alive the conspiracy nonsense about Foster's having been murdered, an advantage that Starr, being a hack, was more than willing to pursue. Ken Starr never gave any more of a damn about Vince Foster, or his family, which has consistently asked that Starr and people like him leave Vince Foster to rest in peace, than he allegedly did about those women at Baylor who came to the administration with grim stories about sexual assault.

David Hume Kennerly Getty Images

Elsewhere in his new tome, Starr, as is his custom, settles for indictment by insinuation because he couldn't get one in court. From Fox News:

In it, Starr recounts a Jan. 22, 1995, deposition with both then-President Bill Clinton and the first lady about the suicide of White House adviser Vince Foster and other issues stemming from the Whitewater land deal investigation...The first lady, though, was a different story. “In the space of three hours, she claimed, by our count, over a hundred times that she ‘did not recall’ or ‘did not remember,’” Starr wrote. “This suggested outright mendacity. To be sure, human memory is notoriously fallible, but her strained performance struck us as preposterous...“[P]roving that someone knowingly lied when they said ‘I don’t recall’ or ‘I don’t remember’ is extremely difficult...What was clear was that Mrs. Clinton couldn’t be bothered to make it appear as if she were telling the truth.”

It is also difficult proving someone knowingly lied when that someone is under oath before a Senate committee seeking confirmation to a seat on the highest court in the land. Jesus, these really are the fcking mole people.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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