Daily Inspiration Quote by Kenneth Starr

Starr’s line is a legal alibi disguised as a mission statement. “Assigned” pushes agency upward, toward the attorney general, as if the independent counsel were a neutral instrument rather than a political actor with discretion. The grammar does the ethical work: the subject is not “I chose,” but “I was assigned.” That passive framing anticipates the central critique of Starr’s role in the Clinton investigation - that the probe expanded and intensified beyond its original remit - and preemptively narrows his responsibility to mere obedience.

Then comes the talismanic phrase “to do a job,” a blue-collar idiom meant to sound unglamorous, even tedious. It’s a rhetorical move to strip away the spectacle that surrounded the investigation and replace it with procedural inevitability. In a media ecosystem hungry for scandal, Starr tries to recast himself as the opposite of a headline: a functionary.

The punchy, almost clinical “find out whether crimes were committed” performs a crucial bit of subtextual jujitsu. It suggests there were always two equal possibilities - crime or no crime - and that he simply went where the facts led. But “find out” also implies authority to define what counts as criminal, which statutes to foreground, and how aggressively to interpret intent. In the Clinton-era context, when legal questions about perjury and obstruction blurred into moral theater about sex and power, this sentence attempts to cordon off politics from prosecution. That’s precisely why it works: it offers procedural innocence in a story that never stayed procedural.