So there was this Newsweek cartoon from the late 1990s that I’ve never understood and has sort of bugged my mind.
I can’t find the original cartoon. But it was the painting Whistler’s Mother, except that on the small picture frame on the wall were the words: “Subpoena: Kenneth Starr.”
Decades later, I’ve still never gotten it. I know Starr was the guy investigating Bill Clinton at the time. But what’s the joke?
I can’t off the top off my head remember the details of the Starr investigation, but sounds to me like the joke was that he was reaching out to anyone, just to find some dirt on Clinton.
Or maybe that Clinton was such a horndog that he’d try to bang any woman he saw?
I dunno, just a couple of WAGs.
It seems risque for Newsweek but could it be the dress and that the handkerchief that she’s holding looking like a certain stain.
Well, that was the thing, right? The investigation was initially about Whitewater, which then greatly expanded to cover a wide range of other topics, including sexual harassment, potential ethics charges, etc.
Depending on what year it was (probably before the Starr report came out and before anything about Lewinsky had been leaked by Starr’s office?), it’s possible it was merely referring to the wide net Ken Starr cast, since Whitewater itself wasn’t going to play out very well and they were digging into pretty much anything/everything they possibly could.
C’mon Dopers, put a little imagination into this. We have to come up with something better than this.
reddit says it has the explanation of the joke, but none of the links go to the right joke.
Image search doesn’t have the photo, but has ones with Hillary’s face photoshopped on the body.
Bill Clinton + Whistle blower + subpoena has to have something to do with blow jobs. That was the line at the time, “But Clinton got a blow job!”
Did Whistler ever paint his father? 
I’m pretty sure he’s hidden under the dress. Not quite a blowjob joke, but getting closer.
BTW: what is the background picture in the original?
Looks like a farmscape, not a lot of detail.
The joke is that Whistler’s Mother has become an icon of maternal simplicity and purity, and the absolute last person that you would expect to be involved in an investigation of sexual misconduct.
From there you can go either way, depending on your political leanings. You can take it as a joke on Ken Starr for running a fishing expedition, or on Clinton himself for being such a horndog.
Geez, I hope that’s not it. That’s not funny, just lame. 
Some of these are funnier than that:
