Joseph Epstein is onto something when he compares Hillary Clinton to Lady Macbeth. In his hilariously twisted No Way to Treat a First Lady, Chris Buckley based a character on Mrs. Clinton, Elizabeth MacMann, who earned the nickname “Lady BethMac.” Writing about Bill Clinton, Florence King borrowed an assessment of Caroline of Brunswick: “Fate wrote her a most tremendous tragedy, but she played it in tights.”
Had he been an actor, Bill Clinton would have been perfectly suited to playing comical lugs like Pseudolus in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. That he’s dragged poor Hillary around on all his sordid escapades is part of why there’s a whiff of tragedy about her. Given her skills at survival and her steely determination, her cool reason and calculated bursts of emotion, I think the role she was born to play is Eleanor of Aquitaine in The Lion in Winter.
I don’t think it’s entirely possible to understand Hillary without understanding that on some level she always sees herself as the beleagured underdog. She was a Goldwater girl and then one of the original McGovernites, which were both spectacularly losing causes. After the healthcare debacle, she famously said, “Being a Cubs fan prepares your for life—and Washington.”
Hillary Clinton, a former Methodist Sunday School teacher, almost certainly knows this mantra of John Wesley’s:
Do all the good you can,
By all the means you can,
In all the ways you can,
In all the places you can,
At all the times you can,
To all the people you can,
As long as ever you can.
I’m sure that this is how she started off, with Wesley written on her heart.
But she wasn’t content with merely losing. She was a scrapper. After loss after loss after painful loss, she felt justified in fighting back, by any means necessary. So she did what she saw others (most notably her husband) do: spin and stretch and shade the truth. It worked for him, bought her off and much of the nation—why wouldn’t it work for her?
So she adjusted and twisted herself. Camille Paglia had a shrewd insight when comparing Hillary Clinton to a drag queen:
Hillary — whom her Wellesley College classmates called “Sister Frigidaire” — was a natural as a lawyer, but she had to learn how to be a politician, where flexibility and gladhanding cordiality are crucial. Year by year in Arkansas, especially after Bill was defeated in his first reelection bid, Hillary, a high-achieving firstborn child with two recessive brothers, taught herself how to act like a woman. The smoothly efficient First Lady we see before us, with her chameleonlike blonde hairdos and charismatic smile, is actually a drag queen, the magnificent final product of a long process of self-transformation from butch to femme.
I suspect that Hillary has sublimated her rage against Bill (his constant infidelities must have been a hideous wound) and turned it against her own enemies, which now include much of the media, many Democrats, and virtually all Republicans. Her desire to do good, which Mike Kelly noted in his Saint Hillary piece, has become twisted in her desire to win the presidency. She’s changed her appearance, ceded her home base (it’s ironically fitting that her chief rival is a transplant to her native Illinois) and became a Yankees fan. So many compromises—and for what? For a media that ridicules her every move with barely veiled sexism and old allies who’ve jumped on the Obama bandwagon, now that she’s no longer the fresh new thing.
Her road to the presidency is paved with good intentions. But she’s been hurt so many times and has justified to herself any hurtful actions she’ll take as being done for the greater good. Her life would make for a great tragedy. One can feel, as Bill Kristol does, a certain grudging respect, if not pity and fear—there will be no catharsis till it’s all over, God knows when. This psychodrama belongs on a stage, not the White House.
Hubbard posted this at 10:17 AM HKT on Monday, April 28th, 2008 as Audacity of Hype, Journalism, Walking the Cat Backwards
3 Comments »
Nobody does more to make Andrew Sullivan look foolish…than Andrew Sullivan. Here he is, screaming “racist!” at another guilt-by-association-by-association republican ad saying you can’t vote for a local candidate because he’s endorsed Obama and Obama attends Christ Trinity. These ads are stupid and weak; they are not racist.
There should be no problem with Wright-quoting ads being used against Obama, though it goes without saying that Sullivan and others will cry foul. Obama attended a racist church for years, but we all have to respect that. If we don’t, and then have the audacity to point that it, it’s because we’re racist.
Tom posted this at 10:16 AM HKT on Monday, April 28th, 2008 as Race, What Ever Happened to Andrew Sullivan?
2 Comments »
Apollo writes:
One can be tough and be emotional, as Hillary is proving. She’s taking punches and she’s giving them, and she’s not whining. I can’t look at that, and then look at the constant whining of McCain and Obama, and not feel a certain affinity for the woman who’s behaving more like a man than either of them. They’re wanting to be the frickin’ president, but here they are crying like a bunch of third graders that the other side’s cheating at kickball.
So you’re suggesting that Hillary Clinton, corporate lawyer and First Lady, is tougher than John McCain, combat veteran who held up under torture and is criss crossing the country at 72 campaigning to be president? That’s a neat illustration of how poorly political behavior maps onto evaluating toughness. Your metaphors of choice only exacerbate the problem. You say that Hillary is “taking punches.” Um, no, no one is “punching” her, they are just saying negative things about her. It doesn’t take any toughness to have people say nasty things about you and “keep fighting” as Hillary would put it, because you aren’t fighting at all. You’re just shaking hands and giving speeches and kissing babies. An exceedingly weak person being attacked could easily do as much. Michael Moore takes a lot of criticism, and dishes a lot out. Is he tougher than John McCain too?
Whether or not these candidates speak ill of their opponents or whine about campaign ads or stump speeches is a matter of the strategy their campaign staff has developed and their assessment of what tactics will work to get them elected, not an indication of whether they are tough or not.
Also, Hillary Clinton, she of the “vast right wing conspiracy” and the “Republican attack machine,” the woman who whined in a debate that she was always having to answer questions first, and that Obama and John Edwards were ganging up on her, is hardly above “crying” like a third grader when she thinks it is to her electoral advantage. I think complaining that John Edwards is being too tough on you is an immediate disqualifying factor from ever being called tough again… but apparently dislike for Barack Obama has the strange side effect in conservatives of making them see Hillary Clinton favorably despite the accumulated evidence of her career and even very recent events in this campaign.
conor friedersdorf posted this at 9:02 PM HKT on Sunday, April 27th, 2008 as Uncategorized
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Obama himself says that Rev. Wright is a legitimate issue, rescuing, I guess, the North Carolina Republican Party from the Republican nominee’s charges of racism. Is this a sign that: A. Obama is more decent than McCain? or B. McCain has a stronger stomach for attacking Republicans than does Obama? or C. Both A and B?
But read McCain’s comments. It’s striking how the man has not a single serious thought on the matter. I posted a couple of weeks ago that perhaps McCain had gained control of his tendency to mouth off. The incident with the North Carolina ad has shown that that was not the case, at least so far as his mouthing off involves attacking his own party. McCain hasn’t and can’t defend his accusations that North Carolina’s Republican Party is racist. He just made a media issue out of attacking them because…well…what ever it is that drives him to attack Republicans.
As Rush said, we’re all mavericks now; this man feels very little loyalty to his party, so it’s unclear why his party should feel loyalty to him. I still think the North Carolina party should run a slate of uncommitted electors.
Apollo posted this at 8:24 PM HKT on Sunday, April 27th, 2008 as Audacity of Hype, Race
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I can understand why politicians use the loopholes to circumvent laws they don’t like, but when you’re the author of the law, you really should obey the letter and spirit of it. John McCain is busy weaseling out of McCain-Feingold, as Kim Strassel reports:
Unable to match Mr. Obama with smaller donors and (thanks to his own law) unable to cash any million-dollar donations, Mr. McCain is resigned to public financing. This will limit him to $84 million in taxpayer funds from the convention to Election Day. Mr. Obama will have no such restrictions.
Meanwhile, McCain-Feingold’s biggest “accomplishment” these past five years has been the flowering of those shadowy operations known as 527s, which abide by no rules. Democrats have fine-tuned these outfits, and are gearing up to unload hundreds of millions in negative advertising on none other than Mr. McCain. This bullet is aimed not at his foot, but his head.
In light of all this, the McCain camp has come up with a plan that it hopes will tighten the score. It has filed to create the “McCain Victory ‘08″ fund, a “hybrid legal structure” that includes the campaign, the Republican National Committee, and four battleground states.
Mr. McCain’s own law restricts individuals to donations of $2,300 per candidate, but those individuals can also contribute much bigger amounts to different party funds. So, with “McCain Victory ‘08,” donors can write a check for $70,000.
Technically, the money is divvied up between Mr. McCain, the RNC ($28,500) and the four states ($10,000 each). In reality, it will in effect all be used for the candidate’s benefit.
Well, isn’t that nice for a well connected guy like McCain? What happens to the poor souls who don’t have his lawyers? Ask the people of Parker North. I’ve mentioned them in passing before, and here’s an old article with background on them; George Will today reports that they were successful in preventing annexation, but they’re still tangled up in a lawsuit:
Herewith another example of what is being done around the nation in the name of political hygiene, as that is understood by “campaign finance reformers,” those irksome improvers whose animating ideology is McCainism.
Parker North is a cluster of about 300 houses close to the town of Parker. When two residents proposed a vote on annexation of their subdivision to Parker, six others began trying to persuade the rest to oppose annexation. They printed lawn signs and fliers, started an online discussion group and canvassed neighbors, little knowing that they were provoking Colorado’s speech police.
One proponent of annexation sued them. This tactic — wielding campaign finance regulations to suppress opponents’ speech — is common in the America of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law. The complaint did not just threaten the Parker Six for any “illegal activities.” It also said that anyone who had contacted them or received a lawn sign might be subjected to “investigation, scrutinization and sanctions for campaign finance violations.”
This is the sort of garbage I’m tired of. McCain would go up in my opinion if he filed an amicus curiae in support of the folks of Parker North; after all, he wrote the idiotic law and is subverting it, so why should they be punished for doing what he’s doing?
Hubbard posted this at 3:06 PM HKT on Sunday, April 27th, 2008 as Audacity of Hype, Grumblin Mumblins
2 Comments »
Obama, asked about flag pins:
“Then I was asked about this in Iowa,” Obama said. “And somebody said ‘Why don’t you wear a flag pin?’ I said, well, sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t. I said, although I will say that sometimes I notice that they’re people who wear flag pins but they don’t always act patriotic. And I was specifically referring to politicians, not individuals who wear flag pins, but politicians who you see wearing flag pins and then vote against funding for veterans, saying we can’t afford it.”
If you’re looking for a president who won’t question your patriotism for opposing his policy, this isn’t him.
But there’s also the fact that this version of history is false. He is here questioning the patriotism of others to cover up for another time when he questioned the patriotism of others, saying that flag pins were “a substitute for true patriotism,” which, evidently, only involves informing others of how right you are. That is, so long as you’re Barack Obama. If you’re someone else, patriotism is doing whatever Barack Obama thinks is patriotic. Like refusing to wear flag pins and devoting 100% of GDP to veterans.
Apollo posted this at 1:56 AM HKT on Sunday, April 27th, 2008 as Audacity of Hype
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Cutting the moderators from the debates is the greatest idea for presidential politics since someone thought of putting Reagan on a ballot.
And let me say, if Obama talked about issues instead of whining about campaign styles, there’d be a lot more discussion of issues and a lot less focus on campaign styles. Since he claims that he wants a discussion of issues instead of a focus on campaign styles, the credulous might be led to ask why doesn’t he do just that. Cynics, on the other hand, have their guesses.
I am really dreading an Obama-McCain election. It will be nothing but month after month of demanding retractions and bemoaning various fake outrages. I despise the thin-skinned politics of apology; I would rather replace elections with actual bare-knuckled fist-fights. At least then it would give some impression that our president was a man and not a cry-baby. Hillary should lend each of these two a testicle; she seems to have some to spare.
Addendum: From the story:
In Anderson, Obama noted that McCain has switched views on issues like tax cuts for the rich to curry favor with the GOP base. “The straight talk express lost a wheel,” said Obama.
The first step in launching a new politics is not to repeat stale lines.
Apollo posted this at 1:17 AM HKT on Sunday, April 27th, 2008 as Politics
2 Comments »
Tom says North Carolinians who are pissed at McCain for his comments on the North Carolina advertisement are suffering from McCain Derangement Syndrome. I think he’s missing something.
MCCAIN: I think it’s — Anyone who watched it was offensive in that it, uh, brought, ehh, elements into this race which are –
SMITH: Race?
MCCAIN: — excuse me. Into this contest, of race, that are totally unacceptable.
I didn’t realize until today, when I was listening to Rush’s broadcast from Friday, that McCain had joined the chorus saying that the ad made race an issue. If you think people going apoplectic-definitely not donating and talking about not voting-is over reaction, it is only because you do not understand the situation of southern white conservatives.
We’re used to being called racist. It used to be pretty standard fare in southern politics for Democrats and blacks to accuse white Republicans of being racist. And it’s an accusation that really gets your blood boiling. In part because it’s so awful, in part because there’s no way of refuting it. Democrats tried to set it up so that the only way you could refute it was by following their plans: more welfare, more racial preferences, less law enforcement. But it’s also infuriating because it’s a complete conversation stopper. It’s a lot like calling someone a Nazi. We learned to tolerate it from Democrats as a standard modus operandi, and in time the slur became less frequent mostly because it became less powerful.
But for the Republican nominee, without offering any evidence or providing any reasoning for his argument, to accuse a southern state’s Republican party of racism: Them there’s fightin words. I’ve no affiliation with North Carolina or its GOP, but it really gets my goat that McCain went there.
In the south, for white conservatives, it’s about as low as you can go. And from your own party’s nominee? The person who is supposed to represent you? This sort of thing ought to be coming from Obama’s sycophants, not somebody actually expecting votes and money from North Carolina Republicans.
Bill Buckley had the only sensible response to this sort of name calling. North Carolina Republicans should run their own slate of independent electors unless that asshole apologizes. Until then, Tom, it’s John McCain who should shut the hell up.
Apollo posted this at 12:31 AM HKT on Sunday, April 27th, 2008 as Race
5 Comments »
Bryan Caplan and Mark Steyn are betting. First, Caplan:
Here’s an especially specific claim in Mark Steyn’s America Alone:
The U.S. government’s National Intelligence Council is predicting that the EU will collapse by 2020. I think that’s a rather cautious estimate myself. Ever since September 11, I’ve been gloomily predicting that within the next couple of election cycles the internal contradictions of the EU will manifest themselves in the usual way.
I smell a bet. I propose the following terms to Steyn (or up to any three other people):
If any current EU member with a population over 10 million people in 2007 officially withdraws from the EU before January 1, 2020, I will pay you $100. Otherwise, you owe me $100.
Steyn accepted:
Throwing caution and my children’s college fees to the wind, I’ve recklessly taken [Caplan's] bet . . . . Hey, why not make it a grand? A hundred bucks’ll barely buy you a falafel at the Tour d’Argent in the Paris of 2020.
I’m inclined to side with Steyn on this one. The EU usually loses whenever it faces actual voters in a referendum.
What I expect to happen is that states will start ignoring EU dictates, and eventually someone will decide that dealing with a super-nanny-state isn’t worth the effort, and will withdraw. If I had to guess which nation would be contrary enough to pull out, I’d say Italy.
Hubbard posted this at 6:39 PM HKT on Saturday, April 26th, 2008 as Europa Universalis, I have seen the future. . .
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Supervisor: “Your baby mama just called.”
Worker: “The one in New York or the one in Maryland?”
Supervisor: “The one in North Carolina.”
Hubbard posted this at 3:40 PM HKT on Friday, April 25th, 2008 as Excruciatingly Correct Behavior, Vignettes
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Let us never forget.
Thank you to those that serve in the Australian Armed Forces – the only Allies you Americans have had for every conflict since WW1.
A special thanks to both my Uncle Alan Lockett RAAF, who served in Vietnam, and most of all my Grandfather John Sadler RAAF who served in Europe during WWII.
Jamie posted this at 9:58 AM HKT on Friday, April 25th, 2008 as Heroes
6 Comments »
You fools! It’s Kate Beckinsale. K-A-T-E. B-E-C-K-I-N-S-A-L-E.
Tom posted this at 9:00 AM HKT on Friday, April 25th, 2008 as Ourselves
1 Comment »
Just read this — it’s one of the best magazine pieces I’ve come across this year.
conor friedersdorf posted this at 11:54 PM HKT on Thursday, April 24th, 2008 as Uncategorized
1 Comment »
In light of a previous post, I think it’s worth pointing out that Stop-Loss is petering out and will probably fail to hit $11 million at the box office. This is well short of the paltry $15 million that Lions for Lambs brought in. That movie starred Tom Cruise, Meryl Streep, and Robert Redford, and was the 126th best grossing movie last year, so I’m not sure what the studio expected from Ryan Phillipe when they bought this movie a Super Bowl ad spot.
Two amazing facts:
- We are five years into a war that has been the top news story almost every single day, and we’ve only recently passed the 4,000th American death.
- We are five years into a war that has been the top news story almost every single day, and there has not been a single studio movie portraying American soldiers or the American war effort in a positive light.
Apollo posted this at 10:14 PM HKT on Thursday, April 24th, 2008 as Kulturkampf
9 Comments »
Earlier this month, I wrote concerning the arrest of the “Jefferson 1″, saying that the dancers’ actions seemed a little too prepared and wondered whether they had courted arrest. In the comments thread, Joey identified himself as one of the dancers and said they did not go to the memorial with the expectation, or intent, of getting arrested.
Through some recent correspondence with him, I’ve confirmed to my satisfaction that Joey was one of the dancers and take him at his word. My skepticism is satisfied and I retract the earlier comments. This leaves me with only one further thing to say:
Free the Jefferson 1!
Tom posted this at 2:54 PM HKT on Thursday, April 24th, 2008 as Liberty and/or Security
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