Posted on 06/05/2008 8:15:54 AM PDT by neverdem
I have detested the Clintons ever since I covered the New Hampshire primary in 1992. The man I saw was not the silver-tongued charmer who seems to have bewitched so many people.
Up close, he seemed like a red-cheeked, piggy-eyed bully with a mean streak a mile wide.
And when he lied - which he more or less did for a living - he had a hard-faced little spouse to step into the TV studios to cover up for him.
This woman put up with A LOT from Bill over the years but could always tell herself it was worth it because in the long run the experience would give her the presidency she so obviously deserved.
Advertisement Over the years I watched this gruesome drama - the Clintons using and abusing the democratic process as marital therapy - until, the morning after this year's Iowa caucuses, it finally seemed to be over.
A good friend of mine wrote an exultant article saying Barack Obama had done us the huge favour of moving America into a "post-Clinton" era.
No more would the happy couple be able to inflict themselves on us. We were free from Lanny Davis and Harold Ickes and Howard Wolfson and Hillary's ghastly brothers and all the easy money riff-raff who had benefited from Clinton's last minute pardons.
As I read it I was hit with the queasy realisation I didn't believe a word of it. My friend Congressman Steve Cohen was forced to apologise the other day for comparing the former First Lady to Glenn Close rising from the bathtub in Fatal Attraction.
It's actually been more like a movie about an unkillable swamp creature or lagoon dweller.
And the morning after the last two primaries Lanny Davis was circulating a petition in the Democratic party to attach her to the Obama ticket.
"Good grief," I found myself muttering. "Is there no end to this woman and her overweening ambition?"
Well, THAT was a dumb question and no mistake.
Her performance in New York on Tuesday night was positively flabbergasting. Having won South Dakota, she congratulated that state on having "the last word"- while Montana's results were still being counted.
She congratulated Mr Obama all right but not for having won by securing the majority of delegates.
She let it be known that she would accept the vice presidential nomination without ceasing to count herself a candidate for the Presidential one.
And she demanded - wait for it - "respect" for the 18 million people who had voted for her. In other words, unless she gets a great deal of care and feeding and pampering, 18 million Americans will have been dissed.
The nerve. The nerve is really quite something.
In Washington yesterday, at the same pro-Israel podium at which Mr Obama spoke earlier, Mrs Clinton spoke of the man who has un precedentedly won the nomination as if he was just another Senator, like her, just another friend of Israel, like her.
There was a time one might have expected a Jewish audience to be asked to applaud the choice of the first black American nominee but Mrs Clinton couldn't find it in herself to be quite that gracious.
Indeed, if any one thing has exposed the hollowness and rottenness of the Clintons it is the almost casual way they have ignored their old black friends and allies to pursue a Clintonian version of a white backlash "southern strategy". Nothing is excluded if it serves the cause of the great entitlement.
From 16 years of polemics against this dynasty, I had acquired a huge shelf of anti-Clinton books and even written one myself in an effort to get the poison out of my system. For about 10 seconds after Iowa I thought of tossing them out. But now I think I'll have to hold on to my arsenal. I shall be needing it again.
Perhaps it's a Jaws-type movie I'm trying to think of. Like a Great White Shark, Mrs Clinton will never stop her relentless predations until the very end.
Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair
wow!
I agree completely. She’s not gone until she’s 6 feet under, and even them I’m not so sure. I always said she would not get the nomination, but that doesn’t mean she’ll go quietly. Hell no.
Hitchens needs to watch his back now.
I must admit I enjoyed reading that.
“The nerve. The nerve is really quite something.
“We have seen an X-ray of a very dark soul.”
Michael Goodwin
This insight should have been the silver bullet.
You should read RON BROWN’S BODY...
in that book you will find the real Clintons.
I enjoyed reading it too. And I have a feeling that Mr. Hitchins enjoyed writing it as well.
Hitchens "gets" the Clintons...really "gets" them.
Imus said this morning that Lanny Davis called wanting to get on and push HRCas VP. Imus said "Lanny, don't call, ever!"
i love CH for this!
For those who remember the Clinton presidency, the gall is all too familiar. They always go just a bit farther than we expect from even the Clintons. When she referenced Obama, the words sounded very much to me as though she were praising him for a failing effort. Much the way the victor might congratulate the runner-up for a job well done. That speech was simply stunning.
bump
Where are you listening to Imus on the radio?
Wow! He seems to hate the Clintons as much as he hates Christians.
lol... Sums them up nicely. Someone needs to tell that dysfunctional "family" unit that it is rich enough now to pay for its own private therapy. The American people (and the world) have shared their misery far too long, and are done throwing good money after bad paying for it.
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