Of course, they’re relying as usual on the increasingly restive mainstream media to do their dirty work for them. If it were a Republican in the crosshairs, Hillary’s shocking refusal to meet with the Inspector General (who interviewed all four of the other living Secretaries of State of the past two decades) would have been the lead item flagged in screaming headlines from coast to coast. Let’s face it—the genuinely innocent do not do pretzel twists like this to cover their asses.
No, they don't. Nor do they continually communicate with the public in terse, carefully parsed, disingenuous non-statements. That is the sign of someone who is trying not to communicate, and for good reason, because communication brings accountability.
One needn't be a media star - Trump is, but that's another discussion - in order to communicate with the public, and not to do so lends to the indelible impression that the speaker is not to be trusted. Paglia had a problem with Schwarzenegger along those lines which I'm not entirely sure is justified, since she also clearly appreciated that it lent to Arnolt's anti-establishmentarian image. But if one cannot, or more accurately will not, communicate in clear, meaningful language then we have a member of the professional managerial class to which Hillary aspires insisting that it really isn't important, hence neither is the reverse communication between voter and candidate. That's a common enough attitude but not one that resonates with said voters.
An apparatchik, to use the old Soviet terminology, and one who expects communication to be accomplished by another arm of the apparatchiks, namely the mainstream media, who actually have performed that function for the Clintons in the past. Things, however, have changed since the mid-90's, notably the stranglehold the conventional media once had on broadcast communications. Hillary has not changed with them. And what was once (or at least was presented as) a dignified reserve is revealed as stony, uncaring insularity. Hillary doesn't care about the voters at large, she doesn't even care about her core constituency, she cares about Hillary and power, period.
That is more than image, that is reality, and when it comes into contention with a boisterous - Paglia's apt word - never-to-be-intimidated Trump, it looks precisely as Hillary's campaign looks at the moment: tawdry, self-absorbed, and hostile. Trump is going to win that one every time.
Bill, you ought to have a national column somewhere. Your well thought out comment was a far better piece than Paglia’s article.
“An apparatchik, to use the old Soviet terminology, and one who expects communication to be accomplished by another arm of the apparatchiks, namely the mainstream media, who actually have performed that function for the Clintons in the past. Things, however, have changed since the mid-90’s, notably the stranglehold the conventional media once had on broadcast communications. Hillary has not changed with them.
Hillary doesn’t care about the voters at large, she doesn’t even care about her core constituency, she cares about Hillary and power, period.”
Well stated and spot on.