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As it turns out, a somewhat disappointing Barnes & Noble book-signing turnout.
If not hillary! herself, certainly all that "Living History" hype
…which went so far as to even include a Sidney Blumenthal prolix, paranoiac, procuratorial poison pen prolegomenon…
and hillary clinton's own sniffing, multivenue, cozy-clintonoid-interviews-of-the-Colmes-kind-scheme confirmation of the Blumenthal account that (inadertently) exposes her ineptitude, corruption and paranoia even as it argues that she is the unwitting victim of a philandering husband and a rancorous right wing…
THE CLINTON RAPES, LIVING HISTORY, USEFUL IDIOTS AND ENTROPY
should have generated more than 1000 hillary clinton sycophants.
But then, hillary clinton is no Howard Stern….
Both a confirmation of The Marist College polls and a foreshadowing of 2008, the puny turnout illustrates why hillary clinton requires the drag-and-drop, the prescreened, heavily controlled, sycophantic crowds, her pre-programmed, totally scripted appearances (or, alternatively, her totally mute "listening tour"), her unavailability to the press, indeed, her "bluebird." |
The story...
I live in Cleveland, Ohio and I heard that Howard Stern was going to have his Book Signing at the Barnes & Noble in Mayfield Heights! I couldn't believe it. Well I went there to get my book signed at noon. I thought, hey, Howard is going to be there in a few hours (one thing I must tell everyone this was THE WORST Winter Storm we had all year it was around 5 degrees outside, BUT there was a blowing wind.. which made it even worse) so I thought no one was going to be there. Well was I in shock!!! There was OVER 10,000 people in line by noon!
The Barnes & Noble was on the corner. Well the line went ALL the way around the block behind ALL the ''other'' stores??!!! I couldn't believe it but, hey, this was Howard Stern and it was his new book ''Miss America!!''
Well I got in line and there were people that actually slept over night. Some had tents & cardboard boxes. I was in such shock by all this and learned a lot about the fans in line. Everyone was really cool.
There was all 3 Local News station reporting on it!! Well for 6 LONG hours with all the blowing wind and freezing snow I stood there and finally actually got IN THE STORE. As soon as we got into the store they had 4 policemen checking everyone with a ''Wand'' (to check for guns) Well we thought, hey, now that we are in this won't take long. Well we were wrong it was another HOUR!! But it was so cool to finally see Howard!!!! He was so cool and nice to everyone!!
The line was getting closer and closer to him and we were making eye contact with him!! THEN the worst thing happened we saw ''Howard's People'' & ''The off duty Police'' walk over to Howard and whisper something in his ear. Howard looked in shock and hurt!! Then he said something back to them and he didn't look happy. WELL about 2 minutes later the Police & another guy said to everyone in the store ''WE are sorry to say this but the whole airport and town is CLOSING DOWN because of the weather So Howard is only going to sign a few more books.'' Well Howard looked pissed/sad... to remind you he had to leave because he had a David Letterman appearance the next day this was the one were Howard wore a dress.. with makeup,nails etc.
Well Howard actually stood up and said ''I am going to get an hotel and stay the night. I will sign everyone's book that is IN The Store!!'' Which was so cool and very nice. (He did this on his own) Well we actually got up there and we said ''thank you for staying.'' and Howard said ''this was the greatest crowd he has ever seen with this BAD Weather to stand out there like this I have to say Thank all of you'' which was so cool. He talked to everyone and was very nice and thanked everyone! You can tell he was really touched!!
Well we were so happy that we got in there and just leaving, seeing all the fans still inside the store (he must have been there for at least another hour) But the sad thing was going to the car and seeing so many people still outside in that awful cold and got nothing. They all looked like they were in shock. To this day I will never forget how cold it was there and just how nice all the fans were and what a nice guy Howard was!! Everyone always brings up 25,000 people in L.A. or the people in N.Y. BUT I feel over 10,000 in Cleveland in the worst cold/snow day of the year was the most shocking if you ask me.
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Hillary Clinton book signing brings out 1,000 people
AP Photos XTRF102-103
By DEVLIN BARRETT
Associated Press Writer
NEW YORK (AP) -- More than 1,000 people snaked through a midtown Manhattan bookstore for a chance to meet Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and receive a signed copy of her memoir, "Living History," during its first day in stores.
Even before the event at Barnes & Noble began early Monday morning, more than 400 people had gathered, some after waiting through the night, for a chance to chat with the former first lady as she signed copies.
Many book-buyers asked for two autographed copies, leaving her hand "a little worse for wear," she joked.
"I really enjoyed it and I tried to talk to people so I could actually have a good time," Clinton said.
To handle the crowd, bookstore employees issued wristbands, like those given to concert fans.
The bookstore had originally planned to give out 250 wristbands, but as the Democratic senator stayed on signing, more than 1,000 were distributed, said Donna Passannante, a Barnes & Noble executive.
"It ranks up there with one of the top book signings we've done here," she said.
One Clinton admirer, Krystal Powell, waited over two hours for an autograph, and was overjoyed to get it.
"It was definitely worth it," said the office assistant.
The scheduled one-hour event stretched to more than 21/2 hours, as passers-by hopped onto the end of the line that stretched around the corner inside police barricades.
When she eventually walked out into a waiting van, a crowd cheered from behind barricades across the street.
Just before the signing, Clinton told reporters at a Manhattan hotel that her critics also could benefit from reading her memoirs.
"I don't know whether I can change anybody's mind, but I think if people read the book with an open mind they may be surprised, they may learn a few things, they may decide that maybe they weren't given a full picture of what had gone on," Clinton said.
Barnes & Nobles' vice president of marketing, Bob Wietrack, predicted the long-awaited memoir will be the chain's No. 1 nonfiction book of the year. Simon & Schuster, which agreed to pay Clinton $8 million, printed an astounding 1 million copies. After seeing the turnout on Monday, the publisher decided to print another 50,000 copies, spokeswoman Victoria Meyer said.
In the book, Clinton revisits the public and private wreckage from her husband's affair with intern Monica Lewinsky. She concludes that what her husband did was morally wrong but not a betrayal of the public.
Time magazine is running excerpts from the book and an interview with Clinton. In the interview, she is asked if she plans to run for president in 2008, and answers: "I have no intention of running for president."
Some of her fans predict otherwise.
Anne Braudis, 56, emerged from the book signing with a gift for her grandson, who's 4 years old. "I want to give him a copy of the book signed by the president of the United States -- when he's 10," she said.
A new ABC poll found that 53 percent of Americans don't want the former first lady to ever run for president. The same poll found Americans are still highly divided about her, with 44 percent expressing a favorable opinion and 48 percent viewing her unfavorably.
Clinton will have two other signings during the week in Washington. And during the summer, she will sandwich more book-signing visits into her Senate work schedule. Meyer said Simon & Schuster is not releasing the itinerary for logistical and security reasons.
(Copyright 2003 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.) APTV 06-10-03 0219PDT |
WASHINGTON- February 22. Sen. KnowNothing Victim Clinton held her premiere press conference today on Capitol Hill, ostensibly to answer questions about the peddling of White House pardons by her brother and her campaign treasurer. Notably absent among the press queries were any about her own involvement not only in those pardons, but in the larger universe of sold pardons--the incipient clinton scandal du jour--Pardongate.
KnowNothing's brother, Hugh Rodham, secured two of the 141 clinton midnight pardons, one for a cocaine kingpin and the other for a snake-oil swindler. Rodham netted a quick $400,000 for his "work" according to various rodhams and clintons and their assorted lawyers. KnowNothing's campaign treasurer, William Cunningham III, himself a law partner of longtime KnowNothing adviser Harold Ickes, helped obtain last-minute pardons for two convicted felons.
LA FAMIGLIA
Displaying a willingness to throw her brother (along with her husband) to the wolves, Sen. Victim Clinton was quick to make a distinction between her big, bad brother's pardon "work" and that of her campaign treasurer, "a fine lawyer and a fine man." The "family" connection of brother Rodham to Clinton rendered Rodham's "work" offensive, whereas the campaign treasurer Cunningham's connection to the senator and her campaign coffers made his securing of two pardons in record time a sterling example of highminded, effective public service.
KnowNothing is apparently not the best of thinkers. If the "family" connection makes lobbying for cocaine-kingpin and snake-oil-swindler pardons unsavory for brother Rodham, then the "family" connection makes lobbying for the Hasidim 4 (see Keating 5) pardons even more distasteful for the wife, First Lady and senator-elect. Moreover, pardons for votes is arguably a greater offense than pardons for cash.
EFFECTIVELY PLEADS 5TH BY INVOKING SPOUSAL PRIVILEGE
KnowNothing specifically declined to answer when asked whether she discussed the pardons with her husband, effectively pleading the 5th. Turning aside questions about the pardon decisions her husband had made, she told reporters they should address those issues with him and his staff. She refused to say whether he should agree to appear voluntarily before congressional committees investigating the pardons. Interestingly, no one asked her whether she would agree to appear voluntarily before those same congressional committees.
I DIDN'T HAVE SEX WITH THAT PARDON
"I did not have any involvement in the pardons that were granted or not granted," insisted Sen. KnowNothing, seeming to forget her presence at the New-Square/Oval-Office schmooze that secured pardons for the four Hasidic felons who set up a phony school in Brooklyn to swindle the government out of millions intended for the poor.
RESURRECTING RUFF
KnowNothing noted that her"best memory" was that she never spoke to her brother or to Mr. Cunningham about the pardons. With variations of "I don't have a memory" and "my best memory, and avoiding the more obvious "I don't recall" and "my best recollection," KnowNothing reprised the Ruffian standard used during the clinton years to commit perjury without penalty.
I GET LETTERS
...or more precisely, envelopes. During her denials of involvement in any of the pardons, KnowNothing made the curious claim: "People handed me envelopes, I passed them on [and never opened a single one. Honest.]"
I AM VICTIM
Reprising the role of victim that enabled her to win a senate seat in spite of low poll numbers, high personal negatives and consistent public failures, the senator peppered her answers about big, bad Hugh (understanding that the subtext was big, bad Bill) with "saddened" and "disappointed" and "heartbroken" and "shocked."
UTTER CONTEMPT FOR THE PEOPLE
This session today was cut short by a staffer when reporters appeared dissatisfied by Senator KnowNothing's lack of candor.
In the end, this press conference full of poses, poll-tested phrases and prevarication was just another display of the clintons' utter contempt for the people. Bill Clinton committed the same error last Sunday in his shameless, lie-filled New York Times Pardongate Apologia.
The clintons' fundamental error: They are too arrogant and dim-witted to understand that the demagogic process in this fiberoptic age isn't about counting spun heads; it's about not discounting circumambient brains.
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Mindless rhinestone-studded-and-tented kleptocracy
by Mia T
John Podhoretz recently asked, "Whence comes hillary clinton's reputation for brilliance?" For the answer, he intuitively, rather brilliantly in fact, looked to her anatomy and noted,"This isn't the first time she's shot herself in the foot."
The above anatomical analysis supports the Podhoretz thesis. Notwithstanding The Pod's erroneous conclusions concerning
Ian Hunter recently observed that our leaders are shrinking. "From a Churchill (or, for that matter, a Margaret Thatcher) to a Tony Blair; from Eisenhower to Clinton; from Diefenbaker to Joe Clark; from Trudeau to Chretien -- we seem destined to be governed by pygmies."
The pols understand their anatomical limitations well; they attempt to mitigate them with veneer. And so we suffer mindless alpha-beta-beelzebubba grotesquerie. . .
and rhinestone-studded-and-tented kleptocracy.
With all the media genuflecting before the press-conference podium of bill clinton, it bears remarking yet again that the clinton intellect (an oxymoron even more jarring than AlGoreRhythm and meant to encompass the cognitive ability of both clintons) is remarkable only for its utter ordinariness, its lack of creative spark, its lack of analytic precision, its lack of depth.
The clintons' fundamental error: They are too arrogant and dim-witted to understand that the demagogic process in this fiberoptic age isn't about counting spun heads; it's about not discounting circumambient brains.
Politicos and reporters are not rocket scientists . . .
Professions tend to be self-selected, intellectually homogeneous subgroups of Homo sapiens. Great intellects (especially these days) do not generally gravitate towards careers in the media or politics. Mediocre, power-obsessed types with poor self-images do.
Thus, clinton mediocrity goes undetected primarily because of media mediocrity. ("Mediocrity" and "media" don't come from the same Latin root (medius) for no reason.) Insofar as the clintons are concerned, the media confuse form with substance, smoothness with coherence, data-spewing with ratiocination, pre-programmed recitation with real-time analysis, an idiosyncratic degeneracy with creativity.
Jimmy Breslin agrees. In Hillary Is the 'Me-First' Lady, Breslin laments:
"At the end of all these years and years that are being celebrated this week, the national press of America consists of people with dried minds and weak backbones and the pack of them can't utter a new phrase for the language or show the least bit of anger at a business or profession or trade or whatever this business is that is dying of mediocrity."
Listen carefully to the clintons. You will hear a shallow parody of the class president. Not only do they say nothing; they say nothing with superfluous ineloquence. Their speeches are sophomoric, shopworn, shallow, specious. Platitudinous pandering piled atop p.c. cliché
In seven years, they have, collectively, uttered not one memorable word save, "It was a vast right-wing conspiracy," "I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky,"and, "It all depends on what the meaning of 'is' is.
Even the clintons' attempts at alliteration fall flat. Compare Agnew's (Safire's) "nattering nabobs of negativism" with clinton's "preachers of pessimism," an impotent, one-dimensional, plagiaristic echo (its apt self-descriptiveness notwithstanding).
Before they destroy their backs along with their reputations, media gentry genuflecting at the altar of the clinton brain should consider Edith Efron's, Can the President Think?
A wasted brain is a terrible thing.
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HILLARY CLINTON LACKS COGNITIVE CAPACITY TO LEAD |
