WHY HILLARY'S IOWA MISSTEP CAN SINK HER
MISSUS CLINTON'S SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE PROBLEM
- by Mia T, 1.29.07
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ell, it didn't take long for missus clinton, off-leach—(sort of)—to step in it.
On reflection, it will become clear that what is being spun as a little Iowa faux pas is in fact a huge blunder with national implications and the potential to sink the clinton candidacy.
All the more surprising when one realizes that the visit to Iowa by this Thatcher pretender,1 this wannabe-commander-in-chief, 2 was more a micromanaged toe-dip than a bold foray.
Watch the blunder as it unfolds. Notice how the crowd initially laughs at her, not with her. Notice, also, her initial cluelessness.
COVERAGE... OR JUST COVER?
It is revealing that clinton sycophant, Ann Kornblut of the Washington Post, formerly of The New York Times, quickly mischaracterized the blunder thusly:
Asked by a voter what qualified her to handle leaders from countries such as Iran and North Korea, Clinton began her reply, then stopped and, for effect, repeated the question.
"What in my background equips me to deal with evil and bad men?" she said wryly, prompting peals of laughter from the audience. [emphasis mine]
Missus clinton repeated the question not wryly, but cluelessly, totally oblivious to its deeper implications.
Ms. Kornblut's revision is giving missus clinton and her house-of-cards candidacy cover. Not for the first time, either. 3 (ON REJIGGING GALLUP'S LOSING NUMBERS FOR HILLARY: THE ALTERNATE [sic] UNIVERSE OF ANNE KORNBLUT)
On a superficial level, this misstep is an early indicator that missus clinton will not survive her tin ear, her lack of mental agility, her clumsy lack of candor, her baggage... and, of course, her Q score.
With a Q score—a measure of celebrity likability among the hoi polloi—in the toilet, missus clinton can win elections only by running virtually unopposed...
And then only with the help of protheses, props, poses, PR machines, scripted appearances, screened audiences, vetted questions, Secret Service barracades, secret police, softball settings and sycophantic hosts... fictionalizing, 'humanizing,' digitizing and otherwise hiding the real hillary clinton.
And then we have the baggage....
Anyone else but a clinton would have been summarily laughed off the stage.
HILLARY CLINTON'S Q SCORE
Hollywood take note
(WHAT THE HELL IS THIS MORIBUND LOSER DOING IN THE POLITICAL ARENA ANYWAY?)
by Mia T, 01.26.07
I neglected in the above analysis to consider the reflexive nature of the response to absurdity. Perhaps not literally—yet—but Missus clinton was, indeed, laughed off the stage at that 'town hall' meeting in Iowa Sunday.
And therein lies the problem for missus clinton.
SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE SYNDROME
If the Saturday Night Live clip and missus clinton's "I'm in!" video taken together make plain the absurdity of a hillary clinton commander-in-chief, 4 the Iowa misstep reinforces it.
- Watching the Saturday Night Live clip and missus clinton's "I'm in!" video in succession confirms the obvious: The pundits and pols are asking the wrong hillary! question.
The fundamental question concerning missus clinton's candidacy isn't "Can she win?"... or "Will she win?"... or even "Should she win?"
No. The fundamental question is this: "Can missus clinton be taken seriously? Is missus clinton's candidacy more than simply a bad joke? Is missus clinton's candidacy legitimate? "
By asking the other questions, legitimacy is the presumption, the unasked question, the "When did you stop beating your wife?" sort of fallacy.
But the Saturday Night Live clip and missus clinton's "I'm in!" clip taken together belie that presumption.
The reason the Saturday Night Live sequence is so devastating is because it is not the usual SNL farce based on fact.
Rather, it is fact based on farce.
And missus clinton's "I'm in!" video confirms it.
Let down the curtain: the farce is done. (Rabelais)
Somebody stick the fork in that baby, already. Please.
ADDENDUM:
- This exchange on Hardball underscores the farcical condition of the hillary clinton candidacy. Pay special attention to Howard Fineman.
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HILLARY "I'm in" CLINTON'S 'CONVERSATION' WITH SELF
(OKAY HILLARY. LET'S TALK.)
~with commentary from Saturday Night Live
by Mia T, 01.22.07
also: THE PUNDITS AND POLS ARE ASKING THE WRONG HILLARY! QUESTION... -
... While America appears not to be ready for a female president under any circumstances, the post-9/11 realities pose special problems for a female presidential candidate. Add to these the problems unique to missus clinton. The reviews make the mistake of focusing on the problems of the generic female presidential candidate running during ordinary times.These are not ordinary times. America is waging the global War on Terror; the uncharted territory of asymmetric netherworlds is the battlefield; the enemy is brutal, subhuman; the threat of global conflagration is real.
Defeating the enemy isn't sufficient. For America to prevail, she must also defeat a retrograde, misogynous mindset. To successfully prosecute the War on Terror, it is essential that the collective patriarchal islamic culture perceives America as politically and militarily strong. Condi Rice excepted, this requirement presents an insurmountable hurdle for any female presidential candidate, and especially missus clinton, historically antimilitary--(an image, incidentally, that is only enhanced today by her clumsy, termagant parody of Thatcher), forever the pitiful victim, and, according to Dick Morris, "the biggest dove in the clinton administration."
It is ironic that had the clintons not failed utterly to fight terrorism... not failed to take bin Laden from Sudan... not failed repeatedly to decapitate a nascent, still stoppable al Qaeda... the generic female president as a construct would still be viable... missus clinton's obstacles would be limited largely to standard-issue clintonisms: corruption, abuse, malpractice, malfeasance, megalomania, rape and treason... and, in spite of Juanita Broaddrick, or perhaps because of her, Rod Lurie would be reduced to perversely hawking the "First Gentleman" instead of the "Commander-in-Chief."
Mia T, 10.02.05
HILLARY'S COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF PROBLEM
(see descriptor morphs)Clinton Administration Veteran:
"Hillary Rodham Clinton needs to be kept very far away from the White House for the rest of her life."
My two cents' worth--and I think it is the two cents' worth of everybody who worked for the Clinton Administration health care reform effort of 1993-1994--is that Hillary Rodham Clinton needs to be kept very far away from the White House for the rest of her life. Heading up health-care reform was the only major administrative job she has ever tried to do. And she was a complete flop at it. She had neither the grasp of policy substance, the managerial skills, nor the political smarts to do the job she was then given. And she wasn't smart enough to realize that she was in over her head and had to get out of the Health Care Czar role quickly.... there is no reason to think that she would be anything but an abysmal president.-
J. Bradford DeLong
professor of economics, Berkeley
clinton Administration veteran
Hillary Clinton?
Who would even know her name were it not for her attachment to a man?Thank you, Gavin McNett, for your tribute to the incomparable Tammy Wynette. (TAMMY WYNETTE, 1942-1998) Too many pundits, usually leftist and privileged, sneer at country music. To these critics, any music created by poor, Southern whites (at least those poor, Southern whites who didn't attend an Ivy League university) must be held in contempt, along with its correlatives: incest, racism and trailer parks.
Hillary Clinton? Who would even know her name were it not for her attachment to a man? Where would she be now if she as a child had to pick cotton from sun up to sun down?
Tammy Wynette stands alone, a legend; and she will be admired wherever people appreciate the honesty of the human experience. Human beings are vulnerable. We all should be thankful to any artist courageous enough to bare her soul on the public stage so the rest of us who are listening and know whereof she speaks might benefit.
Sean Smith
Fresno, Calif.
Salon.comDecember 7, 1941+64
AN OPEN LETTER TO TIM ROBBINS, DAVID GEFFEN, CHRIS MATTHEWS, MAUREEN DOWD + JEANINE PIRRORE: a not-so-modest proposal concerning hillary clinton
Dear Concerned Americans,
Hillary Clinton's revisionist tome notwithstanding, 'living history' begets a certain symmetry. It is in that light that I make this not-so-modest proposal on this day, exactly 64 years after the attack on Pearl Harbor. The context of our concern today--regardless of political affiliation--is Iraq and The War on Terror, but the larger fear is that our democracy may not survive.
We have the requisite machines, power and know-how to defeat the enemy in Iraq and elsewhere, but do we have the will?
In particular, do we have the will to identify and defeat the enemy in our midst?
Answerable to no one, heir apparent in her own mind, self-serving in the extreme, Hillary Clinton incarnates this insidious new threat to our survival.
What we decide to do about Missus Clinton will tell us much about what awaits us in these perilous new times.
COMPLETE LETTER
December 7, 1941+64
Mia T
COPYRIGHT MIA T 2005, 2007
COPYRIGHT MIA T 2007 -
