On this eve of the critical primary in Pennsylvania, I find myself wondering about an amazing question:
Why in the ever-lovin’ name of The Great Woo-Woo is Hillary still in this race, force-feeding her and her husband’s reputations into the wood-chipper, Jack-the-Rippering the Democratic party, weakening our chances in November and creating so much anger and (excuse me) bitterness that she may even be endangering her own (previously unassailably secure) political future.
Phrased differently, why has Hillary embarked on a course of action that has revealed her to be a bald-faced liar, a cold and deceitful politician, an enraged, angry bitch, the Medusa of American Politics.
I have a theory.
It seems to me that Hillary has spent her entire adult life as an appendage to a brilliant, talented and charismatic man who has regularly, constantly and endlessly humiliated her, both in public and in private. From their earliest time together, Bill has told Hillary, my way or the highway, and Bill’s Way was sex with whom and where the mood seemed right –and Hillary be damned.
Or as Camille Paglia has recently written,
Humiliated and upstaged by her philandering husband, Hillary is the champion of an army of women who were stymied, betrayed or outmanoeuvred by men. Over the past year, whenever her cowed male opponents mildly rebutted Hillary in debate, her campaign jumped into über-feminist mode: male bullies, they screeched, "ganging up" on a helpless damsel.
Hillary is not the first wife of a powerful man to be humiliated by a philandering spouse. We know from history and literature, as well as our own experience, that the behavior is common; we also know that women in Hillary’s position have a wealth of possible choices.
The best revenge, of course, is for the wife to take a lover, preferably a lover who is richer, handsomer and more amusing than Hubby. That is the favored approach in France, the country in which I live; and Cecelia Sarkozy, a woman who joyfully gave her husband the President of France the Royal Salute, is a recent case in point. In France as in America, an infinite series of Hollywood starlets, political wives and other Wronged Women have followed the same path.
Some particularly noble Betrayed Spouses have decided to stay married to the Head Honcho, and to use their position to do something worthwhile for the country. Think Eleanor Roosevelt, Jackie Kennedy, Lady Bird Johnson.
Other women have followed a more conventional path: they either file for divorce (Mrs. Greever, in New Jersey); or write a tell-all book (Sra. Mario Vargas-Llosa, to name one among many); recently, they have takenm to the Internet, where a cohort of modern young women have sat themselves down in front of their computer screens and began posting a series of tell-all blogs.
And then there is the Enraged-Wife-As-Litigator, a she-demon who haunts the corridors of the divorce courts, filing motions, challenges, demands, and Requests For Rehearings on every jot and tittle of the divorce agreement, from the ownership of Aunt Suzy’s green chenille rug to the precise terms of the (Always unjust! Always violated!) custody agreement. (Some angry men also occasionally pursue this option: their conduct is also loathsome.)
On a more "lit’ry" level, the Wronged Spouse has historically found solace by either killing herself (Mme. Butterfly) or simply drilling the bastard full of holes. (Frankie and Johny; Jean Harris and the Diet Doctor)
I’d wager that over the course of the past 20 years Hillary has considered all of these alternatives –except possibly hari-kari
I would speculate further that she came close to many of them – but that she was deterred by one thought:
"Stick with me," said the Big Dog, "And I’ll make it all up to you, first by making you a United States Senator and then by making you the First Woman President of the United States."
That’s a hell of non-divorce settlement.
For a long time, it looked as if Bill’s Mega-Non-Divorce-Settlement Package was on its way to being tied up in a red ribbon and marked "Paid."
But a funny thing happened on the way to the White House.
A guy named Obama intervened.
At first, Bill and Hillary were merely annoyed by the uppity arrival of Obama. After all, "The stocks were sold, the press was squared, the middle class was quite prepared. . . " Surely nothing could go wrong with a plan so well conceived, so universally praised, so fully in tune with the Spirit of the Times.
But the more Bill and Hillary condescended, the more Obama persisted.
And then Bill and Hillary began to get annoyed. And like everyone else who is acting out of pique rather than reason, they began to make mistakes.
That’s when the story got interesting.
First, the Clinton’s "inevitable" meme failed in Iowa-- big time.
Then Bill began insulting the Black community, the heart and soul of the Democratic party.
And then the two of them began insulting the caucus states and the small states and the latte-slipping states and the Democratic party activists and the You-Tube Young and ....... the list is endless.
During this process, the country and the world learned a whole lot about Hillary Rodman Clinton that we had never known before.
We learned that she is a congenital liar. (How many of us could stand up in front anyone, let alone a international audience, and tell a bald-faced lie like the Tuzla story? Think about it! Would you ever dare tell a whopper like that?)
We learned that she is a vicious campaigner, and that she will not hesitate to cut the throat of her fellow Democrat, or to base her campaign on Republican talking-points, if it serves her personal interest. (3 am; today’s last-minute Pennsylvania ad containing references to Bin Laden, for chrissakes.)
And we have observed on numberless occasions that she is obviously enraged by the fact that the ultimate prize –this prize for which she suffered such phenomenal, long term public humiliation, at the hands of such a callous, dick-centered egotist as her husband, a man who was willing not only to humiliate his wife and young daughter but risk THE PRESIDENCY OF THE UNITED STATES FOR A BLOW JOB – IN THE OVAL OFFICE!—we have seen that the final payoff, the Pot of Gold at the end of the dark rainbow of decades of humilation— is about to be snatched away from her, and that that final betrayal has driven her mad with rage.
In Hillary’s view, the prize has not only been snatched away: it has been snatched away by a Junior Senator from Hicksville, a yokel who obviously doesn’t know a Shiite from Shinola, a Harvard fancy-pants whose IQ is (Visibly! Obviously!) half of her own; whose experience in Washington isn’t worth a bucket of warm spit and whose sole claim to fame is a nice smile and a few pretty phrases! And who is not even smart enough to articulate an cogent answer to a bunch of moronic gotchas from a couple of hack TV performers on ABC news!
Wouldn’t you be mad?
Wouldn’t you be ready to burn down the Democratic barn and everything in it, including all those f*ing turncoats like Bob Reich and Bill Richardson and –who next? Vernon Jordan? Al Gore, that loser, or Nancy Pelosi, that San Francisco weathewane?
Wouldn’t you be ready to jump into the embrace of Richard Mellon Scarife, the right-wing Pennsylvania nut-case who funded the impeachment effort against Bill and who has now endorsed Hillary?
WTF would you care about the Democratic Party, that pack of weaklings, all of whom are apparently ready to double cross you at the first whiff of electoral advantage?
Anyone who has ever experienced an Angry Woman –an infuriated mother or wife or a girl friend or a boss – anyone who has ever been in the cross-hairs of such a person can understand Hillary Clinton. We recognize those pursed lips, those narrowed eyes, those rasping phrases: we’ve seen it all before and we know the only way to deal with it is to flee for your life.
Will Hillary drop out?
I don’t believe it for a minute. A candidacy fueled by a rage such as hers, a candidacy fueled by decades worth of feeling cheated.and cheated on, a candidacy based on a monumental sense of entitlement: this is not a candidacy that will go gently into that good night.
Drag down Obama, that latte-sipping, inarticulate, mealy-mouthed twerp? Who gives a shit! The nomination belongs to Hillary and she will fight for it until Denver in August --and then some.
In my view, we’re going to have Hillary to kick around for a long, long time.
In my view, Hillary is just like a nasty cold, or a spate of really, really bad weather -- or maybe like the Mean Lady Down the Block that we all remember from the happy days of childhood.
Like a nasty cold, Hillary is something we have to live with; and eventually it will be over.
But don’t look to Hillary to graciously step aside in favor of yet another man.
As Hillary would say, been there, done that.
This time she’ll go down like a man, throwing vicious punches until the ring is soaked with blood, until she and her opponent are both lying unconscious on the mat, half dead with exhaustion but macho to the max.
Hillary will make the world understand: Hell Hath no Fury like a woman denied the presidency.
Stay tuned.