Hillary Clinton's Ribald Monologu

Hillary Clintons Ribald Monologues

OBIWU

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential campaign has finally come undone, like a lost bride head. The ribald dirges of its quixotic misadventure are stampeding the chinks and crannies of every bend.

At North Carolina State University in Raleigh on April 29, 2008, Governor Mike Easley laced his endorsement of Senator Clinton's candidacy with curious rhetorical markers. In the presence of his own wife, Mary Easley, and Mrs. Clinton, the governor announced that there was "nothing I love more than a strong powerful woman." He concluded his speech by asserting that Hillary Clinton "makes Rocky Balboa look like a pansy." Senator Clinton's excitable response to Easley was equally signifying, if poetically suggestive: "When the lights are gone and the cameras are off and the speeches are over what you want is somebody who will deliver results, and sometimes that's not very glamorous." The raucous crowd hailed Easley and his guest.

During his introduction of Senator Clinton the following day the president of the local steelworkers union Paul Gipson, sought to outdo the state governor by going on a verbal rampage. Gipson announced that the union members need an American president like Hillary Clinton who can improve on the achievement that her husband President Bill Clinton made with NAFTA. "I truly believe that that's going to take an individual that has testicular fortitude," he said. "That's exactly right. That's what we gotta have." Like a straggler in a whorehouse, he yelled his endorsement speech to a scandalized audience. Gipson slammed unnamed "Gucci-wearing, latte-drinking, self-centered, egotistical people that have damaged our lifestyle." All the while Hillary Clinton stood behind her buoyed endorser, smiled and laughed sheepishly exactly as she had done the previous day. She amplified the praise that was showered on her: "I must say, Paul, I appreciate that endorsement … I do think I have fortitude. Women can have it as well as men."

At the "Home of Mother's Day" in Grafton, West Virginia, on May 11, Senator Clinton unveiled an Email she said she liked very much to a cheering audience. The message from a supporter named Angela read: "Keep strong. It's not over until the lady in the pantsuit says it is." In campaign stops through Indiana, West Virginia, and Kentucky Clinton mounted her mantra, "I am a fighter … I am not a shrinking violet," as if magical wishes alone could change the Obama drama of math, money, and momentum. Was Clinton trying to prove her tigritude all the times she called out Obama, an able-bodied young man of forty-six: "If you can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen!"?

Select responses from various bloggers reveal something about America's perception of Clintonite ribaldry. Thomas from Phoenix, Arizona, writes: "Well, Bill told Gennifer Flowers that she'd slept with more women than he did; maybe she does have testicles." Mark R. from South Montrose, Pennsylvania, writes: "Maybe that's why she always wears pantsuits … Hillary compared herself to Teddy Roosevelt. What's next, a mustache?" Shel from Salt Lake City, Utah, writes: "Yep, she's got 'em. They're Bill's & they're in her purse (which Bill holds when they go out)." And Jim from Santa Cruz writes: "The blogosphere is going to have a field day with Gipson's remarks - I can hear the short haircut jokes already."

Perhaps, Hillary Clinton's ribald dirges could have engendered fresh excitement had they not been stark reminders of the infamous "Bimbo Eruptions" which dogged Bill Clinton's executive suites from Little Rock, Arkansas, to the White House. The American public will not easily forget a roll call of the worst tawdriness there had ever been in political history since King David stole Bathsheba and sent her husband Uriah – who was his best general – to be murdered in a war of brazen subterfuge, and his son King Solomon kept over one hundred and forty concubines. Genuine or alleged, the online harem lists include Judy Gibbs, Arkansas Penthouse model and call girl who tragically burnt to death in her home; Sally Perdue, former Miss Arkansas; Dolly Kyle Browning, old Arkansas flame; Gennifer Flowers, former Arkansas nightclub singer; Paula Corbin Jones, former Arkansas state clerk; Cristy Zercher, one of six so-called "Clinton stewardesses" on board 1992 campaign jet "Longhorn One"; Kathleen Willey, former White House volunteer; Elizabeth Ward Gracen, former Miss America & TV actress who reportedly left US to escape Kenneth Starr's subpoena; Deborah Mathis, former White House press corps; and of course Monica Lewinsky, former White House intern whose trysts led to the second ever impeachment of a United States president. Even a patient and tenacious people have a saturation point, and Americans seemed determined to make that point by thumbing down Hillary Clinton's candidacy. But the Clinton fatigue had its core beyond the bawdily outlines.

The Clintons have lost face before the leadership base of the Democratic Party. Senator Ted Kennedy and the Massachusetts's House of Camelot abandoned the Clintons with a fanfare following Bill Clinton's "fairy tale" speech in New Hampshire and his "Jesse Jackson" interview in South Carolina, both of which riled everyone as contemptuous race-baiting. The Kennedys' endorsement of Senator Barack Obama came on the heels of Hillary Clinton's bruising loss in South Carolina. On the throes of another grueling loss in North Carolina, former Senator George McGovern of South Dakota was the first party stalwart to publicly announce the switching of his earlier endorsement of Clinton to Obama. "By any practical test," he said, Obama has won the nomination for Democratic Party's presidential primary. It is only left for Hillary Clinton to "do the right thing" by dropping out of the race and helping to unify the party behind Obama against the presumptive Republican nominee, John McCain.

McGovern would know, because he still blames the failure of his presidential bid to the 1972 drawn-out Democratic primary. Notably, both Bill Clinton and former Ms. Hillary Rodham cut their teeth in Democratic Party politics by working as young volunteers on McGovern's campaign which was colossally routed by the Republican Richard Nixon. Like McGovern, Ted Kennedy – 1980 presidential contender – was one of the staunchest supporters of Bill Clinton's triumphant presidential campaign in 1992. In other words the Carolinas have become – and would be marked in the annals of world politics – as the Waterloo of Clintonism. Al Gore, vice president to President Clinton, 2000 presidential nominee, and Nobel peace laureate has kept far away from the Clintons. Senator Robert Byrd, longest-serving member in the history of the Senate and president pro tempore of the United States Senate, has endorsed Obama. Senators Bill Bradley and John Kerry, 2000 presidential contender and 2004 presidential nominee respectively are both Obama's foremost endorsers. Fellow 2008 presidential primary rivals, including Governor Bill Richardson and Senators Chris Dodd and John Edwards, have all lined up behind Obama.

Bill and Hillary Clinton constantly talk, but they always talk to themselves. They talk to no one and they listen to no one. They are a mighty island surrounded by a rivulet. They have sucked the running water out of the living fountain of America. The Hillary Clinton campaign is already mired in debt to the staggering tune of twenty million dollars. "Hillary Clinton for President" souvenirs are currently sold at half price by vendors who are wise to skip a bankrupt relic in a depressed economy. Many of the so-called "HillRaisers" who were banked on to funnel millions of "bundling" dollars to her campaign are crossing over to Obama. The Clintons are all alone now. An inflated Hillary look-alike doll given to the candidate on the trail was found to have shriveled a few days later. Soon or late an unwatered tree in a desertified land stifles from asphyxia, like a starved womb. But how did the once most viable name-brand in American politics arrive by such a tragicomic trait of the Dickensian Bounderby that now portends its denouement before a climax?

On five different occasions between October 2007 and March 2008, Senator Clinton yarned some asinine "fairy tales" about how she and her then teenage daughter ran and weaved under "sniper fire" in Bosnia during her husband's presidency in 1996. Mrs. Clinton never bothered to explain why the American army would allow a serving first lady and her only child to be exposed to an unnecessary life-threatening emergency in a foreign country. Worse still, what psychological condition could make a serving senator, landmark female politician, and presidential contender of the world's strongest power feel an overwhelming need to peddle such an infantile, boldfaced, and unsolicited moonlight fiction?

In nowhere more than in this mind-boggling instance – except in the legends of President Clinton's serial bimbo rifling – do we see a greater evidence of the Clintonite self-annihilating archetype. The queen bee is always a black widow. The Oedipus complex is not actually gender-specific. In the unconscious men and women are equal and the same. Hillary Clinton's Bosnian tall tale is as phallocentrically Quixotic as her claim to have shot big games as a teenager under her father's hunting tutelage, her 1995 claim to have been named after Sir Edmund Hillary who climbed Mount Everest in 1953 – six long years after she was born, her open bar downing of life-size mug of beer and shots of hard liquor in the midst of an all-male crowd on the campaign trail, her acquiescent chuckles at the "pansy" and "testicular" monologues of her homophobic and bawdily endorsers, and of course Bill Clinton's own well-chronicled epical philandering. The usually serene Obama could not resist the urge to gleefully ask to see Mrs. Clinton's "Annie Oakley" picture. A cynical blogger, Joshua, was equally unpersuaded: "If Hillary was really a gun fan, Bill would have been neutered ages ago."

Does it really matter to the Clintons that the ultimate victim of their sexual revelry is their only child? A couple of times in her college campus rounds for her mother's campaign the young woman was confronted by unrelenting students who sought to know what she thought of her mother's role in the impeachment proceedings against her father over his affair with Monica Lewinsky, a youth who was of his daughter's age group. "It's not your business," she seethed on both occasions. Is it too farfetched for MSNBC's David Shuster to aver on February 7 that their daughter had been "pimped out" as a campaign surrogate? Haven't Bill and Hillary Clinton consistently assaulted the humanity of their only child at both fictive and factual realms for the past two decades? It appears they will stop at nothing until they have done in her political inheritance.

Hillary Clinton's father, Hugh Ellsworth Rodham, was an eloquent Republican. By age seventeen Hillary Rodham herself had become a volunteer for Republican Barry Goldwater in the 1964 presidential election. Barack Obama has repeatedly accused the Clinton campaign of lifting pages from desperado Republican playbook. The Republican radio jock Rush Limbaugh has become Clinton's strongest ally since the Pennsylvania primary. With the shamefaced employment of the hydra-headed Clintonite "Kitchen Sink Strategy" and the Limbaughan "Operation Chaos," which throws dirt at Obama while drawing out gullible Republicans to vote for Clinton in Democratic primaries, the chicken has finally come home to roost. In her final campaign stop in Kentucky Senator Clinton actually cited some vague analysis by the discredited Republican Karl Rove, President George W. Bush's Rasputin, as evidence of her being a "stronger candidate" than Obama. Should anyone be amazed at the transformation of Hillary Rodham Clinton to a Limb(o)augh-Rovian Democrat?

What if wishes were horses? Between campaign stops in North Carolina, Senator Clinton stampeded everyone to bet on the filly Eight Belles in the 134^th Kentucky Derby. Clinton claimed that as the only female in the derby, Eight Belles will teach all the male horses how to race. By such exaggerated comparison of Eight Belles's historic race with her own candidacy, Clinton brought sudden global pressure to bear on the 2008 derby. The Clintonite poor judgment, which peaked with Hillary Clinton's Senate vote to invade Iraq without reading the security report, completely blindsided the unequaled force of a big bay colt like Big Brown. Eight Belles came in second behind Big Brown, broke her two ankles in the hyper-tensed race, and had to be euthanized on the course in the most tragic two minutes of any world sport. Eight Belles was literally stopped in her tracks. Big Brown, whose instructive grace and carriage are the stuff of acclaimed super athletes, went on to win the 133^rd Preakness in Baltimore, Maryland, and is heavily favored to win the elusive Triple Crown at the Belmont Stakes in New York. In arguing why Obama should not pick Clinton as vice president, Ted Kennedy told Bloomberg Television's Al Hunt that Obama should pick someone who "is in tune with his appeal for the nobler aspirations of the American people."

Instead of blaming sexism alone for the orgasmic collapse of the 2008 Clinton presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton and the loquacious "I am not a racist" Geraldine Ferraro will need to adjust their panoptical lenses more appropriately. As an Igbo proverb says, when a fool grows older without making money she claims to have been possessed by the Mermaid. When an old woman loses her way, another Igbo proverb says, she indulges in picking scraps. Neither grace nor nobility is a quality that is possible in Senator Clinton's cackling laughter and bloody cockfights. Clinton is far beyond the screaming headlines – "damsel of distress" and "seeds of destruction" – which Peggy Noonan of The Wall Street Journal and Bob Herbert of The New York Times respectively used to denounce her most recent trade in racial bigotry. Despite her strident denials to the contrary Hillary Clinton replicates Jerry Siegel's fictional Salu Digby, the "Shrinking Violet" as archetypal Marlowean Faustus in flaming red pants.

Obiwu is a Biafranist scholar and comparative theorist. He can be reached at: obiwu@yahoo.com.