Hillary Storms Onward

Poor Hillary Clinton can't catch a break.

Just when she was all set to claim entitlement to saturation media coverage of the latest version of her life, a hurricane named Irma is sucking it all up instead. Irma even has the nerve to totally crush Florida, which Hillary also memorably lost to her favorite stalker, Donald J. Trump. Didn't Irma get the message that there's a special place in hell for women who don't support other women? So Irma is either a Bernie-bro, a Putin troll, a James Comey FBI entrapment schemer, an Anthony Weiner sexting partner, or a Wikileaks dumpster fire that got way out of control.

Or probably all of the above. The important thing is that if something inconveniences Hillary Clinton, nobody else - not the homeless, the jobless, the drowned -  could possibly ever hope to reach the level of her sublime victimhood.

I don't plan on reading Hillary's book when it officially comes out. But judging from reviews of deliberately leaked copies, it is a nauseating combination of political revenge porn and self-pity. Not a good look. As a matter of fact, the speculative parodic review I already wrote concerning What the Hell Happened pales in comparison to the real thing. I was half-kidding when I predicted that she would also blame Obama for her loss. But she really goes there, chiding him for not abusing his office by hijacking the airwaves to deliver a  fear-mongering address about Russian interference in her coronation. 

She outlines numerous instances when she wanted to do something, but her handlers wouldn't let her. Her instincts and her intellect lost out every single time. Donald Trump was literally breathing down her neck on national television during a debate and she had to force herself to smile like a docile lady and keep quiet. She wanted to lash out at James Comey after he called her illegal email set-up "careless" but she had to keep quiet. Yada yada yada. She actually still cedes power to white male supremacy while pretending to fight against it even as she struggled to represent white male supremacy as the very first First Lady ever to ride her husband's coattails to the Oval Office.

Not a good look for someone who claims to have such unprecedented qualifications for leadership. Hillary was not and never will be a feminist with the courage of her own convictions.  

As Simone de Beauvoir writes in The Second Sex, "when a woman is named or elected to a position of power, she still represents the patriarchy; the lot of her female subjects/constituents/employees doesn't automatically improve. A queen (or a president) is not a woman first and foremost - she is an institution."

 A Clintonian restoration, with its neoliberal, plutocrat-friendly agenda, would have done little or nothing to elevate working class women.

De Beauvoir could have been forecasting Hillary's faux feminism, her sense of "it's my turn" aggrieved entitlement, and her current blame-game antics when she observed nearly 70 years ago:

She was promised compensations, she was assured that if she abdicated her opportunities into the hands of the man, they would be returned to her a hundredfold, and she considers herself duped; she accuses the whole masculine universe; resentment is the other side of dependence; when one gives everything, one never receives enough in return.

The snippet in Hillary's memoir which I find the most interesting and troublesome, though, was her claim that she was actually napping on Election Night as the returns came in. This is not a good look for a potential president who needs to stay awake and alert during critical national and international moments. Forget the 3 a.m. phone call. This dame couldn't even last past 9 p.m.

Was she hitting the bottle? She seems to admit, every chance she gets, that she does love her Chardonnay.

Was she on some other medications? Did Wolf Blitzer's stentorian CNN babble render her unconscious? Was she simply bored?

Perhaps she was just getting caught up on her beauty sleep in order to look her best at the Javits Center coronation gala. Perhaps she was lying about her election night snooze altogether.

I don't know, and frankly, I don't care. As Hillary herself famously scoffed about Benghazi, what difference at this point, does it make?

What I do know is that Hillary Clinton must be a bit short on the excessive cash needed to maintain herself and Bill and Chelsea and the grandkids in their lifestyles. Why else would she charge thousands of dollars for tickets to her book tour appearances? Most authors are only too happy to sign autographs for the price of just the book, score a few unpaid interviews, and then call it a tour.

But where there is chutzpah and where there are globs of money to be made, there is life in the old gal yet. So along with the book tour comes the political campaign to keep the centrist Democratic Party dream alive. Somebody's got to stand up against the growing anti-capitalist chorus for Single Payer health insurance, after all. So it might as well be Hillary. If she can't destroy something good, then what good is she?  She already managed to destroy the possibility for universal coverage once, during her husband's administration, so who says she can't try, try again?

I got an email from her just today, slugged "re: bravery" as though I were part of some ongoing trendy, insidery discussion. Hillary being Hillary, of course, she had the gall and the bad taste to immediately use the name of murdered Charlottesville activist Heather Heyer as a means to suck money off someone else's courageous dead body. In coordination with her book tour, Clinton is using her political action slush fund to "fight back" against the very hate and divisiveness which her tortured new memoir absolutely wallows in and perpetuates!

"Some days, it feels like the work left to do is insurmountable," she writes in the spammy email, probably typed out between exhausting sips of Chardonnay. "But if I've learned anything, it's that those (sic,hic) are the days we need each other* more than ever. That's one of the reasons we created Onward Together: to support smart, passionate activists who know what needs to be done and could use a little of our help to get there."

If you think Hillary Clinton would ever have given a dime to smart, passionate Bernie Sanders supporter Heather Heyer or any other anti-fascist, then I've got a ghostwritten memoir to sell you. Of course, what she really wants is money for her collapsed little eye-wall of  functionaries and campaign operatives, who are now doing such amazing work as collating maudlin quotes from other functionaries in a clunky new propaganda website called Verrit. (rhymes with Ferret.) 

Read the fine print: Hillary's slush fund will do nothing to make ordinary people's lives better today, or even tomorrow. It is classic neoliberal claptrap, a purely aspirational and intentionally vague public relations gimmick:

Onward Together works to build a brighter future for generations to come by supporting groups that encourage people to organize in their communities or run for office."

 Translation: give Hillary Clinton money to pay Clinton people a fraction of this money to inspire volunteer Clinton people to support other unpaid Clinton people. And if you're very lucky, some amazing shards of shattered glass ceiling might even eventually trickle down to your grandkids after you're long dead.

The designated grift sweepstakes winner for today is a group called Run For Something, (the hills?) which is designed to suck up money for only "good and necessary" causes, defined as winning more seats for centrist Democrats who are not in the Bernie Medicare For All Brigade. Oh and to get you even more inspired, click here to score a ticket to one of Hillary's own upcoming pity party/revenge porn appearances!

And while you're breathlessly waiting to see Hillary in the flesh, she suggests that you also do your mental health part and show your class solidarity by attending Broadway shows.

I've been fortunate enough (wealthy enough)  to see quite a bit of theater - if you get the chance to see Come From Away on Broadway, take it."

 By "you," she obviously doesn't mean people on fixed or low or no incomes. She means only those fellow Fortunates with enough disposable income to afford the three-figure price of admission to a hit Broadway show. Just by this suggestion alone, Hillary gives her own whole show away. Her appeal is both geographically and financially limited to the Acela Corridor/Wall Street and Silicon Valley/Hollywood.

But in her book, she nevertheless persists in claiming not to understand why her approval ratings stand even below those of her favorite stalker. It must be on account of her XX chromosomes and the vast, right wing He-Man Woman Haters Club. What other explanation could there possibly be?

Then again, this troubling confusion is probably understandable from a woman who says that her favorite reading material is mystery novels. She is a cozy closed-room puzzle unto herself, in dire need of an emergency dose of Hercule Poirot-level little gray cells to help her in the fine art of honest self-examination.

The hoped-for whirlwind of a comeback from a comeback from a defeat is barreling toward some mighty cold waters in the form of dismay from her fellow Democrats. Her book might be storming sales lists on Amazon this week, but all forecasts point to a rapid weakening to classic tropical depression status in the overstock bin.

But there will always be fine wine from Hillary's Zazzle collection. At only $6.65 a bottle, even the deplorables can feel the Clinton glow and afford to drown their sorrows with the Hillary Signature Star, Woman's Place White House, or Love Trumps Hate Heart (?) labels.

*oppressed wealthy elite donors of the superior knowledge class who couldn't care less about those annoying and demanding purists in the bottom 90%.