Redstate

To Wrack and Ruin

By streiff Posted in 2008 — Comments (9) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

If you Google the unlikely word combo "hillary clinton cleavage" you get 336,000 hits. Substitute "boobs" for "cleavage" and you get 365,000 hits. Replace "boobs" with a more earthy word for tatas (four letters, starts with at "t") and you get 285,000 hits. In a sure sign that the Four Horsemen are saddling up their steeds, one writer for the Washington Post has created a veritable garden industry out of Hillary Clinton's rack.

Anyone who was alive during the long night of the Clinton horror show should immediately recognize what is going on here.

Read on.

Hillary Clinton has several problems as a candidate. A philandering layabout of a husband. Crooked brothers. Questionable business ethics. These don't pose an insuperable problem for a candidate. Unfortunately for her, she is also singularly unattractive, unpleasant, and shrewish. These traits do pose difficulties and they pose greater difficulties for a woman than they do for a man.Sad to say, an ugly man can get by in life by being funny or rich or smart (see Thompson, Fred). An ugly woman gets a life membership in NOW and the League of Women Voters... or a high position in the federal bureaucracy.

Hillary has made her political career out of equal parts bare-knuckle brawling and playing the victim. We all recall poor hapless Rick Lazio being lambasted for picking on a girl when he tried attack her record and principles during her first run for the Senate.We can all recall various stripes of equally unattractive, unpleasant, and shrewish -- some might say hirsute -- feminists waving "Don't Pillory Hillary" signs when the adoring national media momentarily covered the mysterious disappearance and reappearance of the Rose Law Firm billing records.

Far from being the gauche act of a catty fashion writer this has all the marks of a premeditated act. Why? Let's take a quick trip back to 1997 as one bimbo Mt. Vesuvius was erupting and threatening the Clinton presidency. Bill and Hillary took a vacation to St. Thomas in the US Virgin Islands.Their marriage, always unorthodox, was now approaching Gothic. Roger Simon picks up the story:

The man is 51, and the woman is 50, and while they are both attractive, neither would claim to be a hardbody. They look like a normal couple, dancing in the daylight on a beach and enjoying each other's company. Whether or not they would like to be photographed in their bathing suits on that beach and have that photograph distributed around the world is another question.

The photo captions inform us, unnecessarily, that the dancing couple is Bill and Hillary Clinton, photographed while on vacation in St. Thomas a few days ago. Photographers and a TV crew took the pictures from about 100 yards away, without the permission of the White House. The picture ran in newspapers all over the planet on Monday -- the Los Angeles Times ran it in full color on the front page -- and the White House instantly announced that the first couple's privacy had been invaded.

"We stupidly assumed they'd be granted some privacy," deputy White House press secretary Joe Lockhart fumed.

Mike McCurry, the presidential spokesman, informed the press that he was "upset" and threatened to make the presidential couple less available for photographs in the future.

The same day, President Clinton was asked by a reporter if he felt his privacy had been invaded by the picture, and he responded, "Yes."

But there is a lot more to the story.

So I called a source who has vast knowledge of the White House publicity operation and asked him if the White House was really upset with the picture.

"Naw," he said. "It was a great picture."

So why did the White House complain about an invasion of privacy? I asked.

"This is a post-Diana world," the source said. "It's good to complain about that, and it's good to complain about the press. It makes the public more on your side. But a picture of the two of them dancing? You can't lose with a picture like that."

And so the White House didn't lose. It got a good picture, and it got to complain about the press, too.

Clinton has an image problem. Elizabeth Edwards hit the nail on the head as when she opined that Hillary behaved like a man and gave credence to the idea that John Edwards is the real female candidate in the race. Keep in mind this was barely two weeks ago.Then we get a fawning and incredulous piece in the Washington Post about Hillary's borderline risque outfits and her rampant sexuality. (Here I have to stop for a moment and paraphrase Lloyd Bentsen: I know bosoms, bosoms have been a very good friend of mine, and those are not bosoms)

This is followed, as night follows day, by her toadies and lickspittles engaging in a friendly fire incident with the Washington Post. And now she has sent out a fundraising letter complaining about the story:

Lewis's fundraising letter begins: "Can you believe that The Washington Post wrote a 746-word article on Hillary's cleavage? ..... I've seen some off-topic press coverage--but talking about body parts? That is grossly inappropriate.

"Frankly, focusing on women's bodies instead of their ideas is insulting. It's insulting to every women who has ever tried to be taken seriously in a business meeting. It's insulting to our daughters--and our sons--who are constantly pressured by the media to grow up too fast."

As the anonymous Clinton staffer told Roger Simon:

"It's good to complain about that, and it's good to complain about the press. It makes the public more on your side. But a picture of the two of them dancing? You can't lose with a picture like that."