[whiteperil] Sean: Wake me when it's over

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Posted by Sean:
Wake me when it's over
http://whiteperil.com/posts/1192347771.shtml


   I noticed [1]Rondi had added some election-related application on
   Facebook, so I clicked through to look at it. The text at the right
   said something like, "The 2008 election is almost here." I didn't do a
   double-take until a few seconds later--that's how accustomed I am to
   the idea that we're already in the run-up to the election.
   The good citizen in me is not looking forward to the coming year.
   Following politics can be good, wicked fun sometimes, but I mostly do
   it because I consider it a duty. I will listen to the debates and read
   up on candidates' records as legislators and seek out the opinions of
   commentators whose judgment I find helpful. But I am expecting this to
   be the least fun election season of my adult life.
   A lot of that has to do with Hillary. My sainted aunt, I am so sick of
   hearing about Hillary. I'm not referring to her relentless
   spotlight-seeking in and of itself--what else do you expect an
   ambitious politician with designs on the Oval Office to do? She's
   actually become much less grating to watch and listen to over the
   years. As an old-fashioned celebrity-loving gay guy, I've taken some
   pleasure in watching her develop a more bankable image. Work it,
   Hills, I say.
   Unfortunately, there's a flip side, which is that everything she says
   or does is examined to death, by friend and foe alike, for what it
   might indicate about her emergent Hillaryness. Of course, every
   politician makes tossed-off comments or clothing choices that get
   overworked in the media, but with Hillary the enterprise reaches a
   whole new level. Some sources speculate that Clinton's newest shade
   from Clairol suggests her commitment to the reconstruction of Iraq is
   less than sincere.... I understand that there are reasons for it--she
   may lack Bill's charisma, but in her own weird way, she may be just as
   compelling a figure. A lot of her fans seem to think she's some kind
   of saint, and a lot of her detractors seem to hate her more than they
   do Satan.
   You can imagine what I think of her politics. Hillary represents just
   about everything I detest about arrogant, technocrat-in-group statism.
   Since she's such an inveterate triangulator, I'm not sure how many of
   her overweening policy points she would actually work to push through
   in their purest illiberal form, but I'd prefer not to find out.
   I will say that in one sense I sympathize with her: She clearly wants
   to be a natural at winning over voters. She works and works and works
   at it, all to little effect. It must be frustrating to want so much to
   be good at something for which you have no talent, especially when
   you're married to someone who could charm the spots off a leopard. She
   always reminds me of Tom Cruise, who refuses to settle into being a
   movie star with a presence a lot of people will pay to see. He
   struggles mightily to be an Actor, and it doesn't work because you can
   always see the gears turning. Same with Hillary. The more "on" she is
   with her gestures and her speech patterns in technical terms, the more
   she comes off as an animatronic Anna Lindh doll. It would be nice to
   see her just cut the crap and be the steely, high-handed bitch she
   clearly wants to be. (And America needs a steely, high-handed bitch or
   two, now that Madonna's been domesticated and run through the
   Brit-erator.) She would be utterly fabulous at that. But it would
   obviously cost her the election, so it's not going to happen.
   Instead, we're going to spend the next year in the spin cycle
   perfected when Bill was in the White House, only with a senate term
   and a grown-up Chelsea ("See? At least one person in this family is
   normal!") sloshing around in it. Eric has [2]two [3]posts up about
   Control of the Narrative. While they don't address the election
   explicitly, they're pertinent here. Apropos of something else, he
   says, "I think media culture and hypersensitivity tend to fuel each
   other, and the result is a latent hysteria constantly lurking in the
   background, and ready to break out upon the slightest provocation."
   We're so used to hearing that every bracelet Hillary wears may say
   something about what's going on in that calculating head of hers that
   I think a lot of people have started to buy it without realizing
   they're doing it. We're in for an annoying year.

References

   1. http://wonkitties.blogspot.com/
   2. http://www.classicalvalues.com/archives/2007/10/when_victims_co.html
   3. http://www.classicalvalues.com/archives/2007/10/post_492.html