From Jonah Goldberg over at NRO’s The Corner:
From a reader:
Mr. Goldberg and staff,
I have recently realized that I feel little if any Clinton hatred anymore. I guess I still think Bill is sleazy, but I have come to view Hillary in a neutral or even somewhat positive way. I am wondering if you feel the same way (I know you had more direct experiences with the Clintons in the 90’s). For the last several months, Hillary has been given the “Republican treatment” by the media. Obama is the new Bill Clinton, the one the media and the intelligentsia will defend and adore to all lenghts. Hillary is now evil, just as the first Bush and Bob Dole were evil. Maybe I delighted in this turn of events for a while, but now I guess I feel like Hillary has been through a purgatory of sorts. Wondering if you feel the same way.
Me: “And staff?”
Anyway, I know what the reader is getting at, but I’m not really there. For the record, I never had much hatred for Hillary Clinton. I never liked her much, and still don’t. But my biggest gripe with her was with the completely unwarranted celebration of her as an impressive person. It seemed to me in the 1990s she was the subject of enormous projection. It was simply asserted that she was charismatic, charming, exciting etc. And I never saw it. Not even a little. I still don’t. I find her to be completely charmless. At times, that feeling of “What am I missing” could grow into full-blown anger or even hatred, particularly when she was getting away with so many lies and benefiting from so many other mendacities. But, generally, such feelings were short-lived.
It still gets me how people downplay Clinton corruption – shady land deals, illegal fundraising, serial lying, perjury, obstruction of justice, that sort of thing – but I do have to say I feel a bit of sympathy for Hillary Clinton these days. She has, indeed, gotten the “Republican treatment” from the left and the MSM…and while I’m not nearly as famous – nor even remotely as big a target – I, too, have felt the brunt of scurilous campaigns of slander and intimidation. Its disheartening to be the object of hatred and scorn, merely for not being a person blessed by the left.
My clearly favorable opinion of citizenship for illegal aliens? My sympathy towards my fellow Americans who are gay? My distaste for large corporations? My willingness to massively increase education spending? My opposition to the death penalty? Its all nothing – because I’m not in lock step with the left, I’m just an evil, racist, sexist, homophobic, bigoted tool of the PNAC/NeoCon cabal of imperalist oppressors of the masses/rapists of the environment. I expect leftwing opposition, but I can’t for the life of me figure out why so many of my fellow Americans choose to hate me because I’m conservative. But for Hillary, it has to have really hurt a lot – she is a leftist. Down the line she’s a dyed-in-the-wool socialist who wants to completely change American society in a leftwing manner…but because she won’t apologise for her pro-war vote in 2002, she’s been anethematised on the left…she’s hated by them as much as I am, and it doesn’t matter how much she kowtow’s to them on all other leftwing positions, they’ll go on hating her for that one, small diveregence from leftwing orthodoxy. A lifetime’s devotion to the cause, all for naught because the left will not allow even an iota of independence – Stalinists to a man, woman and “other”, the left doesn’t tolerate dissent.
Hillary, however, can have her revenge – and, actually, do a bit of service to her nation. She can run as an independent. I’ve never thought she would, but what love or loyalty does she now owe that left and that MSM which has so cruelly turned on her in favor of a slick-talking con-artist? Not a bit…
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