Thursday, February 07, 2008 - Posts
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Or maybe the Clinton campaign is not so strapped for cash after all: ABC News is reporting that contrary to earlier reports, senior campaign staff is still getting paid as usual. And one Democratic consultant not aligned with any campaign speculates that the whole "we're so broke" narrative might have been a fund-raising stunt for the benefit of potential donors.
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I don't guess I have ever seen The View—even if we are a sort of online homage to their caffeinated trailblazing. (Only, who is our Elisabeth?) But on yesterday's show, Whoopi and Joy and Sherri went where no Washington reporter has ever dared to tread; they made fun of Chelsea Clinton.
On Monday, co-host Joy Behar said on the air that she still hadn't decided on a presidential candidate. So the next day, after casting her ballot, Behar returns home, picks up her ringing phone and hears the breathy voice of Bill and Hillary's 27-year-old daughter, who was belatedly making a pitch on her mom's behalf. "At first, I thought it was a crank,'' Behar said. Because who knew Chelsea made campaign calls? (Or—until Emily B brought it to our attention—fired off campaign e-mails? And btw, the semi-grammatical, loosely informed message from Chelsea does not seem to have been a hoax, as Emily Y hoped.) Turns out, Chelsea also called The View's Whoopi Goldberg and Sherri Shepherd on Tuesday, and they all re-enacted the calls on yesterday's show, cracking up as they imitated her little-girl voice: "I was like, "Talk up! I can't hear you!'' Shepherd said.
Is this why Chelsea is usually silent? Because she sounds like Marilyn Monroe? Her parents have always been ultra-protective of her, to the point that the first year they were in the White House, they didn't even include her in the family Christmas card. Which was understandable when she was 12, but is increasingly odd now that she's grown; remember her father's insistence, just a few months back, that a New York restaurant take down a photo of Chelsea they'd had hanging on the wall alongside shots of other famous folks who had eaten there?
Maybe now, in any case, the Garbo of the political world is cutting loose at last; hard as it is to believe, she apparently addressed a crowd for the first time in her life on Jan. 29, at the University of Utah: "I'm feeling a little bit intimidated about that,'' she told the audience. She also filled in for her mom at the University of Delaware on Monday. And now that she's dialing for votes, who will hear from her next? Katie Couric? Kelly Ripa? Or if we're really lucky, Maureen Dowd? As you know, Miss Clinton, the D.C./Maryland/Virginia primary is next Tuesday, and some of us are on the fence, too! (Uh-oh, I think I just figured out who our Elisabeth is. Operators will not be standing by.)
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Emily Y. makes a great point about the risks involved in sharing a joint tax return with Bill Clinton; I had an off-the-record chat with the charming Kazakh dictator once, and there is zero chance Clinton did not know he was dealing with a complete thug. The guy is like something out of an animated version of The Sopranos.
So, the Clintons keep two houses and two checkbooks—and this $5 million loan to the campaign does come out of her account, according to the campaign, as it would have to, under the law. But their careers and finances seem impossible to divide into his and hers. (Would she have gotten an $8 million advance for her revisionist, group-written memoir, Living History, if her hubby hadn't been president? No. Then again, would he have ever been president if she hadn't been with him? Maybe not. And so on ...) They are absolutely inseparable as a political force—a fact that, more than her gender, her vote to authorize the war in Iraq, or her role in scandals past, has got to be the question facing her campaign.
Which led me into this recent argument with my own other half: I say Al Gore's widely derided decision to sideline Bill in 2000 is looking smarter and smarter in retrospect; he argues that my favorite Nobel-winner would be finishing up his second term if only he hadn't indulged his post-Monica anger toward Bill. Thoughts? (So I can pass on only those in full agreement with me ...)
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Dahlia, maybe the $5 million comes from Hillary's bank account. She did make about $10 million from writing her autobiography. Isn't the real question: Why does she needs the money? In spite of her continuing good showing on election days, Obama is floating in cash, while she's cutting staffers' pay. But the bigger issue you raise is an important point about her entwined life with Bill. This incredible story in the New York Times lays out the dangers of having Bill engage in his philanthropic activities during a Hillary administration. It seems Bill and a major contributor to his charity, Frank Guistra, took a trip to Kazakhstan recently (not to film a sequel to Borat). Bill ended up praising the country's notorious dictator, a man both Hillary and the United States government have denounced. Bill's friend came away from the trip with a lucrative uranium deal. Guistra gave Bill's charity $30 million (for a total contribution of—I'm not making this up—$130 million). And then Bill and Guistra lied to the New York Times about a subsequent meeting with a high Kazakh uranium official at Bill's home in Chappaqua (their memories were refreshed when the Times found others who confirmed the meeting). If you were a Republican, wouldn't you want Hillary to be the nominee?
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Anyone wanna tell me what to make of the Clinton campaign loaning itself $5 million—ostensibly to level the playing field with Obama? We had a rollicking discussion here over the merits of Hillary’s refracted glory last month, and at the time I had no problem defending the fact that her fame was partly (mainly?) attributable to Bill’s. But is there a principled feminist argument to be made defending her spending their (his?) money? Money derived from his ability to command jillions of dollars per speech?
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