Hillary says she has written another book. She’s on a book tour. But as usual for this ghastly revenant of American politics, that isn’t true. She no more wrote “Living History” than did you or I, although I have no doubt that she edited it very, very closely. After all, without careful precautions, it was always possible that one or two elements of the truth might inadvertently slip out.
But this column is not a fiction review, so I’ll ignore the book. What interests me more is the response of other women to the latest charade of this fraud. Consider, for example, the words of Erica Jong in the New York Observer: “The woman is stronger than Queen Elizabeth I of England, a greater strategist than Catherine the Great of Russia, braver than Boadicea or the Amazons of old.”
Apparently, Ms. Jong is not only afraid of flying, she is also woefully ignorant of history. File this one under Exhibit 3,567(b) in my catalog of contempt for feminists. So, let’s have a look at the comparisons, shall we?
Before she was ever crowned, Elizabeth faced the very real threat that she would be murdered by Catholic fanatics concerned about her sister’s inability to provide for a Catholic heir. She survived several assassination attempts by her cousin’s partisans, faced down the French over their massacre of the Huguenots, and with the help of a timely storm, defeated the Spanish Armada. Under her reign, English power and English literature flowered as never before. While putting up with Bill Clinton for years no doubt required superhuman strength, I think the nod here goes to Good Queen Bess.
Can you even imagine the concept of Good Queen Hillary? The mind reels.
Boadicea was an earlier British queen, who led the Celtic Iceni in a two-year uprising against the imperial Roman army after her daughters were raped and she herself was flogged by soldiers. Her husband, the king, was already dead, so Boadicea took matters into her own hands and vengefully orchestrated the slaughter of tens of thousands while razing Colchester, St. Albans and London. While this does sound like something very much in Hillary’s line, I don’t think braving the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy quite rates with battling Roman legions in terms of sheer valor.
While Boadicea was a warrior woman, the Amazons were not, primarily because their existence is wholly fictitious. Not unlike the idea that Hillary is an author, or, for that matter, human.
It is true that one might well question how Catherine the Great rates as a strategist. After all, how cunning can a woman be, whose former lover selects all of his subsequent replacements? Nor did she lead her armies personally, as did her imperial antecedent, Peter. However, her very survival on the throne was a strategic masterpiece, since she started as little more than a German princess with a very tenuous claim to the Russian empire. But she held her throne, and went on to establish schools across the country, triple the number of factories, turn the empire’s budget deficit into a surplus and found Russia’s first school of medicine.
Whereas Hillary Clinton managed to fail, in spectacular fashion, at the only executive responsibility she has ever held in her life. Unlike Catherine, Hillary’s only interest in medicine was her failed attempt to destroy it in America. Fortunately, she proved to be as painfully inadequate in exercising power as she is ruthless in pursuing it.
Hillary the Great? Hardly. And yet, I’m only surprised that Ms. Jong did not compare her, favorably, of course, to St. Francis of Assisi.
Because it is not enough for Ms. Jong to raise Hillary above these three women of historical fame. She is angered – bitter – that we do not follow her example and fall to our unworthy knees before the lizard queen. “The fault, dear readers, is not in Hillary, but in our ghastly mass media, which only applauds brainy women when we are reduced to tears.”
But it is more truly we the people Ms. Jong would fain see reduced to tears. She, and other minions like her, will not be content until we have the Hillary Channel, Hillary-span, and CNBHillary – all Hillary all the time – until at last we look upon that eerie lidless gaze, and, with tears of fear and joy streaming down our faces, proclaim our love for her.