- For a month now we've refrained from taking childish,
if not infantile, if not downright cheap and totally unfair shots at Sen.
Hillary Rodham Clinton - self-proclaimed virtuecrat and humanitarian, most
meritorious of the meritocracy, smartest of the smart set, chief priestess
of right-thinking, diversity-university, holier-than-thou know-it-alls
who surely know that it takes a village and if you don't know it too you
are, simply, a knuckle-dragging member of the vast right-wing conspiracy
of dunces.
-
- We've refrained, as I said. But we can keep silent no
more.
-
- Saturday night, Madison Square Garden. The Heroes of
New York spot the ubiquitous pantsuit. They recoil. Like spontaneous generation,
like The Wave rolling through Fenway, the boos come to life and crescendo
to full throttle, all but drowning her out. ``Thank you. Thank you for
being here tonight,'' says Hillary, onstage at ``The Concert for New York.''
Eight words into her greeting, she's shouting to be heard. ``Thank you
for supporting New York.'' She's practically bellowing.
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- ``Get off the stage!'' jeers a cop a few feet away.
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- ``Thank you for your generosity.'' She's screeching.
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- ``We don't want you here!!!'' the cop screeches back.
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- ``On behalf of all the people who are going to need help
for a very long time . . .''
-
- And the ``anti-Clinton slurs spread and intensif(y) throughout
the Garden, with many standing near the stage lobbing profanities.'' We're
quoting The Drudge Report here, pardon me. But these are desperate times.
-
- ``Please join me in welcoming . . .'' And Hillary goes
on bellowing but smiles as if nothing's wrong, as if she were not being
pummeled by the very people we and she have canonized since Sept. 11 -
New York City police and firefighters and survivors of the World Trade
Center tragedy - as if she were not utterly humiliated and ready to pulverize
whoever got her into this nightmare. Oh my, my, my. What a deeply satisfying
moment it was.
-
- ``It's visceral for me,'' an equally thrilled fellow
Hillary-hater Kevin Barry said yesterday. ``Who's she to get up on the
stage?'' Who, indeed?
-
- And who better to tell her than The Heroes, the real,
regular people who apparently can't stomach her fawning phoniness anymore.
-
- Yet according to Drudge again (sorry), a Hillary confidante
labeled these same heroes as ``cops and firemen who listen to right-wing
talk radio. They still think she killed Vince Foster!''
-
- In other words, heroes when it suits her; knuckle-dragging
vast right-wing conspirators when it doesn't.
-
- In case you missed the others, this is the third post-9/11
faux pas for the first feminist who would, heaven help us, be our first
female president.
-
- Last week, a black van carrying Hillary and driven by
a Secret Service agent blasted through security at a Westchester County
airport, injuring a policeman who tried to stop it. First he shouted at
them to stop. Then he banged on the van. ``I didn't know if we had a terrorist,''
said vigilant officer Ernest Dymond, who was briefly hospitalized. ``Once
I found out who he was, I was even more agitated that he, of all people,
should have known.''
-
- Hillary was on her way to a private airplane at the time.
-
- Then there was her petulant performance during President
Bush's speech to Congress a month ago. He's talking courage, endurance,
patience, love. She's grimacing, rolling her eyes, chatting away, clapping
stingily, as if it hurt.
-
- He's reassuring a shattered nation. ``The state of the
union is strong.'' She looks, this newspaper said, like she's ``sucking
on a lemon.''
-
- Of course, we could cut Hillary some slack here. We could
point out, for example, that many of the Heroes of New York overimbibed
Saturday. We could. But we won't.
-
- For if there's one bright side to our current horror,
it's that we're drawn to what's better among us, what's higher, grander,
truer and soul-enlarging - not what's prunish, greedy, grasping, cold-blooded,
calculated and completely full of it. Like her.
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