Boudica's Balls! Ann Althouse Doth Forget Too Much

"[Hillary Clinton's] real accomplishment in the Senate has been to rehabilitate the image and political career of Hillary Rodham Clinton. Impressive though that has been in its particulars, it makes for a rather thin claim on the presidency. Senator Clinton has plenty to talk about, but she doesn't have much to say."-- Josh Green of The Atlantic

Althouse: Hillary's lead proves the netroots are ineffectual. "I'm ready to vote for her if she maintains that hawkish edge. That is, I think there's a hawkish edge in there somewhere, since she [is] going to so much trouble to hide what must be it."

Normally a smart, smart person, Ann must be having a bit of brain fatigue after her Herculean efforts earlier this week parsing Lee Bollinger. How else to explain this statement, this capitulation, this shriek of existential distress disguised by the tatterdemalion meme of the moment?

I agree that the netroots are "ineffectual," but then they always have been. Filling tinfoil hats with flatulence never a lethal grenade doth make. And certainly the Hillary campaign will use the netroots for money and pleasure and then lose them. It is in the nature of a Clinton to use and toss away people like so much soiled Kleenex. It works for them and so many of their camp-followers yearn to be used Kleenex. But it is first, foremost, and always in the deepest nature of a Clinton to do one thing better than anything else: to lie.

For all the "Bush lied" corned-beef hashcrap slung about wherever netroots keyboard, the real professional, star-class liars in the American political system these days are all to be found in the Clinton machine. And Hillary is first among equals. Bill comes up for air every now and then and delivers a whopper, true, but these days he's merely quaint.

The pro with the go-girl attitude is the Hill from the Hill. After learning the central secret of lying from Bill -- how to fake sincerity -- she then ramped it up by learning how to lie to herself. Once you can lie sincerely to yourself, anything is possible.

The Clinton lie was first perfected by Bill -- Oh, the paced parsing. The moistening of the eyes. The slightly bitten lower lip. The acting skills that almost rise to the level of David Caruso. The the awe-shucks bashful smile. The glad-handing. The charm that sucked dogs off of meat trucks. The meaning of is-is. -- These are Olympian feats of lying. But the best, the most innovative, of Clinton lies is the lie laid out so long and slow that it makes it possible for the listener to lie to herself. Not the "Big Lie" but a new trick for that old dog -- the Long Lie. This is accomplished by a careful, long, slow pacing to the lie, a lie that is not so much told as allowed to emerge over weeks and months -- a bit here, a pause, a morsel there, another pause, a nod and a wink, and a silence on a central issue that is so long and pregnant that the auditor finds herself filling in the blank. It is indeed the lie of the blank. A lie told so well you end up telling it to yourself. A lie the liar never told you. An aikido lie.

It is in this lie that Ms. Althouse and many others are finding solace these days as the media mantra ("President Hillary... Your eyelids are getting heavy, heavy... "President Hillary"... You can hear nothing but the sound of my voice... ); as the tedious media mantra sweats and frets its hour upon the stage. In this we find the use of the classic Long Big Lie -- repeat something often enough, long enough and unremittingly and people, even smart people, even lawyers like Ms. Althouse, start to believe it.

To think, to really think, that Hillary has the only set of C-in-C brass balls among the Democrats may, in fact, turn out to be true. Yet one must always remember that for a Democrat, at this stage of their shady game, to claim to have balls of any metallic substance is an easy gambit. Teflon testicles are today's standard issue for the Crats. I'll admit that measured against someone like John Edwards the impression that Hillary possesses a penis may well have some truth to it, but it still will not likely measure much above two inches. Not nearly enough to get her the Boudica bump she needs. Unless, of course, the Long Clintonian Lie is not exposed on the fly.

The Warrior-Queen Boudica-Hillary meme is just that. A meme -- not a reality. If it were a reality we would do well to remember the disastrous end of Boudica.

But, to return to the present moment, people who think anything said or pointedly unsaid by a Clinton has a shred of reality to it, had best stop cooking with aluminum pots in order to preserve what shreds of memory remain.

She's not just a Hillary, she's a Clinton and a lawyer.

How do you tell when a Clinton and a lawyer are lying, Ms. Althouse?

To be Zen about it, when their lips are moving and not moving.

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Posted by Vanderleun at September 25, 2007 11:57 PM | TrackBack