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| Home Front: Politix |
| Mark Steyn on Hillary |
| 2008-03-31 |
| . . . Where did the magic go? Well, the show got miscast. I wrote a decade ago that Hillary was like Margaret Dumont to Bill’s Groucho Marx. He goes around leering at cocktail waitresses, waggling his eyebrows and his famously unlit cigar. And Hillary would stand there seemingly oblivious to the subpoenaed dress and DNA analysis and all the rest: In double-acts, the best straight men (or women) are the ones who appear never to get the joke, and that was Hillary in the late Nineties, standing on stage alongside Bill night after night with her rictus grin and droning in the robotic cadences of that computerized voice in your car that tells you to fasten your seatbelt that “I. Am. So. Proud. Of. My. Husband. And. Our. President. Bill. Clinton.” But you can’t recast: You can’t put Margaret Dumont in the Groucho role. In their heyday, the Clintons ran a thuggish operation fronted by an ingratiating charmer. Now the charming facade’s gone, and the backroom thuggery is ineffective. The Clinton campaign’s letter to Nancy Pelosi suggesting that she might like to “reflect” (if you know what we mean) on her call for the super-delegates to support the winner of the popular vote (ie, Obama) was notable not for its menace but for its clumsiness: Few sights are more forlorn than an enforcer who can no longer enforce. The Clinton letter reminded me of Elena Ceausescu still trying to pull the don’t-you-know-who-I-am routine even as the firing squad were taking aim. But on she staggers. Even if she can’t win, she can deny victory to Obama, and to her party. As they say in showbusiness, it’s not important for me to succeed, only for my friends to fail. |
| Posted by:Mike |
| #5 "BillÂ’s Groucho Marx. He goes around leering at cocktail waitresses, waggling his eyebrows and his famously unlit cigar." Bill |
| Posted by: Barbara Skolaut 2008-03-31 19:10 |
| #4 ...Groucho is the go to guy on this subject in more ways than one. Consider: "The last guy who had hold of this place He didn't know what to do with it - If you think this country's bad off now, just wait till I get through with it! The country's taxes must be fixed And I know what to do with 'em - If you think you're paying too much now, Just wait till I get through with 'em! I will not stand for anything that's crooked or unfair I'm strictly on the up and up, so everyone beware If anyone gets caught taking graft And I don't get my share We'll stand 'em up against the wall, and pop! goes the weasel!" - Duck Soup, 1933 And if that doesn't describe Hilary!, I don't know what does. Mike |
| Posted by: Mike Kozlowski 2008-03-31 18:36 |
| #3 More appropriate then you think. Groucho always said that Margaret never had a clue... Decades later, in his one man show at New York's Carnegie Hall, Groucho mentioned Dumont's name and got a burst of applause. He informed the audience that she rarely understood the humor of their scenes together and would ask him, "Why are they laughing, Groucho?" |
| Posted by: tu3031 2008-03-31 15:26 |
| #2 I had to look it up, but the Margaret Dumont analogy was brutal. |
| Posted by: Woodrow Slusorong7967 2008-03-31 15:22 |
| #1 Ceausescu, Groucho Marx and the stained blue dress all in the same article. The man is a genius. |
| Posted by: Iblis 2008-03-31 13:21 |