Hill-bullies May Bring US Four More Years of GOP Rule By Dr. Michael D. Rectenwald 08 Dec 2007 Hillary Clinton is the person that everyone-from various political positions-loves to hate. Of course, she's the favorite nemesis of the far-right pundit- and blogosphere. Check your cable listings; Foxy News (notice the array of neo-Nazi-card-carrying blondes fawning over O'Reilly and Hannity) celebrates a round-the-clock Hill-bashing from now until Election Day in 2008, if she gets that far. The Hillary-haters on rightwing media are so vehement they need napkins for the foam frothing from their mouths. Rush Limbaugh has a special spittoon installed. The microphone is often replaced after sounds become inaudible.
But the Hill-bullies are not exclusive to Faux and Raunch. Chris Matthews, the otherwise floundering middleweight chameleon, has a special, heavyweight hankering for Hillary hate. His animus appears to be especially personal, as if she's somehow slighted him, or refused him a date. He misses no opportunity to scorn her smile, ridicule her delivery, or sneer at the color of her dress. He spares nary a minute bolstering any opponent she might have, be he Obama, Edwards or even a Republican. He's like the DC sniper, lying in wait, always on the hunt for Hillary. His guests try to change the subject, embarrassed for his custom-fetishized caviling.
Not only on cable do we find them. They lurk in the real news, among the New York Times editorial staff or in the far left blogosphere. Here Hillary's haters may be more fretful than angry. For them, Hillary is "Bush-lite," or worse, a neoconspiratorialist posing as a Democrat while really harboring hopes for world domination. She's the ultimate Clintonian silly putty who's not so silly, who actually harbors a secret Nazi within. You can see it leaking out if you look close enough.
How can Hillary represent such antithetically absolute evils to such radically opposed people? According to the far right, she's the abortion-mongering, socialized-medicine hawking, neo-Marxist-Orwellian, abolish-your-freedoms-for-the-sinister-secularist satanic state candidate. For others, she's the epitome of DLC sellout, rightwing conciliating, Bush-licking, Project for a New American Century politics. She's the Manchurian candidate that changes shape to match anyone's hopes and fears: the rightwing impostor posing as liberal (the leftist view), or a real evil socialist posing as a liberal (the rightist view). And, the two sides often borrow each other's metaphors for poignancy. Take the vigilante ad concocted by the non-affiliated Obama fan, which featured Hillary as Big Sister in true UN form.
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...I am proposing to demythologize and right-size the image of Hillary on the left. (I know I'll gain no hearing from the right.) I'm also asking those left of center to consider why so many right-wingers are prone, as if it were a sexual compulsion, to beat on her. In addition to socialism, does she also represent a feared matriarch, a feared mother, or a spouse out of control?
I believe it is demonstrable that the left is being bitten and infected by the rhetoric of the right when it comes to our presidential candidates, most particularly when it comes to Hillary Clinton.
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I'm not saying that we should be happy to take what we can get. But if we continue to join in all those rein-in-Hillary games of the right, we might just end up with Rudolph or Huckabee.