Hill-arious

Excuse me, madam senator, but isn''t it a bit late in the day to be snarling at the luscious Lewinsky? Instead of weeping in print (for a big, fat, juicy fee of $8 million), perhaps Hillary Clinton would have endeared herself a little more to women the world over had she taken a stand with her philandering husband at the time of the scandal. But that wouldn’t have got her the big bucks.So, she played the stoical wife instead. Fair enough. Had she decided to close that sordid chapter then, nobody would’ve commented. After all, as we Hindustanis often say, ‘‘Miya-bibi ka mamla tha.’’
For the former first lady to rake it all up in her new memoir Living History, smacks of cheesy sensationalism. Good for sales, sure (the unpublished book is already number two on best-seller lists), but what about Chelsea? Going by the excerpts (frankly, disappointing), one understands that Mrs Clinton’s only reason for ‘‘staying by her man’’ was to spare her young daughter the agony and embarrassment of having to deal with warring parents, besides coping with all the muck-raking in the media. A noble intention. Most mothers of teenage children caught in a similar imbroglio would do the same.
So what’s the big difference now? I’d say it’s the royalty cheque. Chelsea is still a fairly young person. In fact, if anything, Chelsea is at an even more vulnerable point in her life. Surely, it can’t be much fun reading about what a cad her dad was, especially not when the person calling him that is the mother.
Mrs Clinton claims staying married to the post-Monica Clinton was one of the most difficult decisions of her life. I’d say it was perhaps the shrewdest. Hillary won countless brownie points for gritting her teeth and staying put. I am pretty certain her personal agenda had already been finalised at that point. She was going to run for senator (the second most difficult decision, according to her). I believe both decisions were interlinked. And perhaps, the canny Clintons did a deal (she stays put, he completes his term; she runs for the senate, he stays put). Makes sense. So, why in hell is this tough, calculating woman babbling now? She claims she was the last to know (just like countless dumb heroines of long-running soap operas). She also claims she believed ‘‘her man’’ when he denied the initial reports. Well then, Mrs Clinton must be one hell of a naive chick. Given his track-record (and hers!), it isn’t possible that she lived in ignorance through all his dalliances. The truth may be worse — she chose to ignore them all. Because the perks of her husband’s job were too good to pass up.
We might have admired her a little more, had she admitted as much. A woman needs a life, too. But, no. Hillary disappointingly enough picked a predictable route — she decided to tell all. Alas, even the prose is pedestrian. She sounds like any whimpering, bleating martyred wife when she writes about her inability to breathe when Billy-boy finally decided to confess. Mrs Clinton ‘‘gulped for air’’ and ‘‘started crying’’. The president according to his wife, hung his head in shame and kept saying, ‘‘I’m sorry.’’ Boo hoo.
The prose gets progressively smarmy. Mrs Clinton recalls being ‘‘dumbfounded, heartbroken and outraged....’’ Oh puh-leeze spare us, honey. The reason Hillary stuck around with the heel is all too obvious to anybody — herself. I guess, it’s payback time now. It’s Bill Clinton’s turn to maintain a stoic silence, grit his teeth and bear it. It’s Chelsea I’m worried about. Maybe, she’ll finish her mother’s stated unfinished job of wringing Clinton’s neck. And while she’s at it, she might wring her mother’s too. Unless, she’s smarter and signs up for an even juicier book deal of her own. Only then, will we get the real version of how a misplaced cigar brought the president down.