THE POPCORN REEL POLITICAL
EDITORIAL
"Recount" And Rewriting Reality, With Poisoned, Calculated Rhetoric For June
Laura Dern as Florida secretary of state Katherine Harris in "Recount"; the real Katherine Harris; New York senator and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton; the late Robert F. Kennedy, former New York senator, who was tragically assassinated almost 40 years ago on June 5, 1968. (Dern photo: HBO Films; Harris photo: uncredited; Clinton photo: New York Times; Kennedy photo: Life Magazine)
By Omar P.L. Moore/May 24, 2008
As "Recount" unfolds on HBO this holiday weekend in May and continues throughout the month of June, the intersection of fiction and reality in politics in the United States becomes more timely and interesting.
"Recount", directed by "Austin Powers" helmer Jay Roach, is a thrilling political drama about the 2000 U.S. presidential election in Florida and the ensuing 36 days of the fight to recount votes in the fiercely-contested election between then-Texas governor George W. Bush and vice-president Al Gore and features riveting performances by Tom Wilkinson, Ed Begley, Jr., Denis Leary, Laura Dern and Kevin Spacey. Some of the real-life participants in the Florida fiasco of eight years ago have complained about the inaccuracies of the events portrayed in Mr. Roach's film.
In an age where American beauty in domestic politics has forever been a contradiction in terms, "Recount", or at least the reality of the Florida recount of 2000 has recently been invoked -- crudely and cynically so -- by Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, a shrewd and astute politician for whom the bloom on the rose has sadly faded ever since October 2002 (voting to invade Iraq) and now turned into a decrepit and spiteful weed that refuses to shrink. New York's junior senator recently invoked the recount of 2000 as she sought to seat delegates from both the Florida and Michigan primaries, which were held prematurely this year in disobeying the rules of the Democratic National Committee. "Let's not let some rules disenfranchise -- particularly Florida that's had enough of disenfranchisement, thank you," the New York Times quoted the senator as saying in a May 21 blog story. The senator's declaration appears especially dishonest in light of the fact that last October she said on a New Hampshire radio station program called "The Exchange" with host Laura Knoy the following regarding Michigan and by implication Florida: "It's clear this election they're having is not going to count for anything." (You can listen to the senator say this here, at 24 minutes and 42 seconds in.)
"Recount" And Rewriting Reality, With Poisoned, Calculated Rhetoric For June
Laura Dern as Florida secretary of state Katherine Harris in "Recount"; the real Katherine Harris; New York senator and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton; the late Robert F. Kennedy, former New York senator, who was tragically assassinated almost 40 years ago on June 5, 1968. (Dern photo: HBO Films; Harris photo: uncredited; Clinton photo: New York Times; Kennedy photo: Life Magazine)
By Omar P.L. Moore/May 24, 2008
As "Recount" unfolds on HBO this holiday weekend in May and continues throughout the month of June, the intersection of fiction and reality in politics in the United States becomes more timely and interesting.
"Recount", directed by "Austin Powers" helmer Jay Roach, is a thrilling political drama about the 2000 U.S. presidential election in Florida and the ensuing 36 days of the fight to recount votes in the fiercely-contested election between then-Texas governor George W. Bush and vice-president Al Gore and features riveting performances by Tom Wilkinson, Ed Begley, Jr., Denis Leary, Laura Dern and Kevin Spacey. Some of the real-life participants in the Florida fiasco of eight years ago have complained about the inaccuracies of the events portrayed in Mr. Roach's film.
In an age where American beauty in domestic politics has forever been a contradiction in terms, "Recount", or at least the reality of the Florida recount of 2000 has recently been invoked -- crudely and cynically so -- by Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, a shrewd and astute politician for whom the bloom on the rose has sadly faded ever since October 2002 (voting to invade Iraq) and now turned into a decrepit and spiteful weed that refuses to shrink. New York's junior senator recently invoked the recount of 2000 as she sought to seat delegates from both the Florida and Michigan primaries, which were held prematurely this year in disobeying the rules of the Democratic National Committee. "Let's not let some rules disenfranchise -- particularly Florida that's had enough of disenfranchisement, thank you," the New York Times quoted the senator as saying in a May 21 blog story. The senator's declaration appears especially dishonest in light of the fact that last October she said on a New Hampshire radio station program called "The Exchange" with host Laura Knoy the following regarding Michigan and by implication Florida: "It's clear this election they're having is not going to count for anything." (You can listen to the senator say this here, at 24 minutes and 42 seconds in.)
If Senator Clinton was clear about this in October 2007, then why has
this truism become anything but clear now?
During the same radio program she also said that "I'm going to win the nomination, and then
I'm going to win in November 2008, because we're going to bring more people
to vote for us . . . ".
At the time, the senator expected to be in the ascendancy in several months,
her nomination a fait accompli as the Democratic candidate. The invocation
of Florida, where many voters were disenfranchised systematically -- and
the attempt to link it by implication to her chief rival are fundamentally
dishonest. (It is worth noting that Senator Clinton left her name on
the ballot in Michigan, when all of the other candidates at the time took
their names off in accordance with the DNC rules.)
Months later, after her bold predictions of
last October on the radio, the tide has changed much to
Senator Clinton's chagrin. Back then she had expected to coast to the finish line
in these Democratic presidential primaries and
for months prior to the primaries was billed by the U.S. mainstream news
media as the Democratic Party's front-running candidate.
Now with May 31 as the date for meeting with the DNC Rules Committee in an
attempt to restructure (or rewrite the rules) in order to apportion and seat
all delegates from Florida and Michigan and thus try to put Senator Clinton
within striking distance of the actual Democratic front-running candidate Senator Barack Obama,
who is carefully and politely tip-toeing around the Big Apple senator while
discreetly selecting a running mate in order to position himself against
Republican nominee John McCain.
In something of a "Recount"-redux, it was the
Republican Florida government, under
its governor Charlie Crist, whom in
2007 signed legislation to move up the Democratic presidential primary in
Florida earlier in the calendar ahead of the date that the DNC had scheduled
it for, thereby prompting and entertaining the disenfranchisement of voting Democrats in the
state, albeit much less dramatically and calculatingly than the Florida governorship
of Jeb Bush in 1998, when Florida's secretary of state Katherine Harris
helped co-ordinate a $4.3 million state government payment to Data Base
Technologies, which in that year began a computer program that helped over
the next two years to purge at minimum 20,000 and at maximum 100,000 legally
registered eligible voters off the rolls in the state beginning that year,
setting up the apparatus that would be complete in time for November 2000,
when Mr. Bush's eldest brother would eventually become the 43rd president of
the United States.
As for seeking to become the 44th president of the United
States, Senator Clinton has the unmitigated right to keep running
until the end (June 3), to continue energetically and
passionately engaging voters -- that is what democracy in America and
anywhere else is supposed
to be all about. What democracy isn't about, however, is pretending that
the rules set by her own political party don't exist, or that those rules
can be changed midstream when the change could possibly serve to personally
accentuate one's own political position. (It is wise to note that several
news organizations have performed calculus that in virtually every
scenario the New York senator finishes in second place. While the
Philadelphia Inquirer, nestled in a state that voted heavily for Senator
Clinton last month, had recently projected otherwise, any attempts to entertain what the current U.S. president has
coined
"fuzzy math"
-- which seems to have severely afflicted the junior
senator and not her 71-year-old good friend Senator McCain, will prove
futile, even in the eyes of those who did not take trigonometry or indulge
in rocket science.)
Why does any of this have any thing to do with "Recount" or with the Florida 2000 events that left Al Gore high and dry?
Well, for one, this adulterated Clinton saga could be made into a movie all by itself.
Why does any of this have any thing to do with "Recount" or with the Florida 2000 events that left Al Gore high and dry?
Well, for one, this adulterated Clinton saga could be made into a movie all by itself.
And consider the following: the specter of the New York senator's unusual campaign strategy against a fellow party candidate regarding calls to make every vote count in Florida for the current presidential primaries truly rings hollow, for Senator Clinton and her outgoing husband, president Bill Clinton were nowhere to be found in 2000 when Mr. Clinton's vice president for eight years, Mr. Gore, was mired in the muck of a very messy and agonizing 36 days in the very same state in November and December 2000.
In fairness to the Clintons, Mr. Gore shunned then-president Clinton's advice and counsel when he ran for president eight years ago, foolishly choosing to turn his back on two terms of economic prosperity, balanced budgets, deficit reductions and eschewing the then well-respected Mr. Clinton because of a sex scandal which only increased his ratings and public popularity. Even so, the Clintons' decision to leave him out in the cold during the decisive and critical aftermath of the presidential campaign betrays the current climate where senator Clinton herself is concerned. She was barely audible in the late fall and early wintertime of the 2000 discontent. Neither she nor her husband were calling for every vote to count. They both largely stayed out of the way. Besides, both were busy removing furniture and shifting their residence from the White House to New York, where Hillary Clinton had just won election to the U.S. Senate on November 7, 2000, the very same night as the Gore-Bush fiasco. (This writer had voted for Senator Clinton in 2000, and she was re-elected to the U.S. Senate in 2006.)
And in 2004 when supporters of Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry cried foul over the findings of manipulation and vote spoilage in Ohio that year, the Clintons, powerful and established Democratic politicians who endorsed Senator Kerry's campaign, were also missing in action on the night of November 2 as well as November 3, 2004. And just last year, in 2007, there wasn't a great deal of concern from the Clintons about voter disenfranchisement when the rules regarding Florida and Michigan were set.
Still, the idea that Mrs. Clinton, the former First Lady, would only now call for the examination of Florida, particularly when she did not express concern about the lay of the Sunshine state when she agreed with the DNC rules in 2007, seems to fly in the face of both reason and logic and support political expediency. Senator Clinton had chosen to ignore the realities of how this might look not only to Obama supporters including this writer, but also to some of her own supporters, as well as neutral observers. Some will say that despite Senator Clinton's aggressive campaigning she is harming and jeopardizing her party's chances of winning in November in the general election against Republican senator John McCain. Can anyone remember a campaign in American history where someone, whether Republican or Democrat, suggested that the opposition campaign and their own campaign were both better than the fellow rival campaigner in their own party, in quite the following way? “I have a lifetime of experience that I will bring to the White House. I know Senator McCain has a lifetime of experience to bring to the White House. And Senator Obama has a speech he gave in 2002.” Those words were spoken by Senator Clinton in February of this year.
Experience isn't everything. Judgment, wisdom, demeanor, temperament and statesmanship (or stateswomanship) are also crucial components. Throughout these last 16 months, the most objective observers (and partisan supporters) would do well to compare the three candidates for president side-by-side, and how they have conducted themselves throughout this long, grueling slog of a primary campaign season. Senators McCain and Clinton have had the experience of voting for the invasion of a country that many lesser experience people, namely those in the general public around the world (some 5 to 15 million people worldwide protested against war in Iraq in February 2003, about a month before it would begin) at the time knew hadn't possessed weapons of mass destruction. Senator McCain has the experience of voting against additional money for Hurricane Katrina survivors and for people all along the Gulf Coast and the southern U.S. who were affected by the hurricane that killed thousands in 2005. Last month, Senator McCain made a stop in New Orleans decrying the Bush Administration's tepid response to the 2005 hurricane.
In fact, in late August of 2005 while people were drowning in the southern U.S. during Hurricane Katrina, Senator McCain and the president were eating cake in Arizona on the senator's birthday. And just in time for the Memorial Day holiday Senator McCain, a Vietnam veteran had previously voted against giving additional monies to U.S. veteran soldiers and earlier in the week was the only senator out of the 100 member-senate who didn't vote on a bill to give G.I.s additional money and unemployment benefits. (The bill passed 77 votes for to 22 against. CNN, in its subsequent Sunday discussion, conveniently forgot to mention that McCain was not present to vote for the provision.) How has Senator McCain behaved? He has lost his temper when confronted with allegations of stories in The New York Times (unsubstantiated stories) about an alleged affair with a lobbyist, and has engaged in rhetoric like "bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran", a hideous attempt at a humorous variation on The Beach Boys' "Barbara Ann" song. And Senator Clinton has talked about the need to "obliterate Iran". She has also lied about her experience in Bosnia under sniper fire. How has Senator Obama behaved regarding Reverend Wright? Did he lose his temper? How has he handled all of the things thrown his way?
Recent reports had been circulating that Senator Clinton's husband, if not herself, was trying to position her for a vice presidential spot on Mr. Obama's ticket. Can one imagine a scenario where if Senator Obama were number two in the political sweepstakes and had lost (instead of won) twelve consecutive primaries and caucuses how much media venom and rightful if not righteous anger from Senator Clinton's supporters would be injected and inveighed against the senator from Illinois if he dared to have the temerity to arrogantly (by implication and practice) believe that he should be entitled to be the vice-presidential nominee on Ms. Clinton's ticket?
But this is precisely what Senator Clinton's surrogates are asking for. (Yesterday, Senator Clinton vehemently declared that she has not been seeking the nomination in any way, shape or form.)
Senator Obama, who will be the Democratic presidential nominee when all is said and done after June 3, has the right to pick which ever nominee for vice president that he chooses, and needs no strong-arming from the Clintons or anybody else, when it comes to whom he'll pick as his running mate.
During the HBO film "Recount", Tom Feeney, the Florida State Party chair, played by Antoni Carone, says, "According to the Electoral Count Act of 1877, if an election's not resolved by December 12 then the state legislators can decide who to award their state's electoral votes to." Bob Balaban's Ben Ginsburg, governor Bush's chief counsel during the 2000 campaign, says, "Wait a minute. The Florida legislature can award its 25 electoral votes no matter what the results of the recount?"
"We're calling it the nuclear bomb option," says Mac Stipansky, a Bush political stealth operative and Republican lobbyist played by Bruce McGill.
As Tom Petty sings during the closing credits of "Recount", the senator from New York "won't back down", nuclear bombs be damned.
This editorial was supposed to end right after the Tom Petty quote
-- but it
doesn't because of the following now widely-reported event that
unfortunately makes this editorial a longer
and more discomforting read.
Why, you may wonder?
Well, because more horrific and disturbing is this Popcorn Reel Political Editorial's new and alarming postscript: in comments last Friday Senator Clinton attempted to utilize fear again by tapping into the most hateful and basest recesses of those perverse souls in America who would secretly or openly wish for the premature end of the life of any presidential candidate or any person. Some in the country mask their desire for such a fate by saying that they are concerned for the safety of Senator Barack Obama. In any event, during a stop in South Dakota on Friday, May 23, Senator Clinton, in trying to dispel the idea that she should end her campaign, said that "my husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California."
Why would one have to mention the late senator's untimely demise when answering a question about why it wouldn't be prudent to drop out of a race that is mathematically impossible to win? Why would it be necessary for Senator Clinton to do this and conjure up by strong implication the idea that Senator Obama himself could be at risk for his own physical safety? Why was the word "assassination" even uttered by her, especially when Robert F. Kennedy, also a New York senator years ago, wasn't even in the lead at the time running for president when he was felled at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles on June 5, 1968? The sheer gall of these comments -- which Senator Clinton has since weakly "apologized" for -- are all the more sinister and offensive, especially since she had made similar comments in March and earlier this month -- on precisely three other occasions in the last three months, according to Keith Olbermann, who gave the senator a piece of his mind on Friday and to Ben Smith of Politico.
Some of Senator Clinton's supporters and defenders insisted that she was "tired" when she spoke on Friday and uttered the word "assassination". But was Senator Clinton also tired when she uttered the same "assassination" remarks in an interview with Time Magazine on March 6 of this year? (It turns out the only ones who were tired were the mainstream press, which amazingly but not surprisingly failed to sound the bugle and did not trumpet or repeat the senator's offensive and deeply troubling remarks in the magazine as a national news story.)
Was Senator Clinton "tired" when she made very similar comments (albeit without the word "assassination" included) twice on May 7 of this year?
A tired commander-in-chief is not what one would want in troubled times like these, neither at 3 a.m. nor otherwise.
Senator Clinton's remarks about the late Robert F. Kennedy are especially disturbing, especially when considering what she said on The Exchange with Laura Knoy on October 11, 2007 in response to a question about trying to stop the mudslinging and attack politics of the 1990's, politics lobbed primarily by the Republican party. Senator Clinton, who on Ms. Knoy's show that day said she had had enough of the attack politics from Republicans, also said that "it's not been fun being on the receiving end of it for all of these years." Most telling though, was what Senator Clinton said next: "I never attack first. I want to run a positive campaign. I have been laying out my policies, I've been talking about what I will do as president, but I will also not stand by and watch me or any other Democrat attacked. And therefore we will wage a vigorous campaign . . . The only way to stop [attack politics] is by defeating it. We did it in '06 when despite their best efforts to raise the fear card again, America didn't buy it. And we will do it again in '08," she said (at the 40 minute and 56-second mark of the interview with Laura Knoy of New Hampshire Public Radio.)
Prophetic quoted words indeed. Ironic words indeed, from the senator who this month talked about a USA Today article "that found how Sen. Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me." The same Senator Clinton who in March said on "60 Minutes" that Senator Obama was not a Muslim, "as far as I know." The same senator who neither condemned nor rejected Geraldine Ferraro's comments on Obama being "lucky" to be black during the same month.
Senator Clinton's latest comments, a close and dear friend said to me recently, are tantamount to former presidential candidate Mike Huckabee -- who also was a mathematical impossibility but on the Republican side against now-presumptive presidential nominee Senator McCain -- saying that he should not drop out of the race against the Arizona senator because Mr. McCain's much-reported cancer treatments and age (71 years old) make him a possible liability in that thing called life. Mr. Huckabee didn't say anything unbecoming of the man whom he may well find himself as a running mate with this summer, but two Fridays ago Mr. Huckabee did say something as atrocious, in fact much more so than Senator Clinton did regarding Senator Obama when during Mr. Huckabee's May 16 speech before the National Rifle Association in Kentucky at its annual meeting, in an ad lib response to a loud noise that occurred backstage, Mr. Huckabee said: "that was Barack Obama -- he just tripped off a chair. He's getting ready to speak, and somebody aimed a gun at him and he, he dove for the floor." Mr. Huckabee, who like Bill Clinton just happens to be a former governor of Arkansas, apologized shortly afterwards for saying something so callous, in jest or otherwise. The mainstream press was virtually silent about Mr. Huckabee's remarks, uttered just a week before Senator Clinton's.
But at least Mr. Huckabee apologized.
At a time when Senator Ted Kennedy, who earlier this week was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor and is also an Obama supporter -- the prospective Democratic presidential nominee stood in for the ailing Massachusetts senator and delivered the commencement remarks at Wesleyan University -- Senator Clinton's comments are of profound and deep insensitivity to the Kennedys to whom she passively "apologized" -- and of extreme offense to Senator Obama and to his wife and two daughters, to whom she has not apologized as of the initial publication of this editorial. Senator Clinton has said a litany of offensive things to, or at, her fellow Democratic opponent Senator Barack Obama, whether directly or indirectly, throughout the primary campaign. Though the late senator Kennedy's son, a Clinton supporter, rose to the Senator Clinton's defense last Friday, there was a deafening silence from the New York senator's camp.
Lest film not be mentioned amidst the politics, Emilio Estevez chronicled the late senator Kennedy in the film "Bobby" back in late 2006. (And just last month saw the 4oth anniversary of the tragic end to the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. -- and Senator Clinton had on Martin Luther King Day this year diminished the importance of Dr. King's work by saying that the civil rights leader's dream was still just that until president Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act in 1964.) And while Chris Rock may have had satirical "fun" with the assassination of himself as he played a fictional president in 2004 with his film "Head Of State", surely Mr. Rock would conclude that these latest comments from the senator of the state in which he resides were no laughing matter. And in the 2006 documentary film "Death Of A President", which contained a fictional assassination of current president George W. Bush -- a fictional assassination which was greeted by cheers and applause by two movie theater audience members during a showing of the film in San Francisco late that year was an utterly repugnant reaction to the killing of a head of state, whether mock, theoretical or otherwise.
Last Friday's debacle just goes to show that Senator Clinton, now in hyper-desperation mode (even according to one of her staunch supporters, David Paterson, the governor of the state she represents as senator) will say and do anything to become president. And that a once-smart, sophisticated and innovative senator has chosen to sink into a swamp in order to win over those in the country who would endorse and exhort such poisoned rhetoric.
Senator, have you no sense of decency?
Well, because more horrific and disturbing is this Popcorn Reel Political Editorial's new and alarming postscript: in comments last Friday Senator Clinton attempted to utilize fear again by tapping into the most hateful and basest recesses of those perverse souls in America who would secretly or openly wish for the premature end of the life of any presidential candidate or any person. Some in the country mask their desire for such a fate by saying that they are concerned for the safety of Senator Barack Obama. In any event, during a stop in South Dakota on Friday, May 23, Senator Clinton, in trying to dispel the idea that she should end her campaign, said that "my husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California."
Why would one have to mention the late senator's untimely demise when answering a question about why it wouldn't be prudent to drop out of a race that is mathematically impossible to win? Why would it be necessary for Senator Clinton to do this and conjure up by strong implication the idea that Senator Obama himself could be at risk for his own physical safety? Why was the word "assassination" even uttered by her, especially when Robert F. Kennedy, also a New York senator years ago, wasn't even in the lead at the time running for president when he was felled at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles on June 5, 1968? The sheer gall of these comments -- which Senator Clinton has since weakly "apologized" for -- are all the more sinister and offensive, especially since she had made similar comments in March and earlier this month -- on precisely three other occasions in the last three months, according to Keith Olbermann, who gave the senator a piece of his mind on Friday and to Ben Smith of Politico.
Some of Senator Clinton's supporters and defenders insisted that she was "tired" when she spoke on Friday and uttered the word "assassination". But was Senator Clinton also tired when she uttered the same "assassination" remarks in an interview with Time Magazine on March 6 of this year? (It turns out the only ones who were tired were the mainstream press, which amazingly but not surprisingly failed to sound the bugle and did not trumpet or repeat the senator's offensive and deeply troubling remarks in the magazine as a national news story.)
Was Senator Clinton "tired" when she made very similar comments (albeit without the word "assassination" included) twice on May 7 of this year?
A tired commander-in-chief is not what one would want in troubled times like these, neither at 3 a.m. nor otherwise.
Senator Clinton's remarks about the late Robert F. Kennedy are especially disturbing, especially when considering what she said on The Exchange with Laura Knoy on October 11, 2007 in response to a question about trying to stop the mudslinging and attack politics of the 1990's, politics lobbed primarily by the Republican party. Senator Clinton, who on Ms. Knoy's show that day said she had had enough of the attack politics from Republicans, also said that "it's not been fun being on the receiving end of it for all of these years." Most telling though, was what Senator Clinton said next: "I never attack first. I want to run a positive campaign. I have been laying out my policies, I've been talking about what I will do as president, but I will also not stand by and watch me or any other Democrat attacked. And therefore we will wage a vigorous campaign . . . The only way to stop [attack politics] is by defeating it. We did it in '06 when despite their best efforts to raise the fear card again, America didn't buy it. And we will do it again in '08," she said (at the 40 minute and 56-second mark of the interview with Laura Knoy of New Hampshire Public Radio.)
Prophetic quoted words indeed. Ironic words indeed, from the senator who this month talked about a USA Today article "that found how Sen. Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me." The same Senator Clinton who in March said on "60 Minutes" that Senator Obama was not a Muslim, "as far as I know." The same senator who neither condemned nor rejected Geraldine Ferraro's comments on Obama being "lucky" to be black during the same month.
Senator Clinton's latest comments, a close and dear friend said to me recently, are tantamount to former presidential candidate Mike Huckabee -- who also was a mathematical impossibility but on the Republican side against now-presumptive presidential nominee Senator McCain -- saying that he should not drop out of the race against the Arizona senator because Mr. McCain's much-reported cancer treatments and age (71 years old) make him a possible liability in that thing called life. Mr. Huckabee didn't say anything unbecoming of the man whom he may well find himself as a running mate with this summer, but two Fridays ago Mr. Huckabee did say something as atrocious, in fact much more so than Senator Clinton did regarding Senator Obama when during Mr. Huckabee's May 16 speech before the National Rifle Association in Kentucky at its annual meeting, in an ad lib response to a loud noise that occurred backstage, Mr. Huckabee said: "that was Barack Obama -- he just tripped off a chair. He's getting ready to speak, and somebody aimed a gun at him and he, he dove for the floor." Mr. Huckabee, who like Bill Clinton just happens to be a former governor of Arkansas, apologized shortly afterwards for saying something so callous, in jest or otherwise. The mainstream press was virtually silent about Mr. Huckabee's remarks, uttered just a week before Senator Clinton's.
But at least Mr. Huckabee apologized.
At a time when Senator Ted Kennedy, who earlier this week was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor and is also an Obama supporter -- the prospective Democratic presidential nominee stood in for the ailing Massachusetts senator and delivered the commencement remarks at Wesleyan University -- Senator Clinton's comments are of profound and deep insensitivity to the Kennedys to whom she passively "apologized" -- and of extreme offense to Senator Obama and to his wife and two daughters, to whom she has not apologized as of the initial publication of this editorial. Senator Clinton has said a litany of offensive things to, or at, her fellow Democratic opponent Senator Barack Obama, whether directly or indirectly, throughout the primary campaign. Though the late senator Kennedy's son, a Clinton supporter, rose to the Senator Clinton's defense last Friday, there was a deafening silence from the New York senator's camp.
Lest film not be mentioned amidst the politics, Emilio Estevez chronicled the late senator Kennedy in the film "Bobby" back in late 2006. (And just last month saw the 4oth anniversary of the tragic end to the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. -- and Senator Clinton had on Martin Luther King Day this year diminished the importance of Dr. King's work by saying that the civil rights leader's dream was still just that until president Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act in 1964.) And while Chris Rock may have had satirical "fun" with the assassination of himself as he played a fictional president in 2004 with his film "Head Of State", surely Mr. Rock would conclude that these latest comments from the senator of the state in which he resides were no laughing matter. And in the 2006 documentary film "Death Of A President", which contained a fictional assassination of current president George W. Bush -- a fictional assassination which was greeted by cheers and applause by two movie theater audience members during a showing of the film in San Francisco late that year was an utterly repugnant reaction to the killing of a head of state, whether mock, theoretical or otherwise.
Last Friday's debacle just goes to show that Senator Clinton, now in hyper-desperation mode (even according to one of her staunch supporters, David Paterson, the governor of the state she represents as senator) will say and do anything to become president. And that a once-smart, sophisticated and innovative senator has chosen to sink into a swamp in order to win over those in the country who would endorse and exhort such poisoned rhetoric.
Senator, have you no sense of decency?
Even within the grievous faux pas of her shocking
statement last Friday Senator Clinton has continued to be dishonest to the utmost. Even in her
"apology" statement she
still blamed Senator Obama and his campaign as well as the media for urging
her to get out of the running for president. In truth, the only thing that
has been screaming out for the New York senator's exit is one thing and one
thing only: the math that says she cannot possibly win the Democratic
presidential nomination.
In fact, the only high-profile person whom has openly gone on record and said that the senator should end her run is former Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern, who at the time was supporting Senator Clinton and had then just defected in late April, switching his allegiance to Senator Obama.
Granted, Senator Clinton "apologized" on Friday for uttering the frightening and fear-mongering "a"-word -- but given her history of at best ill-advised comments this year alone, the latest soft mea culpa is far too little and far too late.
In fact, the only high-profile person whom has openly gone on record and said that the senator should end her run is former Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern, who at the time was supporting Senator Clinton and had then just defected in late April, switching his allegiance to Senator Obama.
Granted, Senator Clinton "apologized" on Friday for uttering the frightening and fear-mongering "a"-word -- but given her history of at best ill-advised comments this year alone, the latest soft mea culpa is far too little and far too late.
"I regret that if my referencing that moment of trauma for
our entire nation and in particular the Kennedy family was in any way
offensive. I certainly had no intention of that whatsoever," the former
first lady said of her Friday remarks in South Dakota before the editorial
board of a newspaper there.
The quoted language above hardly constitutes an apology. And hardly constitutes the lessening of the trauma where political assassinations in America are concerned.
The pain and the fear continue -- although it's just a matter of time before fear strikes out -- and I don't mean the film.
Video: Pundits and newspaper reporters, writers and anchors discuss Senator Clinton's comments on "Meet The Press", May 25, 2008
Copyright The Popcorn Reel. PopcornReel.com. 2008. All Rights Reserved.
The quoted language above hardly constitutes an apology. And hardly constitutes the lessening of the trauma where political assassinations in America are concerned.
The pain and the fear continue -- although it's just a matter of time before fear strikes out -- and I don't mean the film.
Video: Pundits and newspaper reporters, writers and anchors discuss Senator Clinton's comments on "Meet The Press", May 25, 2008
Copyright The Popcorn Reel. PopcornReel.com. 2008. All Rights Reserved.