HILLARY FACES THE TIGER

Hillary, the outside story: Review of Living History by Hillary Rodham Clinton (Mark Steyn, Daily Telegraph)

Chapter Two begins: " 'What you don't learn from your mother, you learn from the world' is a saying I once heard from the Masai tribe in Kenya." And you think, well, isn't that just wonderfully diverse, and she heard it from an actual tribe in Kenya! Any tribesman in particular? Or did they all yell it out in unison as her motorcade passed by? Either way, it's the sort of soothing multicultural sentiment that separates enlightened Democrats from rabid redneck Clinton-haters, and that's all you need to know. So you put the book up on the shelf and never open it ever again.

The main victim of this approach is Bill Clinton. From the moment they met, she knew he "had a vitality that seemed to shoot out of his pores", but not a lot shoots out in these pages. One reason is that all the personal details Monica got to first in her interviews with Andrew Morton for Monica's Story: Bill and Hillary's song was I'll Be Seeing You, and so was Bill and Monica's. He gave Hillary Walt Whitman's Leaves Of Grass after their first date and he gave it to Monica after their first "date". The Leaves Of Grass quote that opens Monica's Story - "All these - all the meanness and agony without end, I sitting look out upon . . ." - would be much better for Hill's, but Monica's book came out first, and to be honest it captures Bill's oozing pores better than his wife's does.

Monica's Bill is the Lounge-Lizard-In-Chief: "He undressed me with his eyes." Hillary's Bill is a clunky wonk: "While I was challenging discrimination practices, Bill was in Miami working to ensure McGovern's nomination." Monica says, "The irony is that I had the first orgasm of the relationship." Hill's account reads like she's still waiting.

Here's a question to contemplate: is it possible to humiliate a Clinton, or are they immune? Posted by Orrin Judd at June 22, 2003 7:00 AM