The Fat Lady has not only sung; she has showered, changed from her sequined gown into jeans, air-kissed the conductor, and already gone back to the hotel, where she's lying in a bathtub, drinking wine and daydreaming about her next gig. Back at the opera-house, one lone janitor is sweeping up, humming idly to himself. But he's got to sweep around the feet of Hillary and Bill, because they're still sitting in the front row, alone, calling hoarsely for an encore, and occasionally wondering where the hell everyone else has gone.
They're the King and Queen of a magical and faraway realm, the fog-shrouded Kingdom of Not-Getting-It.
It would've felt so right, so good, for all of us to celebrate the gains that Hillary made for women, bid her a fond (but secretly relieved) adieu, and move on to the general election. Because this election is not about Clinton. It is not about Obama, or John McCain, or Howard Dean, or the President of Zimbabwe. It's about children. The dead children of Iraq, slaughtered by Shock-and-Awe attacks that were the Bush/Rumsfeld version of Grand Theft Auto. The children of Iran, still at play, but already locked in the gunsights of M-16s. My kids and yours, endangered by a ghoulish No-Child-Left-Behind scam that should really be called No Child Left a Dime. Appalachian pre-teens with no job prospects, no future, fated to become cannon-fodder for our next Wag-the-Dog war.
So, in this sweet, fresh time of graduations and new growth, Hillary could have made a perfectly timely exit, capped by a valedictory speech urging us all to stay focussed on saving the children of the world. She would've earned our respect, laid the groundwork for a woman president, and become a trusted leader of her party.
But no. She has squandered her last good chance at a graceful exit. So even though it'd be great to reconcile with her, instead we find ourselves remembering an old song by Dan Hicks and the Hot Licks that could've been written for Hillary Clinton and that gang of fey Machiavellians that run her campaign: "How Can I Miss You If You Won't Go Away?"
And another, more recent one, by a group of truly brave women, the Dixie Chicks: "Not Ready to Make Nice."
How did we stray so incredibly far from first principles? From the minute-by-minute, second-by-second carnage of a war so vile and unspeakable that its authors should be already rotting in jail? From the hunger that gnaws away, every day, in the bellies of rural whites and urban blacks, here in the richest country in the history of the planet? What kind of person would indulge herself in this most monstrous celebration of a single ego in the history of American politics, when she knows it's quite literally a matter of life and death for so many innocent souls?
Well, Hillary Clinton would.
They say you can't go broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people, but Hillary seems intent on proving them wrong. Still channeling untold millions of her money -- and, no doubt, some of Bill's hard-won Colombian "speaking fees," too -- into her own campaign, she's created the political version of vanity publishing. But even that would be fine if she felt, or articulated, some deeper, animating force behind it, some compassion that promised relief for all the legions of sufferers.
But no. Her cause is herself. Her feminism is a feminism of convenience. Her concern for kids -- which surely once must've been real and profound -- has turned into a breezy willingness to "obliterate" them. Her notion of strength is to march in lock-step with moronic Bush/Cheney wars, and she promises to continue their Cowardly Lion style of diplomacy. She crowns it all with an obscene cartooning of civil-rights imagery, pretending that her own lust for ill-gotten Michigan/Florida votes is somehow equivalent to the bravest and noblest battle ever fought on American soil -- the one led not by Lyndon Johnson but by Martin Luther King.
Please, Hillary. Some of us like you -- just not in that way. Leave before you burn whatever good memories are left. How can we miss you if you won't go away?
POSTSCRIPT: Obviously, this piece was written before Hillary's bizarre--and all-too-revealing--"assassination" comment. While I can't bring myself to believe, as some have suggested, that it represented wishful thinking, I do feel it only underscores how terminally tone-deaf she has become as she pursues no cause beyond her Wonderfulness-of-Me campaign. No doubt it will finally tip the balance as any still-wavering superdelegates gather 'round to sing one final chorus of "How Can We Miss You..."
POSTSCRIPT #2: On further reflection, it seems clear that Clinton's assassination remark does, in fact, reflect something much, much bigger than mere "tone-deafness": it's as if she had her own version of the Mayan calendar, on which even the most catastrophic dates and anniversaries--like the murder of beloved Americans--only signify points along her own rise to power. Once again, the lives and deaths of other people--whether Robert F. Kennedy or an anonymous child in Iraq--take on meaning only within the context of her own power-mania.