Not that there’s anything wrong with that, mind you.
In fact, rumors about Hillary’s sexuality have dogged her for as long as rumors about Bill’s infidelity have dogged him. Except that, where Bill’s indiscretions soon confirmed rumors about him, Hillary’s discretion always kept them in doubt about her.
But things changed in 1992, when they seemed poised to win the first installation of their two-for-one presidencies. Specifically, women began coming out of the woodwork to accuse Bill of being not just a serial philanderer but a rapist too boot.
Perhaps you recall the likes of Paula Jones, Juanita Broaddrick, and Maria Crider. What virtually no news organization reported, however, was that these women invariably blamed Hillary for excusing, defending, and covering up Bill’s sexual exploits.
More to the point, they insinuated that she did so not because she loves him, but because she’s a zealous guardian of their mutual political ambitions and keeper of her dirty little secret.
One could hardly blame these accusers for assuming their revelations would halt Bill and Hillary’s march to the White House. Given the way events unfolded, however, one can hardly blame Bill and Hillary for assuming that no accusation, no matter how damning, will ever hurt them.
No doubt you recall how the 1998 Lewinsky scandal threw the Clintons’ MO into salacious relief. Notably, Hillary played her enabling role by blaming Bill’s affair with a White-House intern on a vast right-wing conspiracy. But they weathered even this – complete with an impeachment trial – like water off the back of a duck.
It was hardly surprising, therefore, that the official “outing” of Hillary had so little impact. Indeed, you’re probably thinking: What outing? Well, it came in the form of a 2005 biography by Edward Klein titled, intriguingly enough, The Truth About Hillary. Here – in “Hillary Exposed!” April 14, 2005 – is how I commented on the twittering about its pending publication.
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Washingtonians are all atwitter about another ‘vast right-wing conspiracy’ that threatens to kill the political ambitions of Bill and Hillary Clinton (i.e., their famous ‘two for one’ presidencies – with his down, and hers to go … in ‘08). The plot centers around a ‘hit’ biography, which promises such titillating revelations, it looms as a cross between Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth and Sarah Waters’s Tipping the Velvet.
The hired assassin is the notorious biographer, Edward Klein, who made exposing the Kennedy family’s dirty little secrets a veritable cottage industry. His attack on Hillary is due in the fall, just when scrimmaging for the 2008 presidential election begins in earnest.
Hillary is maintaining a brave face. But insiders say that she has donned a breastplate worthy of a high priestess of the Amazons. Further, that she has retained a gaggle of PR flaks to launch a preemptive campaign to tar and feather Klein and anyone who provides ammo for his hit piece.
Of course, Hillary couldn’t care less what tidbits he writes about her political ambitions. What she fears, and what has the chattering classes salivating, are tidbits confirming that she and Bill have a marriage of convenience. Specifically, one that allows Bill his flagrant dalliances with bimbos of all types and Hillary her secret assignations with women of a certain age, sophistication … and discretion.
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As it happened, Klein’s book had even less impact on Washingtonians than a one-minute man might have on courtesans.
Which brings me to the latest and perhaps most credible account of why Bill does what he does, and why Hillary continually reacts like some little woman standing by her man, like Tammy Wynette. This, despite dissing Wynette’s ballad of the doormat wife in that famous 60 Minutes interview on January 26, 1992.
In this case, reports are that former Miss Arkansas Sally Miller is writing a tell-all. She promises to dish secrets Bill divulged about his marriage during their affair in 1983.
Like the tease the Washington Times published in 2005 for Klein’s book, the London Daily Mail published a tease on Tuesday for Sally’s. But talk about burying the lead. Here are three things the Daily Mail quotes Miller saying about their pillow talk, which clearly render any reading of her book anticlimactic:
Bill didn’t mind telling me that Hillary doesn’t like sex…
Hillary is a lesbian…
Most everyone in Arkansas assumed that their marriage was a business arrangement.
As indicated above, Bill and Hillary have shown time and again that their political ambitions are immune to rumor and innuendo about their private lives. In fact, they belie punditry about Donald Trump’s ability to survive scandal being unprecedented.
Apropos of this, the relationship between Hillary and her devoted assistant Huma Abedin has always seemed more Sapphic than professional. Just as the relationship between Oprah and her BFF Gayle has always seemed more Sapphic than platonic.
This is why Oprah posting Instagram valentines about her romantic love for Stedman is no more credible than her testifying about Jenny Craig being the diet that will finally reveal her skinny inner self … for good. After all, she has testified in similar fashion about too many other breakthrough diets over the years. I commented on Oprah and Gayle’s special relationship in “Oprah Protests, ‘I’m Not Gay,’” July 19, 2006. But I digress.
The point is that reporters are currently scavenging court-ordered dumps of Hillary’s e-mails from her days as secretary of state for evidence of classified correspondence. But I doubt her presidential campaign would suffer any setback even if they happen upon e-mail exchanges between her and Huma that are redolent of lesbian affection.
On the other hand, such exchanges would explain why Huma emulated Hillary when she stood by her man, Anthony Weiner, after he exposed himself as an even bigger sex fiend than Bill. This clearly qualifies Huma for entry into the rogue’s gallery of women who betray their gender liberation and personal integrity by behaving like housewives from the 1950s.
I gave up some time ago trying to reason why purportedly liberated women, like Camille Cosby and Hillary Clinton, stand by men who humiliate them.
The ardent feminist in me would like to think this simply reflects their evolved understanding that marriage is about a lot more than (sexual) monogamy. But it may be that they are riding so high on the power trip these marriages afford them that they couldn’t care any less how much their husbands betray traditional notions of fidelity (or legality?).
(“Hypocrisy of Eliot Spitzer’s Assignations with Prostitutes,” The iPINIONS Journal, March 11, 2008)
Incidentally, nothing proves that a sex fiend never changes his behavior quite like former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer making news again this week for yet another scandalous assignation with a prostitute….
Still, here is what portends if Bill and Hillary lose this campaign, which (unlike ’08) would surely end all hope of ever fulfilling their two-for-one presidential ambitions.
Royal’s resounding defeat by Sarkozy to become president of France precipitated not only the dissolution of her and Hollande’s personal relationship but also the termination of their political partnership…
This Royal-Hollande scandal should help puritanical Americans put their moral indignation over Bill and Hillary’s mercenary and (seemingly) loveless marriage into context…
If Hillary loses the U.S. presidential election next year, I suspect this would also trigger not only the dissolution of their marriage, but also the termination of their political partnership; and, perhaps, in even more precipitous and salacious fashion.
(“Segolene Royal and Francois Hollande,” The iPINIONS Journal, June 19, 2007)
Stay tuned.
In the meantime, you can be forgiven for thinking that Bernie’s political operatives have something to do with the timing of this latest “truth about Hillary.” Except that he has been loath even to exploit her e-mail indiscretions for political advantage. Therefore, I doubt Bernie would touch the black hole of Hillary’s lesbianism with a 10-foot pole.
The character he shows by refusing to do so is just one of the many reasons:
I would like nothing more than to see Bernie do to Hillary in 2016 what Barack did to her in 2008.
(“Bernie Sanders: The Democrats’ Ron Paul…?” The iPINIONS Journal, July 2, 2015)
Related commentaries:
Hillary exposed…
Segolene Hollande…
Eliot spritzer…