Hillary Clinton & Nicholas Kristiof: Bringing Self-Pity and Self-Righteousness Together

To put your gag reflex to the ultimate test, try watching the entire 55-minute interview of Hillary Clinton at the Women in the World  Summit  Women conducted by New York Times columnist and fake humanitarian, Nicholas Kristof.  It is hard to say which of the two is more revolting.  Hillary Clinton,  just when we thought she might go away, like Jason in the Friday the 13^th horror franchise – is  back, or, Nicholas Kristof, the Walter Duranty of our time, a relentless self-promoter, a tireless virtue signaler and a full-time water carrier for Hillary.  

The New York Times was one of the leading propaganda outlets for Hillary’s most recent failed bid to become the North American counterpart to Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, the Argentine (now, ex-) President, currently under indictment (Kirchner-corruption).  For those who don’t closely follow the horrors shows that make up South American politics, Nestor and Cristina Kirchner were the Bill and Hillary of the Pampas. This ambitious duo began as law school classmates. They married and quickly morphed into ruthless, leftist kleptocrats who ascended to the highest office in Argentina, governing as good Peronists always do, which is, to paraphrase President Obama  in 2010 addressing his adulators, “punish your enemies and reward your friends.”  

Cristina was luckier than Hillary, and not having the personality of an East German border guard probably didn’t hurt her either.  Unlike our own Lady Brezhnev of Chappaqua, la Señora Kirchner was able to succeed her husband, Nestor, as the first-elected woman President of Argentina in 2007.  He was bogged down by scandals and ill health and stepped aside after this first term for his wife to run. Nestor then in 2010 finally did his patriotic duty and died of a heart attack at age 60, leaving Cristina alone to complete the looting and exit office with multiple felonies hanging over her head.  One cannot help but wonder: if Hillary had won the recent election how soon Bill would have followed his Latin doppelganger to the great beyond.  The timing would have been perfect for her.  She no longer needed him. She never trusted him. She enjoys revenge and he did plenty to make her want it. Being a grieving widow for the Great Slickster would boost her poll numbers. No downside.

Back to the interview. The testosterone deficient Kristof who talks and comes off, for the lack of a better word, like a big sissy, one of those, goody-goody, suck-up-to-administration nerds from tenth grade student council, is always painful to watch.  A long-time Hillary court-lackey, Nicky was the right “woman” interlocutor in this Woman in the World Summit to bring out the inner-Hillary, the very best we have come to expect from the only Presidential candidate of a major party to run for office while under a major Federal investigation. 

Thus, he opens the conversation with the woman (shoe-in candidate) who shocked the world by losing to the man who Kristof spent months in his columns mocking as a clown, a buffoon, Mussolini-redux, who had no chance of winning: “We should offer you condolences, but maybe you should offer us condolences.”  This is vintage Kristof, oily, ingratiating, and, of course, needing to articulate at the beginning the premise of what this Summit is all about – holier-than-thou rituals of the privileged down-trodden, or as Bertrand Russell put it, the superior virtue of the oppressed.

Next comes the question we have all been breathlessly waiting for: “My social media followers want to know how Secretary Clinton is doing. So, [with a gentle therapist inflection] how are you doing?” Again, this is Kristof at his best.  Granted, he is a certified, high-placed Hillary-worshipper, but also being a Walter Duranty-style self-promoter, he wants everyone to know about his many “followers”.  He is not just any ordinary NYT leftwing know-it-all columnist like Tom Friedman: he feels your pain.  He is the voice of the voiceless, the personification of a movement.  Kristof knows well how his role in this encounter is to be played.  He must, Oprah-like, hit all the right therapeutic, inspirational cords.  Everyone has to feel good -- self-esteem can be fragile.  Shortly after the November election one of Kristof’s columns was “a 12 Step Program for Responding to President-Elect Trump.”  In the interview Kristof also had to adroitly channel the audience’s warmth, admiration and affection, but most importantly, the appreciation for Hillary’s goodness and selflessness had to be enhanced.    

This lead-off question, the “humanizing” question, is also the entrée into the perfectly choreographed, perhaps, first ever coronation of a loser.  Hillary’s response is, well, very Hillary with a minute or two about “long walks in the woods”, being a grandmother and some smelling the roses falderal.  The irony, of course, is that Hillary’s efforts to humanize herself simply make her look even more like what she really is and always has been– a soulless, political robot. Her answer comes off as – “let me get this obligatory and annoying preliminary Grandma nonsense quickly out of the way, and get down to the fundamentals: how wonderful I am, how terrible for the country that I lost and how unfair it all is to me.”  Welcome to a vast, collective spectacle of self-righteous self-pity.

What is so remarkable about this interview is how timeless it is, capturing Hillary as we have known her for decades.  There is not the slightest trace of humility. She always projects her short-comings on to her enemies who thwart her at every turn.  She appears to have no sense of responsibility for her failure and a barely dissimulated, pathological resentment for any and all who might question her sense of entitlement to power.  In her mind and in those of her followers, she did not lose the election. It was stolen from her.  She had underestimated the size of the “basket of deplorables” and the depths of its depravity.  A country with more of the right kind of people in it would have responded to her with a landslide. America last November was just not good enough for her.  With her superior virtue, talents, experience, whatever political legitimacy remains in the land rightfully belongs to her, and now, after a couple of “walks in the woods” she is rested and back. She intends to be “the real” President: Trump is the pretender.

Lest this be doubted, view the portion of the interview which is really the only piece in this self-serving farce that matters. Kristof finally gets to the point:  will you ever run for office again?  Everyone knows in advance what the real answer is.  Disappointing but entirely predictable is the artless response starting with fake hyperventilating, frantically clutching her bosom and some spastic head bobs, followed by several minutes of the usual sort of incoherent verbal smog that Hillary blows out whenever she gets a question she does not want to answer.

The question is not, will she run for office again, rather, it’s how much millage is left in the Clinton political machine.  As long the rich donors (foreign and domestic) give her money, potential rivals back off, and the stooges in the commentariat like Kristof continue to faun over her she will never give up.  There is nothing inside of her other than her sociopathic drive to be in power.  Right now it looks as if once again, we need to be Ready for Hillary.