The Stepford Candidate

Who replaced Hillary Clinton with an animatronic doll? I liked the old one better. The one who was a chronic Glamour-don't, with the silly headband and doughty clothes. The one who made gaffes about not being Tammy Wynette. She was a real person. I could relate to her. Can we have her back, like in the execrable remake of "The Stepford Wives?" I fear this is like the chilling, original film and that the human Hillary is lost to us forever.

I don't get people who think she's a feminist icon. She's amassed a lot of power, but she's become the living antithesis of feminism; cautious, people-pleasing, self-monitoring... She apparently can't state an opinion that doesn't test well in 10 focus groups. To put it bluntly, she has no courage.

This morning I learned from Chris Durang on The Huffington Post, that she weaseled out of answering yet another direct question.

In the short article -- part of a blog called "The Caucus" on the New York Times website -- Hillary Clinton is asked if she agrees with General Pace that homosexuality is immoral.

What do you think she answered? "No, I don't agree"?

No, what she answered was: "Well I'm going to leave that to others to conclude."

Thanks, Hillary! Really brave. Really forthright.

How hard would it have been for her to say: "Well, I think it is not immoral, and I know many Americans don't think it is and don't want to interfere with consensual adult behavior. But I understand other people believe other things. I hope in time that will change."

Isn't that probably what she actually thinks? Wouldn't that be taking a stand?

For Durang, who was talking straight about bisexuality long before it was cool, that's got to rankle.

Somewhere along the line, beltway Democrats seem to have decided that nothing bad can happen to them if they can make themselves completely inoffensive. And they have not yet learned that when you try to please everyone, you end up pleasing no one.

It's a formula that works least of all for Hillary. She wasn't born slick or charming and she can't pull it off without appearing terribly inauthentic. She seems so afraid of being her natural, divisive self, she's become positively insipid. She's more and more like an overly airbrushed photograph, or a plastic surgery disaster. Her entire personality has become like a face immobilized and expunged of character by too much Botox.

Worse than her coy evasions, when asked directly if she thought homosexuality was immoral, is her politically calculated clarification.

"I should have echoed my colleague Senator John Warner's statement forcefully stating that homosexuality is not immoral because that is what I believe," her statement said.

In other words if the big, strong, military, Republican man says it's ok to gay, it must be safe to have that opinion. This from someone who wants to be the first woman President?! A woman who needs a man's imprimatur to state an opinion? She might as well go back to baking cookies.

I'll just die if I don't get this recipe.
I'll just die if I don't get this recipe.
I'll just die if I don't get this recipe.
-- The Stepford Wives (1975)