VauxhallVelcraux

The strangest reality of US political discourse is the inescapability of fake news stories. This week's bullshit about Barack Obama not wearing an American flag lapel should never have existed in the first place, but the deft manner in which he torpedoed it as an issue (except on conservative blogs, where, predictably, the episode served to disqualify him as a Person To Be Taken Seriously, since Jonah Goldberg was on the fence till just now) weirdly prolonged its shelf life. Obama may now be credited for defusing an atomic bomb on his blazer by left-leaning Serious People, maybe even People you know.

John Edwards isn't so lucky, as the $400 haircut will apparently remain wedded to his character like "potatoe" is to Dan Quayle or a ham sandwich with Mama Cass. That story is here to stay. To be fair, it was ridiculous to spend his contributors' money on something like that, although the angle of attack is of course the gender-betrayal of caring about one's appearance. Even though Bill O'Reilly wears makeup on television everyday, it's women alone who are supposed to enjoy being vain and seduced by frivolities, because it's women who are stupid that way, not men who want to be the next leader. Do you know a troop? Ask a troop what he thinks. Breck Girl. Haircut: bad. Breck.

What's weirder is how Hillary Clinton somehow manages to avoid all of these things. She doesn't even get caught in the meta-scandal where a non-scandal can still become topic for discussion when the candidate's handling of the non-scandal transcends the terms of the non-scandal itself until someone especially clever affixes the suffix "-gate" to the most salient plot point. She isn't so new to us that her character requires salvaging or redemption. She's like Marmite. Love her or hate her. There was a brief ruckus when she exposed some cleavage, but that was less about her than about the New York Times succumbing to Maureen Dowd's Coulter-lite attitude about all women. Hillary can't choose her gender and it wasn't even about her, per se.

There is also the "question" of whether America is "ready" for a woman president (or a black man; apparently we can't yet handle the thought of a black woman). What readiness means is beyond me. Forty percent of the populace will blink in incapacitated stupor for four years--the dumbest forty percent, but the one whose wants and prejudices inform our entire political discourse--because they, and therefore America, aren't fully prepared for the reality of gender equality. The facts of course belie this--more people will vote for a woman or a black man than a 72-year old, a Mormon or a twice-divorced man.

(Incidentally, I see the pragmatic concern with respect to the first, and the possible moral objection to the third, but the second one is just complete prejudice. What is it about Mormons that makes them so objectionable compared with Christians? The practice of polygamy, renounced officially in 1896? It's certainly not their belief in the bearded cloud with the booming voice who sends you to hell when you masturbate. Will no one ask Mormon Harry Reid about this?)

So, is the almost complete absence of petty non-scandals surrounding Hillary, the supposedly "most polarizing" Democrat of all, something worth noting? It might be too early. (The whole fucking thing is too early, really). But as of October 2007 she, the one you'd most expect, has not yet had to weather a single "gotcha!" moment. I wonder about the connections between being anointed the Establishment candidate by Democratic operatives and being a media darling. The recent candidacy most similar to hers is that of George W. Bush in 2000. She's related to a former president, for starters. (How weird that, if she should serve two terms, we will have had a Bush or a Clinton in one of the two highest offices for a thirty-six year period). While McCain put up a good fight, those "in the know" presumed Bush's easy ascendancy towards being the ultimate nominee, and that's what happened. Again, the slippery and nebulous ties between corporate media's owners, their interests and the possible overlap with that of GOP strategists is too vast and conspiratorial and enticingly easy, but certainly not nonexistent, even if only by coincidence. Hillary, though, isn't an easygoing newcomer rich kid who's charming the pants off of the Washington press corps.

Instead, she's a seasoned player and expert in calculation whose entire candidacy seems predicated on never making a single mistake and navigating a tacitly hostile media environment by playing it supremely safely while her rivals self-immolate on one or another media fabrication which no Karen Hughes could fix. There's no question that, if elected, she'll govern considerably to the left of where she's currently campaigning. Even if her atrocious pollster/adviser/strategist Mark Penn has a history of union-bashing and her general coterie is comprised of the worst of 1990s New Democrat focus-group insiders who despise the netroots and dread the possibility of the dirty hippies who've been right about everything since 9.12.01 gaining a firmer beachhead in politics by championing the election of more and better progressive Democrats.

So the inevitability narrative can only grow in power. It's a genius strategy for deflecting the mines before the media (which I confess I'm characterizing as a unitary and nefarious monster, a one-headed Cerberus, so to speak) pounces. If in eight months she's where she is now, there's no question Hillary Clinton will have been coasting to election all along!