HRC is a critter of the Sixties, when we all went mad for authenticity because it what the thing which we most visibly lacked And when i say "we" I mean the people who shared her generic suburban origins. Bill is authentic to the extent to which he's really FROM Hope, which is some, but not all that much. Not the way Jimmy Carter was from Plains.

Carter, as a somewhat authentic person who thought putting on airs was a version of lying, thought people like, say, the press, would take him as he was. His first and only term was a brutal lesson in how wrong he was to think that, because the press, whatever its ideology, is mostly drawn from the same nothing/everything suburbia that Hillary is still loathe to call home. She says she's from "Chicago," but she's not. If she'd been from Chicago, REALLY, she'd have known who and what she was, and known it well before she was twenty, and known it wasn't something for which you shopped.

When I say "Chicago" I of course mean a city that hardly exists any more, now it's been gentrified from Canaryville to Rogers Park, and it's become a city in which Bill and Hillary would both feel quite at home. If she had any sense at all she'd have made Obama's "Poverty not Race" theme her own, in that she's truly representative of the post-whatever generation in which all the texture of identity has been reduced to blender food.

That is the authentic her: the woman with no identity, the perfect candidate for whatever happens now after the body of identity politics has cooled. Obama, by taking that away from her, by running as everything and nothing, has preempted the one strength she had -- he isn't just an inspirational leader; he's a political genius.

Anyone who "knows" who they are "well before ... 20" is an idiot who necessarily has *below-average* self-awareness. I didn't care much for "Juno," but a line to that effect was the best moment in the movie.

If substituting a larger fiction for a smaller one amounts to political genius then this makes some kind of (non) sense in the most cynical possible way.

Elj

What is the larger fiction here, and what the smaller one?

And where is the true self to be found?

we'll have lots of time to look at little Hillary now, now she's done us the favor of kicking us past any fantasy we might have of politics as a fable of affirmations; a theater of redemption. Instead we go back to politics as waged by her true hero and example, Dick Nixon. Whatever I want for this country, it isn't that. Whoever she turns out to be in the end, it isn't her.

Slick Willy was really from (the cheesy side of) LIttle Rock. Carter's authenticity is something you should reconsider. He is in the pockets of the Saudis. Check out who bailed him from the peanut business -- Saudi Arabian chums. His inspiration, as well, in his anti-semitic insinuations and ravings of recent and historical times. His Noble Prize should be revoked. I recommend reading Alan Dershowitz's article on Carter on the Web. Otherwise, your comments are to the point. Inauthenticity IS the Clinton mode.

Your title alone deserves some kind of award.

Melvyl,

Some of the posts here make me wonder if you all came over on the same ship... (and no, I am not talking about a trader's ship) You have no idea about what you will learn too late. That's ok, it is written in the stars that posters with your agenda navigate by...

I think once we are finished fixing what was once (briefly) the greatest country on the planet, we will all may want to live elsewhere. What will a fixed America look like? I hope it is not a botched cosmetic job.

How sad for Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Franklin and the rest of the long list of people that risked so much for what we enjoy to this day. Our country, with all of it's flaws, still stands for some of the highest and best ideals as a nation because of our founding fathers.

We have made progress toward being a standard bearer of democracy and our post 9-11 government was called to task before Obama came to town.

We have been distracted by emotional, trying times, but because we have free speech and other checks and balances, we can still avoid total implosion of democracy. Free speech has it merits, but is also a double edged sword...

Still don't know what I'm talking about? That is not surprising...

Hillary walks a path rare trod
by skirted folks used to the prod
She flits and twirls while round her hurls
Insults and gesticulate impiculates

I watch her dance
while a hand with a lance
comes rolling toward to take her soul
She missteps a beat
and in the heat
that hand is seen letting go

luckily that hand cannot bowl
and with a smile and a nod she prances forth
twirling round til it is found
Oval office takes her in

skirts in this hallowed hall wait for merry maids to call
but she sweeps past the dust of last inauthentic drool
to create her own zenthentic pool
hope was here and now the practicality of fate
raises American's fortunes up from hate.