It was the obvious answer last week.
And, no surprise, the one everyone avoided.
Failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton showed up -- why? -- at a fundraising gala for The Children's Defense Fund (Beat The Odds!) where Marian Wright Edelman introduced her -- again, why?
As people zoomed in on her appearance, so much went unasked -- forget unanswered.
Back in June, Frances Stead Sellers (WASHINGTON POST) observed:
Hillary Clinton’s trouble with the Democratic base reaches back to the moment her longtime mentor, Marian Wright Edelman, blasted Clinton’s husband for cutting a deal with Republicans ahead of his 1996 reelection and signing a welfare overhaul law that she said “makes a mockery of his pledge not to hurt children.”
Edelman’s husband, Peter Edelman, quit his Clinton administration job in protest over the 1996 bill, and the tensions lingered for years -- with Marian Wright Edelman telling an interviewer during Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign that the Clintons were "not friends in politics."
Stead Sellers is referring to this 2007 exchange on DEMOCRACY NOW!:
AMY GOODMAN: Marian Wright Edelman, we just heard Hillary Rodham Clinton. She used to be the head of the board of the Children's Defense Fund, of the organization that you founded. But you were extremely critical of the Clintons. I mean, when President Clinton signed off on the, well, so-called welfare reform bill, you said, "His signature on this pernicious bill makes a mockery of his pledge not to hurt children.'' So what are your hopes right now for these Democrats? And what are your thoughts about Hillary Rodham Clinton?
MARIAN WRIGHT EDELMAN: Well, you know, Hillary Clinton is an old friend, but they are not friends in politics. We have to build a constituency, and you don't -- and we profoundly disagreed with the forms of the welfare reform bill, and we said so. We were for welfare reform, I am for welfare reform, but we need good jobs, we need adequate work incentives, we need minimum wage to be decent wage and livable wage, we need health care, we need transportation, we need to invest preventively in all of our children to prevent them ever having to be on welfare. And yet, you know, many years after that, when many people are pronouncing welfare reform a great success, you know, we’ve got growing child poverty, we have more children in poverty and in extreme poverty over the last six years than we had earlier in the year. When an economy is down, and the real test of welfare reform is what happens to the poor when the economy is not booming. Well, the poor are suffering, the gap between rich and poor widening. We have what I consider one of -- a growing national catastrophe of what we call the cradle-to-prison pipeline. A black boy today has a one-in-three chance of going to prison in his lifetime, a black girl a one-in-seventeen chance. A Latino boy who's born in 2001 has a one-in-six chance of going to prison. We are seeing more and more children go into our child welfare systems, go dropping out of school, going into juvenile justice detention facilities. Many children are sitting up -- 15,000, according to a recent congressional GAO study -- are sitting up in juvenile institutions solely because their parents could not get mental health and health care in their community. This is an abomination.
That's a reality that got papered over not just last week but throughout 2016.
So much did.
For the record, in 2007, we stayed out of the issue of who would make the best Democratic Party candidate for president. We covered a debate or two and noted when candidates spoke about Iraq.
That was about it.
Somewhere before New Hampshire, around the time Joe Biden dropped out, we leaned towards Hillary Clinton and some of the fanatics for Barack appearing in the media -- Lie Face Melissa Harris Lacewell (later Perry) -- really made it easy for us to go over to Hillary.
We don't like liars.
We didn't like Melissa first showing up on DEMOCRACY NOW! championing Barack (and every one but Hillary) as a professor when, in fact, she'd spent half of 2007 campaigning for Barack. We didn't like her doing the same on Charlie Rose's PBS show.
It's unethical.
If you're part of a campaign, you're supposed to disclose it.
We didn't like it, neither did Princeton.
And as we amassed more and more about Lie Face, she ended up bounced from that university.
Dennis Kucinich was never going to be supported by us because he's a sell out.
When he handed his supporters to Barack in Iowa, after the first round of the caucusing, so that Barack could win, Dennis, once again, made clear that he wasn't a real candidate.
We had something to like about pretty much everyone and had seriously considered Bill Richardson for his Iraq War proposal (immediately pulling out of Iraq) and Mike Gravel (the sole truth teller among the lot).
John Edwards?
One of us had almost supported him in the previous cycle but meeting him was grossly disappointing, he was more on the make than campaigning ("grabby hands" as we've dubbed him since he dropped out of the 2008 campaign).
Barack Obama?
Again, one of us was supporting him for his Senate run and met him (with Elaine) only to discover his Iraq War position was that US troops are already in Iraq so his pre-war speech no longer mattered.
That alone was reason not to believe him on Iraq.
We were also aware -- apparently all of left 'independent' media (THE PROGRESSIVE, THE NATION, IN THESE TIMES, etc) weren't -- that the counter-insurgency crowd and War Hawks were on Barack's side and advising him. As was Samantha The Power From Hell Power.
Hillary had admitted the Iraq War and her support of it was a "mistake."
It was a huge step for the woman who never admits mistakes of her own.
As Barack lied repeatedly about how he'd always been against the Iraq War (and as the press refused to note his remarks to THE NEW YORK TIMES at the 2004 Democratic Party National Convention in Boston) and as Grabby Hands was completely untrustworthy, as Grabby Hands joined with Barack in attacking Hillary in debates (but Edwards pulled all punches when it came to Barack), Hillary got our support.
This was helped by actual sexism.
Not made up sexism like the crap cry babies inflated in 2016.
MSNBC was attacking Hillary relentlessly with one sexist based attack after another.
Failed radio host Rachel Maddow, in fact, used that sexism to get her own show on MSNBC. She called Chris Matthews out in an AP interview and then, days later, walked it back after MSNBC, eager to make the issue go away, rushed to sign her to her own show in an effort to disappear Chris' many comments such as how he automatically crossed his legs anytime he heard Hillary's voice.
William Kristol rushed to attack White women in February 2008 on FOX NEWS AND FRIENDS -- a sexist attack, by the way, that Hillary's new supporters this go round have been using since the election.
Like Kristol, they rush to demonize White women.
Laura Flanders did the same, in 2008, by the way.
Speaking of 2008, Laura Flanders, Medea Benjamin, Jane Fonda, Naomi Wolf, Jodie Evans, Frances Kissling, Eve Ensler, Kimberle Crenshaw, Alice Walker, Kathleen Hanna, Ruth Conniff, Arrianna Huffington, Nora Ephron and many other women who identified as pro-woman and/or feminist supported Barack in the primaries, not Hillary.
Yet, in 2016, not supporting Hillary, latecomers like failed actress and forever psycho Debra Messing insisted, meant you weren't pro-woman.
We're so sorry that the psycho titty babies didn't like us refusing to ride the bandwagon this go round.
We know why we didn't.
Hillary's 'fuller explanation' on Iraq -- the mistake, it turns out, was not her voting for and supporting the Iraq War. She explained it was her believing that Bully Boy Bush would send more US troops into Iraq than he did.
That's the "mistake" she made.
We know that she did nothing, as Secretary of State, to help Iraqi women.
We know, as Secretary of State, she continued her embrace of war and destruction with Libya and Syria.
That's why we turned on Hillary.
Why did these others rush to support her after rejecting her in 2008?
Because it was the easy thing to do.
Ask women online about 2008?
Those who are still around.
Female bloggers were banned, were harassed, many closed shop.
Because to support Hillary was to be trashed and threatened.
Psychos like Debra Messing have no idea what strength is.
They make the easy choices.
We're proud we supported Hillary over Barack in 2008.
We knew he wouldn't end the Iraq War.
Guess what?
We were right.
He leaves office with US forces in Iraq and the war still going.
But while Hillary was a better choice in 2008, her actions as Secretary of State -- including refusing to answer to Congress about such basics as the Iraq budget (State was put in charge of Iraq in October of 2011) -- she had made clear as Secretary of State that she was nothing but a War Hawk and she'd made clear that her admission that the Iraq War was a "mistake" was just more word games from an attorney.
As we noted above, the post-election has seen a lot of sexist attacks on women from Hillary's supporters.
We're not surprised.
This is the tag along crowd.
They went along with the sexism Barack promoted in 2008.
They're not really feminists.
They're titty babies.
And they were out in full force last week.
Lauren Longo (CARE2CARE) gushed, "Hilary Clinton's Makeup-Free Speech Is All Kinds of Inspiring." If the speech was truly inspiring, why did it matter so little in the write up Longo turned in? She quoted exactly five sentences from the speech?
In fact, it's only paragraph ten when Longo stops obessing over looks ("Of course, Clinton's looks weren't the only great thing about her speech.")
Four short paragraphs later, Longo's done with her column.
Lauren Alexis Fisher (HARPER'S BAZAR) served up "Why Hillary Clinton's Look Last Night Had The Internet Cheering" focused on the looks as well -- while slamming as "trolls" those who didn't think 69-year-old Hillary's choice to go make up free or with limp, stringy hair was such a good look.
L.V. Anderson (SLATE) was also attacking those who weighed in -- negatively -- on Hillary's looks as she lamented that looks are so important -- in an article focusing on nothing but looks but rushing to include this in the second to last sentence of the column, "After suffering the biggest disappointment of her life -- and maybe the biggest national disappointment of the century -- Clinton is focused on public service, not her hairdo."
It's wrong, these and other women, insisted to judge a woman by their looks -- insisted in one article and column after another focusing on . . . Hillary's looks and appearance.
That wasn't just hypocritical, it was also flat out wrong.
In terms of aesthetics, we didn't see the reason to cheer.
Forget the pimple on the chin, the hair right under the chin should have been plucked.
To pretend that this qualified as attractive or brave?
It struck us as lazy.
And no feminist breakthrough.
It was no different than Al Gore, after the Supreme Court gifted Bully Boy Bush with the 2000 election, showing up in public with a beard.
It wasn't about courage or strength.
It was about just giving up.
If anything else was to be gleaned from it, it was DANGEROUS LIAISONS.
2016 saw revelations that ready for that 3:00 a.m. phone call Hillary (remember that ad she ran against Barack in 2008?) required a crew to make her ready.
That wasn't just hair and make up.
It was also people like Donna Brazile feeding her CNN debate questions prior to the debate.
It was people like Debbie Wasserman Schultz gaming the debate schedule and the DNC itself to ensure that Bernie Sanders didn't get a fair shot at the nomination.
Hillary was scheming and plotting her attacks.
She was like Glenn Close as the Marquise de Marteuil in DANGEROUS LIAISONS.
In that film, the main female character schemes and lies as well.
In the end, she's brought down by her own letters.
Fitting that Hillary was brought down by her own e-mails.
Her inability to tell the truth -- the full truth -- about her e-mails from day one went a long, long way towards why the American people found her so dishonest.
But more was to come.
Wikileaks exposed so much corruption.
Election day was supposed to be about just how huge her electoral college victory would be?
John Podesta and others on her campaign were insisting the electoral college vote would be like George H.W. Bush's victory over Michael Dukakis -- 426 electoral votes for Bush, 111 for Dukakis.
Instead, the woman and the campaign took so much for granted allowing Wisconsin to play the role of Le Chevalier Raphael Danceny who ends up delivering a crushing blow to the Marquise.
And the electoral college results came in with Donald Trump receiving a predicted 306 votes to Hillary's 232 (predicted because the electors don't vote until next month).
Consider that rebuking count to be the boos the Marquise receives when she shows up for the opera after everyone has read the letters.
When you make those comparisons, Hillary's new look isn't at all surprising.
The Marquise, after all, retreats and spends the final scenes . . . wiping the make up off her face.
The pretty gloss is no longer needed because people see her -- the Marquise and Hillary -- as she really is.