Hillary Clinton's Faux Gutsiness

In between her many efforts to undermine American democracy by declaring the president to be illegitimate, Hillary Clinton managed to tell the ladies of The View that she showed great gutsiness by staying married to Bill Clinton after the Lewinsky kerfuffle. 

Have you noticed that the word "illegitimate" is most often used in a context that has nothing to do with politics?

She had written about it in her book, Living History:

“The most difficult decisions I have made in my life were to stay married to Bill and to run for the Senate from New York,” she wrote in Living History. “By now I knew I wanted our marriage to last if it could because I loved Bill and I realized how much I cherished the years we had spent together. I knew that I could not have parented Chelsea alone as well as we had together.”

“I hoped Bill and I could grow old together,” she continued. “We were both committed to rebuilding out marriage with the tools of our faith, love and shared past.”

If one were a cynic one would note that the Clinton marriage resembles nothing other than an arrangement. There is nothing wrong with a marital arrangement. Most marriages in the course of human history have been arranged. Love marriage is a relatively modern invention.

An arrangement containing a trade-off. She would allow him all the extramarital sex he wanted and he would do the same for her. Better yet, she would cover for him politically by pretending to be married, and he would eventually step aside in order to promote her ambition to be the first woman president.

If such is the case then the tragedy of the Lewinsky affair would not have been that Bill Clinton cheated. Bill Clinton had always cheated. Like a wife in an arranged marriage, Hillary had tolerated it. She probably was secretly relieved to see him taking his needs outside of the home.

The problem with the Lewinsky affair would have been that it might have compromised her political ambitions. Thus, she not only stood by her man through the impeachment hearings, through the rape and harassment accusations, because she wanted to see whether the people of New York rewarded her good work with a senate seat. If she had not won the senate seat, I suspect that divorce would have looked better and better.

Writing in the Guardian Jean Hannah Edelstein manages to get it wrong:

Hillary Clinton has a deep well to draw from when asked about the challenges she’s faced. But her admission yesterday that staying in her marriage was the “gutsiest” thing that she’s done in her personal life was remarkable. In part, remarkable because over the years she’s stayed pretty quiet when it comes to discussing being married to one of the world’s most exposed philanderers, only occasionally alluding to what must have been some very painful experiences. In part, remarkable because who doesn’t like a glimpse into what makes a well-known marriage tick?

And, let’s not forget, by staying married to an accused rapist and harasser, by defending him to the death in order to maintain her own political viability, Hillary Clinton became the nation’s leading enabler of sexual harassment. 

Great job, Hill.