Clinton-Hatred in Its Doldrums

David Weigel | October 3, 2007

Two of the biggest magazines of the right have prominent anti-Clinton content up today: Great examples, I think, of how Clinton hatred has vaporized as a political or satirical force and slow how the institutional right has been picking this up. First we've got George H. Wittman's American Spectator column on the Clinton Global Initiative.

Clinton Global Initiative is a pretentiously named mechanism...

"Clinton Global Initiative" is a pretentious name? Under what definition of "pretentious"? A pretentious name would be "Clinton: An Initiative," or maybe simply "BJC."

Other than having a keen desire to avoid military service in Vietnam, and a penchant during his year in Oxford, England for the town's pubs, Bill Clinton showed no previous interest in world affairs until becoming president.

But this is just calumny. Clinton obviously has some interest in world affairs after eight years in the White House, right? Shouldn't he?

Ms. Jolie usually doesn't need to go to these do's with her muscular mate, but this was, after all, a William Jefferson Clinton occasion and even though the beauteous and bright Ms. Jolie can karate kick quite well, the Clinton reputation for aggressive action with the opposite sex could not be ignored.

And so on. Meanwhile, National Review is raising money in a "Help Us Stop Hillary!" telethon. No engagement with the Democratic frontrunner's campaign, no attempt to understand the popularity comeback of her and her husband: Just a lot of nostalgiac outrage.