Tickets cost between $72.48 and $228.44
Bill and Hillary Clinton are taking their show on the road.
You what? What show? They’re not performers.
The famous political couple, who individually charge well into six figures for an address, is launching a 13-city joint public speaking tour of the U.S. and Canada titled “An Evening with the Clintons” that kicks off Nov. 18 in Las Vegas.
Ew. Ew ew ew. The famous centrist couple, who have been way too cozy with the billionaire set all along, want you to give them even more money for the high privilege of watching them talk some more. Can you say “vanity project”?
The tickets are expensive; surprise surprise.
“Experience a one-of-a-kind conversation with two individuals who have helped shape our world and had a front seat to some of the most important moments in modern history,” the public relations copy for the tour reads. “From the American presidency to the halls of the Senate and State Department to one of the United States’ most controversial and unpredictable presidential elections, they provide a unique perspective on the past, and remarkable insight into where we go from here.”
That makes my toes curl with embarrassment. I know they like money, but couldn’t they try for a little dignity? They’re not a Vegas act.
The Clintons aren’t novices on the paid lecture circuit. From 2001 to 2015, they raked in more than $153 million in speaking fees for 729 events.
In other words, they’re greedy and they leveraged Bill’s presidency into an enormous pile of money…and now they want more.
American politics, so Oedipal: You want to gouge your own eyes out.
Ugh.
When Trump won, I was horrified. But the tiniest sliver of me thought, well, at least we’re done with the Clintons.
I generally supported Bill Clinton as president. The economy was pretty good. We largely stayed out of war. What’s not to like about peace and prosperity?
But the scandals, sleaze, tawdriness, lies…often for no good reason. Whitewater, travel office firings, failed healthcare plan, “no controlling legal authority”, perjury…
I understand rallying behind him at the time, but it’s hard to argue that he didn’t bring a lot of it on himself.
And let’s talk about the elephant in the room: Bill Clinton sexually assaulted Kathleen Willey and Paul Jones. He had an inappropriate relationship with a young intern.
And he raped Juanita Broaddrick. He did. There’s no reason to disbelieve it. People just didn’t want it to be true. But it is. If you didn’t believe it back then, then read the Wikipedia article and and see how you assess it now:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juanita_Broaddrick
Hillary would probably have been a good president. It really is a shame she didn’t win.
“But her emails!” Yes, blown out of proportion. But stuff like this doesn’t help:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/07/31/clintons-claim-that-the-fbi-director-said-her-email-answers-were-truthful/
Typical slippery Clinton tactics. If not outright lying, being extremely misleading.
And Hillary would have beaten Bernie fair and square, but in typical Clinton style she ends up leaving the impression with a lot of people that she used underhanded means to win, creating a lot of ill will on the left.
And so now we have Donald Trump as president. Yes, an oversimplification, but “Clinton fatigue” definitely played a role.
Bill and Hillary can just go away. I hope their money tour flops. They’ve already got more than enough to have awesome lives.
The media now and then puffs Chelsea as a potential future big political player. Yeah, not interested. She shouldn’t be blamed for her parents, but what has she done? We don’t need family dynasties. Lay down a solid record of public service while not being, well, Clintonesque, and then…maybe. Until then, no.
Hillary Clinton blew her presidential bid with just two words: when she referred to a section of the electorate that she did not think would be voting for her as “the deplorables.” That qualified her in their eyes as a 24-carat snob, and delivered them signed, sealed and stamped to the genuinely deplorable von Trumpenstein; who was only too happy to welcome them aboard for a cruise in his yacht, the SS Pussygrabber.
The rest is history.
@Omar
And the unfortunate thing is, what Hillary Clinton said was perfectly true. She said about half of Trump’s supporter’s had legitimate grievances and desperate, and the other half were genuinely deplorable people. It’s hard to argue with her on that.
Yes. But that is not the way it came across. Appearances are everything in the theatre of politics.
I would actually put her loss down to three major causes, none of which are the ‘deplorable’ comment:
– USA’s election systems are all rigged, at every level, towards the Republican party.
– Progressives are generally quite cynical of Democratic policies every since Obama promised the sky and then turned out to be basically the same as any Dem; but the DNC pro-Hillary shenanigans really pissed a lot of them off. Most swallowed the anger and voted D anyway, but enough didn’t.
– She’s a woman. And not just any woman, but an old one. Ewwwww!
I have never been a huge fan of the Clintons. Yes they are both very smart and Hillary probably would have been a good President (I voted for her). I admit that I voted for her 1, because she is smart, 2, it’s high time we had a woman president, and a very important 3, she wasn’t Trump.
My problem with the Clintons was kind of like that scene in ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ when George shakes hands with Potter and he rubs his fingers before coming to his senses. They came across as very, very smart lawyers – they seemed as if they knew a little too much about exactly where the boundaries of the law ended but not as much as to where the boundaries between right and wrong got dicey. Add the arrogance – the boast that they would overhaul a 2 trillion dollar/yr incredibly complex socioeconomic subculture in 100 days?
Of course we can also argue that our current political course was facilitated by Bill’s sexual improprieties so I think I’ll save my money for a different lecture series. The Republicans keep bringing up the Clintons like Lenin used Trotsky. It’s easier to do that when they keep doing stuff like this.
My problem with the Clintons first of all was the centrism. He signed that reactionary anti-welfare law. Second was the cozy relationship with lobbyists, was Bill saying “Money shouldn’t buy you influence but it should buy you access.” Third was the god damn nepotism.
But I sure as hell voted for her.
Holms @#6: That too.
Everyone who wants to and is on the roll in the US gets a vote, but not everyone has enough of the do-re-mi to enable them to even seek nomination, let alone stand. I and my American relatives were saying ‘anyone but Trump’ (and they were working for Clinton – I won’t use the American expression ‘rooting for’ as that means something else here in Australia; but note they possibly would have done so if they thought it would help, and suitable arrangements could have been made.)
I have no ire left to raise over the Clintons. IMHO, there are two kinds of rich folk: malignant and benign. Additionally, the benign can turn malignant under the right circumstances, exposed to the right environment.
I still consider the Clintons benign.
I think Bill Clinton’s presidency — and I’m talking about policy here, not his personal behavior — has to be thought of in context.
This isn’t intended as a history lesson. I’m sure most people here are aware. But it’s worth remembering:
From 1968-1992, Republicans had controlled the White House for 20 years to the Democrats’ four. And those four were from a squeaker win by a southern, somewhat conservative, Democrat in the aftermath of Watergate. Meanwhile, the GOP presidential wins were all at least solid victories plus two massive landslides (’72 and ’84). There was no such thing as a solid blue state. There was real concern about when Democrats would actually win the White House again.
Sure, Dems had kept control of the House all that time, but with the help of Blue Dog Democrats in the south.
Crime rates were high; today we know that they peaked in the 90s, but at the time it was just a steady upward trend with no apparent end in sight. Liberals were getting the snot beaten of them in campaigns: even the word “liberal” was turned into an epithet that Dukakis cringed away from in ’88. The GOP was winning elections by beating up on Dems for supposedly being soft on defense, soft on crime, and soft on drugs.
So when Clinton, a Southern “third way” Democrat, won the presidency, aided by the fact that there had been three straight GOP terms, a serious recession, and a spoiler third party candidate (though it’s debatable who Perot was drawing more votes from), of course he governed the way he did. The end of the Cold War helped with the “soft on defense” stuff, but he still had to prove that he was tough on crime. I don’t think he had much room to move to his left even if he wanted to: as it was, his budget bill barely passed the Senate with six conservative Dems joining all 44 Republicans in voting no. Even broaching the subject of gays in the military turned into a fiasco.
I totally get why liberals in 2018 aren’t going to look back fondly at Bill’s presidency. There were a lot of compromises with conservatives and silly small-ball pandering (school uniforms? parental controls on TVs?) But politics is about the art of the possible, and the possibilities just weren’t that broad back then. Clinton showed that Democrats could win presidential elections, could run a competent government, could cut the budget deficit and even run a surplus, and preside over good economic growth (in truth, presidents have much less influence over this than is usually assumed, but that’s a rant for another day).
But Clinton’s BIG plus, and it is a really big one, is that he did lend an ear to Jose Ramos Horta while on a trip to New Zealand, and brought US might bear to force the Indonesians and their murderous army out of East Timor. The Chief of the US General Staff rang the Indonesian military CIC and read him the Riot Act, and that got the bastards moving: though not as far as the Hague, unfortunately. None of them were ever punished.
Really?
Firstly, there are reports almost weekly of the various means the Republicans are using to stop people getting on the roll, delay their applications, or kick them off once they are on. Then there are the myriad ways in which voting itself is rendered difficult. I don’t see that statement as being a true fact at all.
That was tried under Jim Crow, and it helped build the Civil Rights Movement and took politics to the streets, concert halls and elsewhere. One casualty was the presidency of LBJ. There is always more than one way to skin a cat.
No, Johnson’s presidency wasn’t a casualty of the Civil Rights Movement – that’s completely backwards.
Also the Shelby ruling by the Supreme Court gutted a major provision of the Voting Rights Act, and that’s why the Republicans are having such success purging voters now.
OB: I think you may have misunderstood what I was getting at. My fault, mea culpa. The US Civil Rights Movement arguably began the day the first slave arrived from Africa via the Caribbean. It is certainly there in the oratory and writings of people like Frederick Douglass (1818-1895). While Johnson was a skilled Washington operator, he was nonetheless soon out of his depth in the issues of the Vietnam War passed to him from Kennedy, and preceding presidents back to Eisenhower and earlier. But the American Civil Rights Movement and all the agitation, writing, music and street demonstrations against the war in Vietnam reinforced each other quite profoundly. They fed off each other, and Johnson was compromised by the first, and totally undone by the second, deciding to not run againfor a second term.
I was personally involved in organising street demonstrations against Johnson’s visit to Australia in 1966 (see https://www.smh.com.au/national/lbj-came-all-the-way-but-few-followed-20111111-1nbrg.html ) and we complemented these by organising a speaking tour of Australia for a prominent black member of the (US) Socialist Workers’ Party, whose name now escapes my memory, but whose speeches ranged across American history, civil rights, and of course Vietnam.
Not a bad summary IMHO.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/presidents/lyndon-b-johnson-the-uncivil-rights-reformer-1451816.html
Civil Rights Act of 1964. Voting Rights Act of 1965. Both passed with the help of prodding, cajoling, and strong-arming by the former Texas Senator.
That too. Noted.