"At the intersection of vanity and liberalism"

"A snail fisking (red noses say it all) from our dead-tree files," we captioned this archival clipping of "a New York Times photo series of Bubba, Hillary! and Newt on the two-for-the-price-of-one couple's second inauguration day in January of 1997." As we've written here before, "Blogging is nothing new. Before the glory of the internet, we were madly clipping and underlining and annotating the margins of tree-based publications.

"Driven by the increasingly common view that something is terribly awry with modern life [In her case, Bubba comes to mind. --ed], Mrs. Clinton is searching for not merely programmatic answers but for The Answer," wrote the late Michael Kelly in "Saint Hillary," a May 23, 1993 NYT Sunday Mag cover story dubbed by Peggy Noonan a decade later as "the first and still definitive Hillary Clinton take-down":

Do you remember it, with Mrs. Clinton posed all in white, ethereal and serene? Her people must have been sure it would be a Timesian puff. It was instead a hard-eyed look at the intersection of vanity and liberalism. No one denied it was brilliantly reported and written with sly spirit, but it was controversial in high end journalistic circles because it did not exactly reflect the reporting of a liberal mind at work.

The same artist -- Anita Kunz -- who apparently illustrated that NYT mag cover of "Saint Hillary" back in 1993* created the above illustration, "Girls will be Girls," for the July 30, 2007 cover of The New Yorker (via Tennessee Guerilla Women). “Based on their clothing, none of those women are physically free," Kunz told The Phoenix. “I’ve had lots of reaction that baffles me. I’ve been called anti-woman, a racist, anti-Semitic, anti-American, you name it!” Like old age, moral relativism is not for the faint of heart.

At the time the article appeared back in 1993, we snail-blogged it with much underlining and feverish scribbling in the margins and passed it around to friends for comments. Our original copy got lost in the shuffle, but the article was reprinted in Kelly's posthumous Things Worth Fighting For, and now -- despite apparent efforts by the higher powers that be to repress it -- meaty excerpts of the entire** "Saint Hillary" article is available online thanks to blogger Winston Churchill of Semper Fido, linked by The Anchoress, who reports:

Can’t seem to come up with it on the search engines, and it is not in Nexis-Lexis. While letters to the paper about the article may be found, it doesn’t seem to be in the NY Times archive.

We'd noticed the same thing during a febrile Google search yesterday -- not our first, as we've blogged about "Saint Hillary," working without tools, before. While an illustration by Anita Kunz of Hillary as Saint Joan of Arc that had appeared inside the magazine is available online [via, again, The Anchoress], the front cover image of Hillary "all in white, ethereal and serene" remains elusive.*** We've left a comment at the artist's website asking for a link to said image.* Meanwhile, speaking of letters to the editor about the article, we loved this comment from William B. Cullimore of New Durham, NH dated June 20, 1993:

The only people I've heard who talk like Mrs. Clinton are lunatics, religious nutcakes and aspiring dictators. A "unified-field theory of life"? The marriage of capitalism and statism? Making the Western world anew? And she doesn't even blink! Give me a break.

Mitt Romney said very much the same thing in his courtly, good-natured way in a WSJ Commentary on "HillaryCare Version 2.0" -- AKA "HillaryCare's New Clothes" -- this morning:

Some of the details have changed, but at the heart of Sen. Hillary Clinton's new health-care proposal are the same flaws that sunk her first version. They flow from her distrust of markets, from her distaste for profit-motivated private enterprise, and from her consequent faith that Washington knows best.

The Anchoress seems open to the idea of meeting Hillary halfway based upon the Michael Kelly portrait:

The Hillary here is so much more interesting than the Hillary we have come to know in that past 15 years of fluffy pieces in the mainstream press and the caricatures from the far right. Michael Kelly seems to have caught Hillary in all of her complexities.

Perhaps, but would you really want someone who gets excited about Michael Lerner's vapid "politics of meaning" to be Leader of the Free World? The News Junkie at Maggie's Farm quotes Hillary 2.0 and has the last word:

"We can talk all we want about freedom and opportunity, about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but what does all that mean to a mother or father who can't take a sick child to the doctor?"

That is Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, via Boston Globe via No Looking Backwards, glibly blowing off the foundations of the country. But heck, it's for the children. I guess children never survived until she decided to care about them. Is there a parent in America who "can't take a sick child to a doctor"? Show them to me, and we will have them arrested for neglect.

*Stop the presses! This just in, a poignant and informational response from artist Anita Kunz in her comments:

Hi Sissy. Well, the cover they ran was actually a photograph of Hillary in a white suit. My illustration was supposed to run on the cover, but they ran the photo at the last minute. Happens to me a lot! Best and thanks for the nice words. Anita

So, it wasn't a Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy to prevent enquiring minds from seeing the cover image after all. Or was it? How come we still can't find the image -- let alone a NYT-sanctioned link to the article -- out there?

**Update: Winston Churchill of Semper-Fido emails with a correction:

I blog as "Semper-Fido," and I just wanted to make a note that the "Saint Hillary" article is not an excerpt, but is printed in its entirety. It is an excerpt from Mr. Kelly's book, "Things Worth Fighting For." As far as I know, [my blog] is the only place to find the article. Has been obliterated from all of the rest of cyberspace, go figure . . . can anyone say "Clinton" and "behind the scenes power"? Thank you for making note of how to find the article.

We can and we do say it often. Thank you, sir, for promulgating this important bit of anti-establishment journalism on the internet.

*** Update 12 years later on September 17, 2019:  Her loveliness, "all in white, ethereal and serene" has reappeared online: The Politics of Virtue:

Comments

[The Anchoress]

Very interesting, Sissy! I happen to like that Kunz piece for the New Yorker - I think it's fascinating and beautifully done. But yeah, now that you mention it, I'd love to see that ethereal and serene all in white pic of Hillary. Why is this stuff so elusive?

[Sissy Willis]

Anchoress: I agree re the illustration. It would be well worth a blog post unto itself. As to why Hillary's footprint is so elusive, one can't help but suspect Clinton goons working behind the scenes. :-)

[Teresa]

I think it would be fun to see Anita's original art that was not used. That would be very interesting.

Excellent analysis Sissy.

[hnav]

a wonderful post...
inspiring memories to be remembered.

could i suggest the wonderful Anchoress might be mistaken about the 'complex' nature of Ms. Clinton.

this is someone who made an ugly ethnic joke relating gas station owners to Gandhi.

there are many moments in the ugly Clinton history that suggest Ms. Rodham is far from complex.

'it takes a village' to hide one's simplistic nature, and those who push communism are often simple idealistic fools.

her failure to vote to rebuke the MoveOn.Org ad demeaning of a Brave American General might be another entry for the 'simply pathetic' book of Clinton regrets.

[WinstonChurchill]

I blog as "Semper-Fido" and I just wanted to make a note that the "Saint Hillary" article is not an excerpt, but is printed in its entirety. It is an excerpt from Mr. Kelly's book, "Thing is Worth Fighting For". As far as I know: http://semper-fido.blogspot.com/2007/08/saint-hillary-excerpted-from-things.html is the only place to find the article. Has been obliterated from all of the rest of cyberspace, go figure... can anyone say "Clinton" and "behind the scenes power". Thank you for making note of how to find the article.

[Sissy Willis]

Thanks for the correction, Winnie, and thanks for publishing "Saint Hillary" online. I have incorporated your comments into an update above.

I seem to remember hearing Miss Hillary say something awhile back to the effect that we must censor the internet. Doesn't she wish. :-)