Conspiracy Theories, II

The “vast right wing conspiracy” is back, according to Bill Clinton on “Meet the Press.” Isn’t it odd how liberals don’t seem to mind that conspiracy; how they don’t call the Clintons “conspiracy theorists” or suggest, by implication, that they are somehow unhinged. Maybe it’s because there’s very little that the right is doing that is “conspiratorial,” at least according to the dictionary definition of the term. They’re totally up-front about their insanities. Too bad liberals weren’t more “conspiratorial” in a similar way. They might have prevented or at least impeded some of the Cheney/Bush administration’s catastrophes “of choice.”

The target this time, according to Bill (not Hillary!), is Barack Obama. But nowdays, it seems, the conspiracy, though equally “virulent,” is “smaller,” thanks to “demographic changes.” In other words, reading between the lines, what Clinton said was: “I had it even worse (yea, me).” Whenever I see that man I cannot help but remember Leopold Bloom’s reflections on Blazes Boylan in the penultimate chapter of Ulysses – “Reflections on his vigour (a bounder), corporeal proportion (a bill sticker), commercial ability (a bester), impressionability (a boaster).” Hillary’s husband is no bill sticker, not in his public parts anyway; but he is most assuredly a bounder, a bester and a boaster.

Sunday morning was bad enough. What cruel divinity thought to follow it the next day with an interview with Madeleine (Mad Maddy) Albright on NPR’s “Morning Report.” NPR called back its icon, Susan Stamberg, for the honor of interviewing our former Secretary of State. Did she ask about the half million Iraqis killed by sanctions -- whether Ms. Albright still thinks it was “worth it” -- or about the countless other ways her foreign policy (and Clinton’s) paved the way for Condoleezza’s (and W’s)? Not a word! It seems that Mad Maddy has written a book about her costume jewelry and its role in diplomacy, and that’s all the ladies discussed. Imagine listening to that first thing in the morning! Worse still, and in the same vein, imagine waking up to an interview with George Packer about his September 28 New Yorker “Reporter at Large” piece on Richard Holbrooke. Packer’s article isn’t exactly a puff piece. But it is innocent of any hint that Holbrooke, an inveterate Henry Kissinger wannabe, along with Albright and the Clintons were on any side other than that of the angels in the years they maintained and enhanced the empire through several military adventures, “humanitarian” and otherwise, and various other offenses against international law and morality.

First Bill Clinton, then Madeleine Albright and Richard Holbrooke. It’s enough to recall the age-old question – with “liberals” like these, who needs a “vast right wing conspiracy?” Many of the right’s wiser souls, including one of the “conspiracy’s” main financiers, Richard Mellon Scaife, seem to have come around to this view; they learned to stop worrying and love the Clintons. They should love the Obama administration too, since it is so thoroughly Clintonized. If there is anything at all to Clinton’s claim that the “conspiracy” is now smaller than when he was its target, maybe that’s why – because the unhinged fringe has fewer sugar daddies to fund its delusions, now that some of the plutocrats who turned them into useful idiots have come to realize that the Clintons and Obama are, in the final analysis, on their side. “Demographic” changes, indeed.