Hillaryzilla

I had a bad day. Actually, I sucked. It’s these damned debates. There are too many debates, too many questions, too many opportunities to stumble. I sucked last night.

Bill told me not to worry, “When you’re done sucking, Hillary, suck it up. Move on.” He always says that.

Still, the damage is done. It all started innocently enough. New York governor Eliot Spitzer wants to issue driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants. On one hand, it’s a good idea because more drivers will be qualified and tested to drive, have identification, and be able to get insurance.

Sure. Illegal immigrants want to be tested for a driver’s license and they’ll run right out and get insurance. Uh huh. Right. Who needs insurance on a 1992 Chevy Impala taxicab anyway? On the other hand, issuing a driver’s license to an illegal immigrant looks like a reward. Voters don’t want rewards to go to illegal immigrants. I know that, but it won’t matter anyway. The illegal immigrant license tells everyone that they’re illegal immigrants. How many illegal immigrants will apply for illegal immigrants license?

How many fingers am I holding up, Tim Russert?

So the question came up in the debate and I didn’t give a good answer. Actually, I gave two answers that were not so good. The Republicans are dancing on one answer, and Obama, Edwards, Dodd, and the other four dwarves are dancing on the other.

Would someone please explain to me how a question about a driver’s license for illegal immigrants belongs in a presidential debate?

Every front runner in a political campaign needs to be careful about stumbling too early in the race. Rudy Giuliani just ran out of the closet and fell on his face.

Rudy, Dwight Eisnehower’s elf from New York, says he’s a Boston Red Sox fan. Rudy’s not a Yankees fan or a Mets fan. He’s a Boston Red Sox fan. He openly rooted for the Red Sox in the World Series. Talk about conceding your home state by turning red coat. What’s the guy thinking? Rudy’s Red Sox Romance won’t get him votes in New York for anything except George Steinbrenner’s shoe shine boy.

The fall out was fast and furious but best summed up by Scott Simon of National Public Radio. Those guys at NPR don’t have much to do all day but come up with witty phrases which describe silly situations.

“Now I don’t have the right or sense to judge another man or woman’s religious faith, sexual orientation, or family relations. But I’m sorry. Yankee fans don’t root for the Red Sox. It’s like Sylvester rooting for Tweety Pie. It would be like Napoleon shaking hands with the Duke of Wellington after Waterloo…”

Bizzaro Don Imus could not have said it better.

What’s really going on here? Bill says I misjudged the situation and the election is probably lost since Giuliani made a pact with the devil. A reporter at the Providence Journal asked Giuliani if he would root for the Red Sox if the devil would get him elected president. Rudy said, “Probably that’s a deal I could not make.” Guess what? Rudy rooted for the Red Sox. That means the devil is behind his presidential campaign. We’re hosed.

The waffle is out of the closet. The devil outed Rudy. You can’t make this stuff up.

Who is Tom Tancredo and why is he saying nasty things about me? Seriously. I didn’t even know who the guy was until someone at my birthday party asked me what I thought of Tom Tancredo’s remarks. I had to ask. I hate it when that happens.

From what I’ve learned since, the guy is a Bible thumper running for president. Who knew? So, I asked around and I found out he’s from Colorado and works in government someplace. He’s running for president using the Ron Paul gimmick. Complain about everything. Tancredo’s presidential campaign is such a success that he plans to retire from the House next year. It won’t be because he’s got a job in the White House, that’s for sure.

Here’s the skinny. Conservatives want an immigration bill which would make it a federal crime to offer aid to undocumented immigrants. I’m all for immigration reform, but not at the expense of locking people up, so I criticized the legislation with a wonderfully political statement in the form of a sound bite:

Good, huh? Anything that smacks of Republicans criminalizing Jesus is good for Hillary.

Anyway, Tancredo came out of the woodwork and started telling people that I don’t know the first thing about the Bible, and I didn’t know the first thing about the law, and blah blah blah. I mention one time that ‘I don’t bake cookies’ and it shows up printed on t-shirts. This guy says he’d lock up Jesus for giving an immigrant a band aid or a coupon for free fries at McDonald’s, and I find out about it a year later a party.

Later that night I cornered Patti Doyle and asked her about Tancredo. She said I should watch the next Republican presidential debate. Tancredo won’t be Mitt Romney but he’ll have hair, too. That makes him easy to spot in the Republican crowd.

One more thing. Republicans have debates?

This is not a secret. Read my lips: “I don’t bake cookies.” Who has the time? Baking cookies is the pastime of June Cleaver, not someone who wants to rule the country. I mean, run the country.

I eat cookies, though. I’m something of the Clinton family aficionado when it comes to cookies. Soft and chewy cookies are better than firm and crunchy cookies. Except for Oreos. I twist my Oreos to break them in half, eat the half with no creme filling, then lick the filling off the other half, then eat it.

Soft and chewy cookies have a limit, though. There will be no Mrs. Fields’ Cookies in the White House. Ever. Or, at least from 2008 to 2016. Debbie Fields’ cookies are nothing more than wads of cookie dough stuffed with chocolate or nuts or lint or whatever else they can find under the refrigerator and then, get this, they’re not baked.

I don’t bake cookies, and from the taste of those pasty sweet wads of doughy allergen, Mrs. Fields doesn’t bake cookies, either.

A few notes from the birthday party:

When Bill told me that Elvis would be attending my 60th birthday bash, I though he’d have a dozen or so Elvis impersonators. Instead, we got Elvis Costello. What a let down. The man is worse than Johnny Cash with all that black, morbid look.

Ron Howard came up to me during the party, slurring his words, and drooling all over. I thought he’d had a stroke. Bill got Billy Crystal to be the master of ceremonies. Crystal looks more like Jon Lovitz every day. If they’re not brothers, then they’ve got to be cousins. They’ve got foreheads that go straight to the collar. If they were Republicans, they could run for president.

But seriously, both men are in dire need of a visit to Bosley.

Last night was the party, but today is the big day. I turn 60. I feel great. And why not? My family is healthy. Bill is healthy. Chelsea is healthy. I’m healthy. You’re healthy. We’re all healthy.

Except for Barack Obama. He’s looking a little anemic these days.

I’m the poster girl for the slogan ‘60 is the new 40.’ In an interview yesterday I was asked how I keep up the pace, where I get the energy for a nationwide campaign. Trust me, it’s difficult. Campaigns are full of junk food and temptations, both of which Bill warned me about.

Though I think he meant to say campaigns are full of ‘temptations.’

Tomorrow is the big day. The big 6-oh. More than half my life has been with Bill. Ups, downs, more downs. The ins and outs have been good, too. He’s quite the romantic lover.

Why did I stick with Bill? After all, he’s caused me three shades of grief through the years. It’s complicated. He’s my friend. He’s the father of our daughter. He buys me gifts. It’s his way of atoning for sins of the past. In fact, he’s traveling so much these days that the gifts are piling up in the family room.

Maybe he’s atoning for sins of the future. That’s Bill’s version of Clinton Family Values.

Mitt Romney is the best the Republicans can do for presidential candidates espousing family values. Apparently he doesn’t believe in tact. Today. His view will change tomorrow. Today it’s this:

Oh, really? Hey, Mitt. I’m still here. We’re still together.

I called Howard Wolfson and told him to respond this way, “Hillary Clinton needs no lessons on character from a man who switches his positions on a daily basis.”

It’s missionary, or nothing, right, Mitt?

Gotta go. It’s party time.

I’m on the plane tonight trying to relax the cramps in my face. Most of Tuesday morning was devoted to a series of fundraisers in Seattle, and a visit to Microsoft’s corporate campus in nearby Redmond, then flights to Colorado and Iowa. Again. If I never see a row of corn again it will be too soon.

The fundraisers in Seattle were a bust. Over 1,000 Democrats hit the streets for donations and all they came up with is a measly $150,000. We did three times that much in money, most of it in cash, just bending a few Chinese arms in New York. Those immigrants will ante up when someone tells them their green card will get delayed if they don’t pay up.

I suppose the drag on fundraising is due to the weather in Washington. The state, not D.C. The state is as gloomy as ever. It’s no wonder there’s a Starbucks on every block. Those poor people have to rely on caffeine fixes just to get started each day.

Speaking of smiles, my face hurts. Walking around Microsoft’s campus wore out my smile. I have cramps. It’s difficult enough being friendly to strangers and act interested just to get a donation, but I honestly felt like I was lost in some kind of a Borg hive. Bill Gates’ collective drones were everywhere. I swear, Microsoft must be giving night school classes and training to employees on how to suck up to politicians because that’s all those drones know how to do. Suck up and grin.

My guide during the visit was Tanya Clemons, a black woman from Louisiana, who introduced me to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. You’d have thought I was an I.R.S. auditor the way the man sweats. Seriously. There must be an environmental ban on Arrid Extra Dry in Washington. At first I thought the whole introduction was some kind of political joke. You know, pull one over on old Hillary with the actor who played Frankenstein’s monster, then I realized it really wasn’t Peter Boyle that Tanya introduced to me. Ballmer is a dead ringer for Boyle. Boyle is just dead.

My facial cramps started about five minutes after I shook hands with Ballmer and Gates. You never know what people like that are thinking. They just stood around and looked at me. No smile. No frown. It was creepy. All the while, I’m thinking, “Do they want to donate to my campaign? Are they trying to curry favor? Is this what corporate suck up is like in the land where the sun doesn’t shine? What’s up with these people? What do they want?”

Al Gore warned me about the facial wars that take place at Microsoft. He said just to smile back the same way, don’t show emotion, don’t lick my lips, don’t look them in eye, don’t touch them, and don’t make sudden moves. Al said the herd there is easily spooked. I did what he said but my face still hurts a day later.

For a company made up entirely of overpaid, well-educated drones, attendance at my speech was paltry, and mostly made up of a few dozen Microsoft vice presidents, all wearing blue oxford shirts, who kept looking at their watches while I was speaking. Then I found out that Al Gore’s buddy, Steve Jobs was giving a motivational talk to Microsoft employees later in the day.

Maybe he could motivate Al to lay off the Angus burgers.

So last night I get a call from Martha Stewart. She’s in town and wants to stop by and say hello. I knew what that meant. I had to kiss her and let her take a look inside my refrigerator.

Kissing Martha Stewart is not on my list of turn ons. Men may like to see two women going at it in a tender embrace and locked lips, but kissing Martha is a little like kissing your next door neighbor’s drag queen uncle. From a distance it doesn’t look half bad, but up close it’s downright scary.

Martha stopped by and I got a little pecker on the cheek, all the while hoping that would be it. We chatted for awhile, and she asked if I’d done any redecorating based on her recommendations. Yeah, like I’m going to shop at K-Mart. I told her no, but she was already headed for the kitchen.

What she found in my refrigerator kept the night alive. I was so hoping it would die young. So Martha started pulling things out of the fridge and telling me what to keep, what to throw away, why plastic is bad in the microwave, and why sodium nitrites give you cancer. Bill loves microwaved bacon, by the way.

The woman is a control freak in the kitchen. If she’d apply that much attention to her hair there wouldn’t be so much gray showing in the roots. Anyway, I hit the panic button. Seriously. It’s a wireless panic button which sets off a silent alarm in my aides quarters. A few minutes later she shows up at the door reminding me of an important campaign contribution meeting, and I’m due right away. It’s all part of the plan.

That ended Martha’s blitzkrieg through my refrigerator and all I had to endure was a going away kiss. Full on the lips and I’m sure there was a little tongue, too. If it’s possible for Martha to have a little tongue. As her lips were parting mine, I pulled her close again, and said, “Martha, that’s got to be worth a small contribution, doesn’t it?”

She smiled that wicked little smile of hers, touched my cheek with the tips of her fingers, and wrote me a check right then and there.

I read something that pissed me off. Then I laughed so hard I pissed again.

Five or six years ago, my book, “Living History” became a national bestseller. Even Oprah loved it. That was before her love affair with Barack Obama. As books go, Living History is special, not so much for what it says, but for what it does not say.

What is says is mostly bland; a history of my life as a Goldwater Girl, then activist, then First Lady. Wife. Mother. Lawyer. That’s me. Big whoop, right?

What got me pissed off was Bob from Accounting. One of my staffers emailed a link about some “missing chapters” to Living History which turned up on the internet. That got me worried. Obviously, not everything I wrote for the book turned up in the book. That’s what editors do. They edit. So, some chapters were edited, others were deleted altogether.

What turned up on the internet, thanks to Bob from Accounting, was a so-called lost chapter from Living History. The chapter wasn’t so much lost as it was completely made up. As in fictitious. But as I read it, I sincerely remember it all happening exactly that way. Mostly. I thought I actually wrote that chapter and the editors, thankfully, kept it out of the book.

The chapter had to do with my reaction to Bill telling me about that fat intern Monica Lewinsky and their escapades under the Oval Office desk and what she was doing and why I was really pissed at Bill because I had wanted to do it first. You know, spice things up a bit.

Well, it turns out that this wasn’t really a lost chapter. The whole thing was just made up, imaginary, fiction, a good guess.

Whew. Am I relieved.