At the New York Times on Friday, Amanda Hess regaled readers over how the "spontaneous" and "chance" sightings of Hillary Clinton since Election Day have made Mrs. Clinton "a new folk hero." Her virtual hagiography even made it to Page C1 of the paper's Saturday print edition.
There's more sap in Hess's writeup than one could likely collect from all of the trees in the wooded areas in which Mrs. Clinton has "unexpectedly" appeared.
Mrs. Clinton and her minions have created a worshipful safe space on Twitter for sad and bitter liberals and leftists who are still unable to deal with the shock of her loss to Donald Trump four weeks ago.
Here are excerpts from Hess's horror:
The Hillary Clinton Selfie as Political Salve, or Weapon
In the weeks since the election, some Americans have found a new folk hero in a familiar face: Hillary Clinton, comfortably dressed suburban retiree.
Within hours of her loss, a steady stream of photos began surfacing of supporters posing with her as she took part in lazy-day activities: There’s Hillary, walking in the woods of Chappaqua, N.Y.; Hillary browsing the aisles at an independent bookstore; Hillary shopping for Thanksgiving dinner at the market; and Hillary walking in the woods of Chappaqua again, this time with Bill.
Adam Parkhomenko, a longtime Clinton aide, has started a Twitter account, @HRCInTheWild, for tracking the spontaneous sightings.
We're not told whether Adam Parkhomenko's involvement is "spontaneous."
And, of course, this enterprise is all about commiseration, and absolutely no one is making any political statements ... oh, wait (original tweets are here, here, here and here):
Note that the final item above is a retweet, clearly indicating that Hillary's trusted aide himself is not above injecting politics into this supposedly purely noble, grief-therapy exercise. As to that tweet's content, I would argue the amount of fleece seen in the photo is nothing compared to the fleecing Mrs. Clinton did of the entities which paid her $200,000 or more for speeches occasionally as short as 23 minutes.
Anyone who doubts the "safe space" element of this endeavor will have those doubts erased upon reading Hess's description of its alleged benefits:
There is a larger Democratic fantasy being enacted here. The smiley sightings project an idea of enclaves — perhaps deep in the woods of Chappaqua, or in the stacks of an indie bookstore — where the fear and depression felt by many after the election does not loom. The Huffington Post called it a “peaceful alternate universe.” If the woman who bested Mr. Trump as a debater, and in the popular vote, can put on a brave face and head out on a brisk hike, these selfies say, then perhaps there is hope for her supporters, too.
Hess herself has a serious problem with the real universe if she really believes that Mrs. Clinton bested Trump as a debater. No objective human being on earth can possibly believe that Donald Trump's me-against-the-world second debate performance, correctly described as a 3-on-1 contest with the moderators stridently in Hillary's camp, was one for the ages, both strategically and rhetorically.
More to the point, Mrs. Clinton, instead of debating Trump head-on, all too often took the cowardly way out, simply saying that her friends in the media do her "fact checking" for her. The fact that she did this as often as she did indicates that she didn't have the ability to counter Trump's points, and was simply copping out.
Given that the Clintons, when in the White House, decided that they needed to commission a poll before they could even decide where to take a vacation, there's more than ample reason to doubt that these encounters have been "spontaneous," or that Parkhomenko, the Clinton aide who is said to have set up the Twitter account, acted on his own. One obvious point made by a seasoned skeptic: "(The) Secret Service doesn't let random people in the woods approach protectees."
But Amanda Hess was apparently too starstruck and determined to carry the feminist flag to do such basic homework:
At Quartz, the writer Lux Alptraum read a feminist political message into the selfies. Mrs. Clinton’s “makeup free look,” she wrote, is “one last middle finger to the patriarchy.” She added, “If there’s any silver lining to this election mess, it’s that after 40 years of scrutiny and stricture, Hillary Clinton is finally, triumphantly, human again.”
Not yet, Amanda and Lux — not as long as Hillary Clinton remains behind the likely quixotic but definitely dirty attempt to deny Donald Trump his earned Electoral College majority and to cast doubt on the legitimacy of his election victory. For those who need a quick explanation, here's an excerpt from the transcript of Bill Whittle's related "Firewall" video:
... the recount will not change the RESULTS of the election, but it could change HOW Donald Trump gets elected. It’s a longshot, but if the recount ties up the electoral votes of these three states when the electoral college meets in mid-December, then neither Trump nor Clinton will have the necessary 270 electoral votes needed to become President. Under such a scenario, the decision would fall on the Republican-majority House of Representatives, who would immediately vote to elect Donald Trump.
WHY?
So that Democrats will be able to claim that “neither of them” had the magic 270; that Hillary won the popular vote by about two million people; and that Donald Trump was not ELECTED but SELECTED. They mean to do to Trump what they did to George W. Bush: DE-LEGITIMIZE him before he even takes office.
The "Hillary in the Wild" campaign is a way to distract from the ongoing skulduggery. Amanda Hess dutifully carried Mrs. Clinton's water.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
