By now I'm a big fan of Harry Potter, the Boy Wizard, especially after he made Hillary Clinton vanish from the world of books.
As the Associated Press reported last weekend, "Harry was likely to make Hillary disappear -- at least from the top of the best-sellers' list. Sen. Hillary Clinton's memoir was the nation's hottest seller before the Potter books began flying off the shelves."
In fact, "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix," the fifth installment in British author J.K. Rowling's hit series, set a new one-day e-commerce record when more than 760,000 advance copies were ordered from the Amazon.com Web site; many of those books were shipped from Amazon's warehouse in Fernley.
Although there's no question that Harry Potter is a fictional character, there is an issue as to whether Sen. Clinton's autobiography, "Living History," is mostly non-fiction or fiction. Giving her the benefit of the doubt, I'd guess that it's at least 60 percent non-fiction; however, the fictional part of it troubles me.
Attempting to recoup an $8 million advance -- which stretched the Senate's ethics rules to the limit -- Ms. Clinton's publisher, Simon & Schuster, mounted a frantic, multi-media publicity campaign highlighted by sweetheart interviews with Katie Couric, Larry King and Barbara Walters, among others. In her interviews, Ms. Clinton said she fell in love with ex-President Bill Clinton because of his "expressive" hands and irresistible animal magnetism.
"I still love the way he thinks and the way he looks," she declared. "Even after all these years, he's still the most interesting, energizing and fully alive person I have ever met." Which only goes to show that some folks will do, or say, almost anything for $8 million. In her book Ms. Clinton attempts to make a sham marriage look like a real marriage when she denies knowledge of her husband's serial philandering.
Not only was she "shocked" when Clinton finally admitted his affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky, she was in total denial about other bimbo eruptions: Gennifer Flowers, Paula Jones, Kathleen Willey, Juanita Broaderick (who accused him of rape), et al. As syndicated columnist Kathleen Parker noted, "Denial was necessary to her marriage, yes, but more important, it has been necessary to her own dauntless pursuit of power. As she denied her husband's serial sexual abuses, she also denied her own role as enabler .... For plunking down $28, Hillary readers get ... an expansion of untruths added to what they already knew to be false." Maybe I'd better take another look at that 60-40 non-fiction to fiction ratio.
Here are some other whoppers that Ms. Clinton told to her fawning interviewers with a straight face: (1) she has no intention of running for president, (2) she had no idea that her husband was a sexual predator and (3) she wanted "to wring Bill's neck" when she found out about Monica Lewinsky.
As to Lie No. 1, it's obvious that Ms. Clinton's book is intended to launch her 2008 campaign for the presidency. Ms. Parker put it this way: "She (Hillary) would bake a 12-tiered wedding cake and stand by the devil if that's what it takes to fulfill her destiny as First Woman." And so she would, even though she once told us that she wasn't a cookie-baking, Tammy Wynette stand-by-your-man type of woman.
But personally, I think comedian Jay Leno supplied the most accurate and honest review of this controversial new book. "Hillary details what it was like meeting Bill Clinton, falling in love with him, getting married and living a passionate, wonderful life as husband and wife," Leno said. "Then on page two, the trouble starts."
Fellow comedian Craig Kilborn added that "so much of her (Hillary's) personality shines through that in the end, you'll want to sleep with an intern." And the irreverent David Letterman announced that Sen. Clinton had taken her oath of office on the family Bible -- "the one with only seven commandments." Ouch!
OK, I'm a Clinton-basher, which makes me part of that vast, right-wing conspiracy (or maybe it's only half-vast), but I just can't help myself. I just can't find a silver lining when I contemplate the Clintons' shameless public behavior.
It's apparent that Hillary has made a deal with the devil. Bill can do whatever he wants as long as she retains her political power. Some of you might think that's a fair trade-off but I find the ongoing Clinton saga more than slightly shabby and unworthy of the highest office in our land.
While Bill dreams of a third term, Hillary campaigns for the presidency. Like her husband, as the perceptive Ms. Parker wrote, "She is able to hold a steady gaze and seduce her audience with false virtue even as she dissembles." And by the way, remember when our own Sen. Harry Reid brought Sen. Clinton to Nevada to investigate the Fallon leukemia cluster? At that time, about two years ago, Harry (Reid, not Potter) caused Hillary to materialize in Fallon for a photo-op. And then she disappeared as if by magic, never to be seen around here again.
I TOLD YOU SO: A couple of months ago I wrote that the Interior Department would reject Carson City's appeal of a BLM land sale in Douglas County just south of the capital. The Department did exactly that last Monday, ignoring the valid economic issues raised by our city officials. So what else is new? The BLM always goes for the money.
Guy W. Farmer, a semi-retired journalist and former U.S. diplomat, resides in Carson City.