January 24, 2014

"Unlike Barack Obama, who will leave the White House with more or less the same handful of friends he came in with..."

"... the Clintons occupy their own unique and formidable and often exhausting place in American politics. Over the decades, they’ve operated like an Arkansas tumbleweed, collecting friends and devotees from Bill Clinton’s kindergarten class to Yale Law School to Little Rock to the White House to the Senate and beyond."

From the NYT Magazine article "Planet Hillary." The point about the Obamas' not making friends is also in that New Yorker article:
Obama’s favorite company is a small ensemble of Chicago friends—Valerie Jarrett, Marty Nesbitt and his wife, Anita Blanchard, an obstetrician, and Eric and Cheryl Whitaker, prominent doctors on the South Side. During the first Presidential campaign, the Obamas took a vow of “no new friends.”
Something else that caught my eye in the "Planet Hillary" article is the onion metaphor. (No, not onion rings. For that, go here.)
James Carville has compared the Clinton world, perhaps not so originally, to an onion (it’s safest, he has said, to exist in the third or fourth layer)....

Hillary Clinton’s truest challenge, it would seem, is not to make the country glimpse who she was 40 years ago; it’s to recognize that for all the layers that have been added to the onion, there’s still something at the center that’s aching for the rest to be peeled away.
I thought the whole point of the layers of the onion metaphor was that there is nothing inside. It's only layers. Layers aren't added to an onion. Layers are the onion. There is no core. And onions don't ache. And if they did, they wouldn't ache for all the layers to be peeled away. There'd be nothing left.

39 comments:

pm317 said...

"During the first Presidential campaign, the Obamas took a vow of “no new friends.”"

How very odd! What have they got to hide? Plenty, I guess.

Anonymous said...

Now it begins...

...I had been telling since before Nov. 2013, the next POTUS is Hillary!

The next VPOTUS is Martin O'Malley.

It is so algorithmic that I find it laughable.

GOP cannot win. Why? They have no respect for women and do not consider women as their equals. The same for immigrant-citizens and scientists.

GOP will never win now. The 2008 election was the beginning of the end.

2016 will be the end of the beginning.

It will be at least 4 elections before GOP has a shot.

It must accept women, scientists, immigrants, peace-not-violence, etc.

POTUS Hillary!

Jaske said...

Obama = Do me now, or else.

Clinton = Do me now, and I'll gladly pay you Tuesday.


Quaestor said...

Re: that rather contradictory onion metaphor...

As they say in Texas, she's all hat and no cattle.

rehajm said...

All the orbits, though they forgot to illustrate the Kuiper Belt of Bill's floozies.

FleetUSA said...

Onion - no core and the tears only grow as you peel away the layers.

rhhardin said...

Onion cloves long to be free.

Ron said...

She emits a gas that makes you cry...and her spouse is a rapscallion!

tim maguire said...

Hey! The fun America's Politico is back.

I don't know that the point of the onion metaphor is that there is no middle, but that you never know when you've reached the middle. There's always another layer. Or at least there always might be.

Onions all the way down.

Strelnikov said...

(1) Carville clearly believes there is a ball of pus at the center of an onion; and
(2) the idea of peeling any part of her is revolting.

David said...

The 500 friends who attended Michelle's birthday party are going to be disappointed.

Ignorance is Bliss said...

You know, not everybody like onions. What about cake? Everybody loves cake!

Bob R said...

So maybe Hillary world is an avocado. Tough skin protecting an oily, green, kind of slimy layer with a hard inert pit at the center.

I'm not really thrilled by the analogy, but I'm looking forward to making eggs baked in avocado with bacon on Saturday morning. Better than thinking about the Clintons.

Michael K said...

Theodore Dalrymple, as in so many instances, has Hillary figured out. After all, he is a psychiatrist.

Titus said...

I like the fact that Obama doesn't have many friends.

tits with friends.

gadfly said...

"I thought the whole point of the layers of the onion metaphor was that there is nothing inside. It's only layers. Layers aren't added to an onion. Layers are the onion. There is no core. And onions don't ache. And if the did, they wouldn't ache for all the layers to be peeled away. There'd be nothing left."

Somewhere a "Famous Quotes" website has added this Ann Althouse zinger. It is too bad that reference to the Clinton's is not captured within.

Anonymous said...

A man who was birthed by a white woman, raised by whites and surrounded by whites during his teen years apparently has not one close white friend.
Bet Clinton could name five close black friends without even thinking and Bush was very close buds with with Condi. Yet Obama is supposed to be the "post racial" President.

George M. Spencer said...

Washington:cherry tree
Jefferson:pen
Franklin:lightning
Jackson:sword
Lincoln:axe
TR:teddy bear
Coolidge:Indian headdress
FDR:smile
Ike:golf
JFK:sailing
Reagan:morning

Clinton:onion
Obama: ?

30yearProf said...

If her performance as Secretary of State is a preview, there is nothing inside the first layer. Nothing at all.

30yearProf said...

If her performance as Secretary of State is a preview, there is nothing inside the first layer. Nothing at all.

pm317 said...

Everybody is dumping on Hillary as usual (and onion for some boring reason -- yeah, Althouse made a profound observation that there is no core to onion or some such thing -- bah humbug).

But nobody finds it odd that the Obamas took a VOW of "no new friends."

Who does that? If they did, what does it tell us of them?

William said...

I read The New Yorker article. It's endless. Obama granted Remnick lots of face time. Remnick didn't let him down. It's laudatory without being too slurpy in its praise. It's the very model of a puff piece. Obama doesn't have a swelled head; it was inflated.

Howard said...

Bob R won the thread. The only thing missing is the matching dumpy physique of the avo: Lite on top and a heavy bottom.

Howard said...

St George: TR is best known for the Great White Fleet. Why all all you Tea-Baggers effete tools?

rcocean said...

Bill and Hillary have made tons of friends:

-David Brock
-Paula Jones
-Gennifer Flowers
-Marc Rich
-Scooter Libby

The list is endless.

Anonymous said...

TR = Roughriders. Great White Fleet came in third. I just performed an exhaustive poll, so I know.

Hillary isn't a-peel-ing enough to be an onion. I liken her to being more of a piece of shit.

Skeptical Voter said...

Peel all the layers away from Hillary and all that's left is the stink.

And as for Obama's vow of "no new friends"--well that fellow doesn't make friends very easily, so I guess it wasn't a hard vow to keep.

Now if the promise to themselves had been "No New Enemies"--well they blew that one big time.

ddh said...

I think that President Obama's unwillingness to make new friends explains a lot about his poor performance in governing. He doesn't even try to persuade, and now nobody wants to listen.

Freeman Hunt said...

I don't think we have tumbleweeds in Arkansas, but Urban Dictionary says "Arkansas tumbleweed" means plastic shopping bag. So the Clintons have collected people in a supermarket sack? Strange imagery.

Freeman Hunt said...

The sack can't blow around collecting more people once it's got one person in it.

rcommal said...

[convo follow trigger]

rcommal said...

Now for my original, actual, instant, gut reaction/comment:

"Oh, for God's sake, enough with the faulty onion analogies, already!

Also, does no one here regularly deal with produce? Cook daily?

WTF.

I am wondering."

Valentine Smith said...

Sorry my friend card is all booked up. Try me again in about eight years.

Valentine Smith said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
rcommal said...

At present, I have a sprouting rutabaga, a sprouting turnip and a sprouting onion, and also I have two potatoes with multiple eyes. I let them get too old, it is is true--to the point that they're trying to reproduce.

rcommal said...

By rights, I ought chop and use up those before the newer produce in the baskets arrayed along my island and counters.

Right?

Anonymous said...

rcommal, old starchy taters can be used to make 'puffed potatoes'.
Look them up if you like to cook. Challenging but fun.

ron winkleheimer said...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNS2SgsIGUk

donald said...

These cocksuckers have no concept of the word friend.