The revenge of Socks the Cat
From the London Times...
AS THE “first pet” of the Clinton era, Socks, the White House cat, allowed “chilly” Hillary Clinton to show a caring, maternal side as well as bringing joy to her daughter Chelsea. So where is Socks today?
Once the presidency was over, there was no room for Socks any more. After years of loyal service at the White House, the black and white cat was dumped on Betty Currie, Bill Clinton’s personal secretary, who also had an embarrassing clean-up role in the saga of his relationship with the intern Monica Lewinsky....
The softening of Clinton’s image seems to be working. Her chief strategist, Mark Penn, predicts that up to a quarter of Republican women will vote for her...
So they are admitting that they are encouraging people to vote for her because of her gender. Isn't that A. illegal B. immoral and C. hypocritical?
...She leads Democratic rivals in the polls by 26 points and is scooping up more donations to her war chest from Wall Street and defence contractors than any candidate from either party – an unmistakable indicator of who they think will win in 2008.
Clinton’s treatment of Socks cuts to the heart of the questions about her candidacy. Is she too cold and calculating to win the presidency? Or does it signify political invincibility by showing she is willing to deploy every weapon to get what she wants?
“In the annals of human evil, off-loading a pet is nowhere near the top of the list,” writes Caitlin Flanagan in the current issue of The Atlantic magazine. “But neither is it dead last, and it is especially galling when said pet has been deployed for years as an all-purpose character reference.”
I wasn't surprised when Socks, or, as he was lovingly referred to by the Clintons, Campaign Prop #2,486, was summarily abandoned on Currie's doorstep during the Clinton's retreat from power.
When I first heard, during the strange final days of Bill Clinton’s presidency, that the first couple were going to jettison Socks, the family cat, I assumed that it was one of those weird rumors that attach themselves to the Clintons, in this case one easily dispelled: a single photograph of the kitty happily curled up on a window seat in his new home, and that would be the end of it. But then, as so often happens with weird rumors that attach themselves to the Clintons, the story turned out to be 100 percent true. Reporters asked Bill about it during a press conference, and he hemmed and hawed. As the final days passed by—which, as you may recall, included a newsy sluice of pardons and outrages, hardly a time when journalists had to invest minor incidents with greater importance—reporters couldn’t quite get their heads around the business with the cat.
In this hour of crisis, the official Socks the Cat Fan Club sent an inquiry to its namesake’s most stalwart champion. Hillary’s Senate office replied with a note—at once chilly and patronizing— suggesting, more or less, that they butt out.
In other words, having received all the publicity they could from the thing, it was of no use to them. One wonders if in an earlier age, rather than Betty Currie, Socks would have wound up in the "loving embrace" of some heavy rocks, a gunny sack and a nearby creek.
Now that Socks is becoming a campaign issue, I hope he's enjoying his revenge. Does he know how much more effective this is than simply shredding an expensive couch, coughing up a hairball while the family is eating, or even pooping on Hillary's pillow? Would he even care? He's a cat and if you know anything about cats, you'll know they generally keep their emotions to themselves unless it's to those special ones they'll let their guard down to.
So when and if the evening news mentions Socks in terms of Hillary's growing reputation of cold, unfeeling callousness, does he give off just that tiny, almost imperceptible twinge at the corner of the mouth that might possibly be the beginning of a Cheshire grin?
Only Betty Currie knows.
Posted by Danny Carlton at October 22, 2007 6:39 AM