Ole Blue Eyes in Scranton

Scranton, Pennsylvania: October 13 The two campaign teams' erotic obsession with "wooing" Pennsylvanian swing voters and its wild fetishization of the color blue is in force here in Scranton, Pennsylvania where I attended a rally of Bidens and Clintons, calling to mind my earlier coverage of Hillary's campaign (see posts Jan-June). Indeed I was able to have a brief lunch with the Senator and former First Lady (see excerpt/transcript below). At this rally, I was most struck by the quartet's emphatic blueness of ensemble, which "signs" both Obama's blue bunting and his "O" and also "signs" a lingering Democratic blue-eyed (devil?) fear of Obama's blackness, a fear which the Biden-Clinton orgy of blue sought to dispel in Bacchanal suburban grandeur among working-class Catholic mid-Atlantic crowds. Note here Bill's patriarchal domination of the podium, his phallic finger wagging in a pointed re-enactment of his post-Monica scolding of the press ("I did not have sex"), and, now ten years on, his finger signs the Obama finger-point histrionics ("yes we can")

Guy: Tell me Hillary, did you feel your defeat to Barack was a defeat for the American femme?

Hillary: Oh Guy, you couldn't be more wrong. On the contrary! What we accomplished was absolutely unprecedented, and, I might add, not unlike the great work done in your own great nation by Segolene Royale.

Guy: A yes but in France she lost very badly, and, anyway, she did not speak after of this "glass ceiling."

Hillary: Well, Guy, the fact is that these ceilings do exist, and for women of my generation it was clear from the outset that we were going to break through to places of leadership and executive positions and, darn gone it, we have.

Guy: And of Palin? And her being, how you say, secreted off from press?
Hillary: Well, you'd have to ask the McCain people about that, but as far as I can tell she's been a very good governor of Alaska.

Guy: But she is not, how you, say, ignorant, estupid, to say she must be a President because she sees Russia from her house? And if she is so incompetent, does this not mean she was picked only for being une femme?

Hillary: Well, I don't want to get into that. Can we talk about Barack?

Guy: Biensur, oui.

Hillary: Well, I'll let you in on a little secret, Guy. Because I know the French are famous for their discretion. But when I lost to Ba-ra-ack, I was in a terrrrrrrrible funk. They had to drag me out of bed that day to go up to that damned Unity New Hampshire lovefest and make nice with that upstart brat. I was gorging myself on ice cream, watching re-runs of "24" and The West Wing, snapping every three seconds at Chelsea, and, at one point, Bill and I had a knock down drag out fight, smashing dishes and all, and I can tell you, it made our Lewinsky, Paula Jones and Gennifer Flowers blow-outs look like days in the park. But in the end, I knew Bill's rough style of campaigning against Ba-ra-ack wasn't the problem. The problem is that I am too white.

Guy: Too white? But you are as white as McCain, though he is, nor is his wife Cindy, not nearly as, how you say, alluring as you.

Hillary: (slaps Guy's arm): That's very nice of you to say Guy, but one thing I am realizing about this great country of ours, is that, frankly, even here in Scranton, given the Bush years, the Iraq war, the economic free fall, Wall Street and banking bail outs, white people are truly getting tired of white people.

Guy: Thank you for your time.

Hillary: Oh it was my pleasure Guy, and Bill and I cannot wait to come visit you in Provence. [Sinatra's "Fly me to the Moon" comes on the jukebox] Oh, ole blue eyes!! I just love this tune, Guy, would you like to dance, we'll create quite the stir in this restaurant. [they rise and dance]