How can you tell when someone owns a public figure? Watch for signs of grovelling.
If something done or said displeases the puppet master, a single frown can turn a puppet’s knees to water. This phenomenon was on full display for anyone who happened to be watching Hillary Clinton as she offered remarks in memory of Nancy Reagan.
Before we can measure the puppet’s reaction, we’ll need a baseline measurement of the subject’s “normal”. Having a constant, or a scientific control, to measure it against will help us gauge the degree of change when influence is brought to bear.
When Bill Clinton was in the the spotlight for sexual misdeeds, Hillary took a fighting stance, and aggressively countered. Deny, deny, deny. She is supposed to have set up a “war room” (presumably not in the Oval Office) to crack down on “bimbo eruptions”.
With scandal after scandal, again and again, we have seen her stonewall. Admit no weakness. Take nothing back. Even now, she’s still trying to claim that the anti-Islamic filmmaker they collared as a whipping boy had something to do with Benghazi.
When asked questions that could lead to felony charges, about her wiping her email servers, she asked with mock innocence: “…like with a cloth or something?”
This is her baseline. Do not show weakness. Do not retract. Do not apologize. All offence, all the time. Except this time.
This time, she flinched. This time, she showed weakness. In trying to give deference to Nancy Reagan, she made appreciative comments about Nancy that made her overlords itch. She now certainly wishes she had never said it. (Story here.)
Alleged anti-bullying advocate, and all-around thug, Dan Savage happened to catch wind of this. Dan Savage is the precious snowflake and paragon of respectful discourse that suggested publicly that Doctor Carson ought to perform a particular indecent act upon Savage. He also — very helpfully — publicly humiliated teenage girls with whose religion he disagreed, because they had the audacity to walk out during his ranting. But don’t worry. “It Gets Better”
Savage read about Clinton’s statement. It included the following:
“It may be hard for your viewers to remember how difficult it was for people to talk about HIV/AIDS back in the 1980s. And because of both President and Mrs. Reagan — in particular Mrs. Reagan — we started a national conversation. When before nobody would talk about it, nobody wanted to do anything about it, and that too is something that I really appreciate with her very effective, low key advocacy but it penetrated the public conscious and people began to say, ‘Hey, we have to do something about this too.’”
The poor Rainbow Gestapo officer could barely contain himself. In responding to Hillary, he even invoked ALL CAPS. Which I suppose means he’s angry. It’s hard to tell with someone perpetually offended and seeking to offend.
He couldn’t let the dead woman be praised. Couldn’t take the high road, not even in death. Because he is prone to seething. And Savage wrote angrily to Hillary. Actually, nothing so direct, personal and productive. He was angry and intent on publicly shaming her. So he published his reaction in a blog, denouncing her for what she had said.
Did she default to her baseline? Deny, deny, deny? Pivot? Blame-shift? Not at all.
She did a most remarkable thing. She walked back her statement, made a retraction, said she mis-spoke, and rephrased Reagan’s accomplishes to exclude AIDS, and refocus them instead on Stem-cell research.
Why? Savage had issued a direct threat. And, like a sock-puppet, she complied.
Would you like to know the threat? Here is the part that’s reprintable.
“Hillary Clinton needs to walk this back immediately or she risks losing the votes of millions of queer Americans who survived the plague years. We watched our friends and lovers die by the tens of thousands while Nancy and Ronnie sat silently in the White House.
Hillary is not beholden to the voters at large. Nor the parents of fallen soldiers. Nor the loved ones of a fallen Ambassador. Nor the laws of the land. But we have learned that she IS beholden to a single bellicose Social Justice Warrior claiming to speak for the entire homosexual (etc.) population.
Do you think such power would be held over her head if and when she returned to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave? You had better believe it. The Left loves to accuse everyone of being in the pocket of some large organization or another. Has it occurred to people to ask whether that’s actually a ploy to deflect attention away from asking who’s holding THEIR strings?
Maybe it’s time we start asking.
