Satirist Terry Castle's LRB take on our Former Next First Lady, is SNL funny, ending on a by no means maudlin Maundy Thursday note:
So Blakey, Bev and I are among the lucky ticket-holders to a big Silicon Valley campaign fundraiser for HRC. (Don’t ask, don’t tell.) Yes: Her Herness Herself! A friendly little plush-covered gathering for six hundred at some well-connected Palo Alto dweller’s farcically supersized manse! The next best thing to a private audience with the Hilldebeest! The Many-Horned Hillaria! (Bernie who?) Hellza-poppin’ H-Rod! (Not the Donald?) The Grinch Who Lost Her Emails! The Ethical Wreck! Our Straight-Talking-Thick-Ankled Lady of the Half-Explained! (Will Huma be there?) OMGoddess!
It should be awesome, we figure: our first sighting, not only of the She-Deity, but also of her millionaire internet-drone advance guard – boyish CEO putti of Cupertino and Mountain View, who have begun (it is rumoured) to flutter Democratically about her. Young-Titan Tesla guys with entrepreneurial dream-teeth and a no doubt healthy obsession with other men.(They’re good boys at heart: their artisanal leather wallets are made from 100 per cent organic Niman Ranch grain-fed beef.) The rail-thin wives should be there, too, of course: agile, urgent, newly hatched Clintonistas, vaguely dissatisfied with everything, but keeping it real enough with teal-green silicon eyeballs and pricey MRS degrees from Stanford. Not to mention the usual klatsch of ruling-class hangers-on: radical Botoxers; Pilates Instructors for Peace and Zero Body Fat; members of the pedicure-rights community – all Teetering-for-Hillary in black sheath dresses and fuck-me pumps.
Since it takes a village, we anticipate, too, the requisite flock of drugged up toddlers cordoned off somewhere in a nanny-pen, raptly checking the Nasdaq with tiny fingers or watching start-up porn on Androids larger than they are. Overlooking everything (or so one hopes), a magisterial phalanx of burly fellows in dark suits, sporting ear buds and bulletproof vests. We’ve heard that upper and lower colonic ‘background checks’ have already been performed on us in advance (without our knowledge!) and that tonight will feature metal detectors, iris scans and hologram IDs. Fine, fine, fine. After all, we’re going to have our official pictures taken with HER: who wouldn’t want to be safe? Sad to get wasted even as one stands leering hysterically at the (Possibly?) To Be Anointed One. I have a particular investment in survival tonight: I’m hoping that one magic handshake with HRH Hillary the First will cure my life-long scrofula.
