How Hillary Clinton Became a Postmodern Menace
In late January, the Washington Examiner published an unsigned editorial with a plaintive headline: “Why Won’t Hillary Clinton Just Go Away?”
The paper’s question was at once timely—Clinton, that week, had been making media appearances for the premiere of the Hulu docuseries Hillary—and timeless. It is the same question that is asked pretty much anytime Clinton is in the news again, which is to say very often, expressed through headlines like “The Real Reason Hillary Can’t Just Shut the Fuck Up and Go Away” and “Hillary Clinton Just Won’t Go Away”—and through arguments like “Hey, Hillary Clinton, shut the f--- up and go away already.” Nanette Burstein, Hillary’s director, told my colleague Shirley Li that one of the many reactions she’d been anticipating to the documentary before its release was “Please go away.” She had good reason to expect that. There aren’t many certainties in this world; one thing you can depend on, however, is the fact that, at nearly any moment, someone is punctuating a post on Facebook or Twitter or Instagram with a #GoAwayHillary hashtag.
The vitriol is revealing. Bill Clinton (, , ) to monetize the ire. It is Hillary, uniquely—a little bit Rorschach, a little bit —who rankles people. It is Hillary who is imagined, by many in the American public, as a conspiracy theory incarnate.
