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Local reporters are making hay about the former SecState’s royal ways. Here’s Jon Ralston in Las Vegas:
We don’t have kings and queens in America, or at least we shouldn’t. But when I see the red carpet UNLV is rolling out for Hillary Clinton in two months I start to wonder. Unless you’re a mindless partisan, the details of that contract with the UNLV Foundation should disturb you. They were uncovered, as I said by the RJ’s Lara Myers, and published over the weekend. The contract reads as if Hillary is being given the, yes, royal treatment. Now it is bad enough that the UNLV Foundation folks agreed to that outrageous $225,000 fee as students struggle to make ends meet.
Hillary can’t seem to decide if she’s running against President Obama or with him, and her behavior indicates she might not be running — or that she’s entirely too out of touch to be running at all.
Most celebrities have a limited shelf life. A few do manage to age with as much grace and glamour as they began with — I’m thinking now of some of the old school greats like Lauren Bacall and Cary Grant. Kevin Costner is sticking mostly with age-appropriate roles, as is Helen Mirren. Neither is allowing their personal lives to detract from their public personas. There are other examples, but you get the idea.
They’re the exceptions though. Some stars get too weird (Michael Jackson) to keep their shine. Tom Cruise, despite being well into his 50s, keeps starring in increasingly-ridiculous sci-fi action flicks, when he ought to be letting some gray show through — and showing guys my age how to do it right. Superstars like Madonna reach a place where they can’t be told No, and cease being recognizable as fellow earthlings. Others burn out, some fade out.
Others — I’m thinking again of Madonna — have so much money and they just won’t go away no matter how much we’d like them to. Lady Gaga would like to go down that road, but she’s probably already past her shelf life.
In the second half of the 20th Century we had our first celebrity-presidents, starting with JFK, formalized by Reagan, and perfected by the Clintons. The Obamas are a whole new ballgame, taking the White House from mere celebrity to superstardom.
Hillary seems determined lately to follow that example, but she also seems to have too much of Madonna’s brittle remoteness to make it work.
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