I stand second to none in my ongoing opposition to Hillary Clinton.  Since her firing by the head of the Democrat Legal Counsel to the Senate Watergate Committee, I have thought her ruthless, mean-spirited, and vindictive.  In his public dismissal, her former boss called her, among other things, dishonest.

In my opinion, her husband is worse. 

Yes, life is ironic – a young lawyer, bright and shiny from Yale Law School, gets publicly bounced and reprimanded because she was behaving in a corrupt manner while investigating a corrupt president.

Character is destiny.

The never-ending tale of Bill and Hillary has become the longest-running political reality show of the era.  The episodes are routine now, with everyone knowing his or her role.  The Clintons have their shtick down pat, and the media knows their role – they'd better.  After all, they've been playing the foil for decades.

The formula:

The alleged crime(s) – sexual, political, financial; the Clinton’s assault on both the messenger and the victim; the long, boring scenes of them ducking, denying, obfuscating, and delay, delay, delay; the inevitable mocking dismissal of the original charges as “old news”; and Bill gets a close-up on the lip-biting, then anger, and walks off stage left to be surrounded by Hillary and Chelsea (who is mostly a bit player – that’s her range.)

Or when Hillary is the protagonist, she gets angry – “What difference, at this point, does is it make?”  That will go down with other Clinton series classics: “I did not have sexual relations with that woman,” and my personal favorite from a particularly nasty sex scene in Arkansas, the ever thoughtful Southern gentleman, Bill: “You better put some ice on that.”

Next, Hillary gets wordy – on and on, back and forth, through verbal contortions that would make her torts professor proud.  Pound the facts, pound the law, and if all else fails, pound the table.  Next, cry and publicly remember Mama.

Last week, in the most contemporary variation on the storyline, Hillary’s face had become a tragic persona.  Lifelong political foe that I am, I am beginning to pity her.

In 1950, Billy Wilder gave us the classic Sunset Boulevard.  Gloria Swanson portrays Norma Desmond, a movie star long past her prime, desperate to revive the former days of adulation and power – slipping deeper and deeper into the psychosis of one who has once held the world in her hands, expecting it always to be so. 

I confess my descriptive powers cannot do justice to the final scene of a woman who does not know it’s over – while the whole world gasps at the sight of her face as she whirls her head into the close-up, garish makeup not concealing her wrinkled visage and a Joker-like painted gash for a smile.

Bill – please end the abuse.  And despite punishing others in that way, I am tired of public humiliations.