Few Jeopardy contestants would recognize the names Norma Jeane Mortensen
, Leonard Slye or Clayton Moore, but even Cliff Claven knows the names Marilyn
Monroe, Roy Rogers, and The Lone Ranger. In fact, both sets of names are the
same people.
The first three are the real names while the last three are the
characters they became. They did not start out as these characters, but they
adopted them and played the part for the rest of their lives. We could also
cite Samuel Clemens who became Mark Twain and Marion Mitchell Morrison who
became known the world over as John Wayne
I am concerned here with a more current example of role playing; one that has immediate significance for all of us. I refer, of course to the character Hillary Rodham Clinton. Hillary Rodham is as much a character as any of those named above.
Something happened to Hillary Rodham that transformed her from a Goldwater Girl into a campus radical. I am not astute enough to identify the time or the event that accomplished this change, but it became apparent not only in her views but in her deportment (there was a book written several years ago entitled "The Seduction of Hillary Rodham;" I’d never read it; perhaps the author has a b3ette3r explanation for the change) It is only important for us to understand that Hillary Rodham abandoned her middle-class life and became Hillary Radical. Whatever force accomplished this change, everything that Hillary did or said afterward was in pursuit of fulfilling her new role as Hillary Radical.
It is likely, as with many of her generation that Hillary did not understand the experience herself. For many of us, it was identification with an individual (I spent years trying to get my hair to behave like Bobby Kennedy's), or opposition to a particular issue such as the Viet Nam War, or just a general estrangement from middle-class America as the result of university experience and exposure the radical professors.
Hillary Radical does not believe in anything except a vision of herself as rescuer. She does not believe in liberty or justice or human rights or any of the other "causes" she espouses in her persona. That is why she can lie and cheat and steal and never be bothered by a conscience, because Hillary Radical has no conscience; characters have no conscience unless the author creates one. Hillary Radical does not know what she belies, until the author puts the words in her mouth.
The point is nobody knows who Hillary is, including Hillary. To elect her
or any other person with such an indeterminate character would be to betray all
that America
represents
Perhaps someday a future Shakespeare will write a play called "Hillary Millhouse," for this American story is surely as much a tragedy as any of the histories the Bard ever penned. It will become an even greater tragedy if she becomes president.
