OPINION:
ANALYSIS/OPINION:
No woman in the television age of American politics has suffered so much abuse and public humiliation at the hands of men.
For her entire marriage, Hillary Rodham Clinton has been cheated on by a pervy molester with an unbridled libido. Again and again plays the endless loop of video in which the man she married is accused of raping — another woman. Oh, such scorn!
And imagine the festering injustice she must feel when she surveys all of her troubles around her now about secret email servers and shady dealings and plummeting poll numbers and then remembers how shamelessly rotten HE was — and yet got away with it all!
Most galling of all must be when she peers across the aisle into the Republican field and sees the dazzling and invigorating campaign that is Donald Trump.
The Donald is having so much FUN.
The Hillary, meanwhile, is so miserable that Reuters news service brought in a body language expert to diagnose her obvious distress. “Sadness. Anxiety.”
Brutal.
Indeed, Mr. Trump and his campaign are everything that Mrs. Clinton and hers are not. She is suffering a terrible case of Trump envy.
Talk about low energy. Hillary Clinton makes Jeb Bush look like the Energizer Bunny!
Hillary seems so old and played out. Yet she is two years younger than Mr. Trump! And still on her first husband.
Because of his mastery in the field, Donald Trump had been in the media’s glare since well before the Clintons arrived in Washington with all their Arkansas baggage. Yet it is Hillary Clinton that everybody is so tired of. Hillary fatigue is the one thing unifying Democrats and Republicans today.
The poor woman is even getting beaten around by Socialist Bernie Sanders — and he is the oldest of them all! And, on top of that, the old codger has been in Congress for a quarter-century! If he ain’t to blame for this mess than nobody is!
Mr. Trump is constantly ridiculed by all the experts who despise him (and his legion of supporters) for his celebrity status. But they cannot deny that he has seamlessly converted that into a Golden Campaign.
But wait! That was supposed to be Hillary’s trick!
All she has ever been is a celebrity, having married the right person who was insanely gifted at politics. She successfully converted that celebrity into a Senate seat from a state she was not from. And she thought she could could ride that celebrity all the way to the White House.
Turns out that old shabby donkey broke down in Foggy Bottom and refused to budge one inch more up the hill to the White House.
Instead political hosannas, all Hillary Clinton seems to get for her celebrity status these days is more and more hellish wrath from voters on both sides of the aisle.
Gets even worse when she opens her mouth.
Donald Trump talks and the most outrageous things pop out about rapists and blood and fat people. Voters jump up and cheer and applaud him for his honesty.
When Hillary Clinton opens her mouth, the most tired and meaningless pablum dribbles out. And everyone just shakes their head and thinks she is lying.
“What, with, like a cloth or something?” she said when asked if her secret server had been wiped clean.
And how about her wealth? She and her husband are worth some $170 million off of book deals and speaking fees and various other grifting that lies at the intersection of politics and money.
$170 million. That is not even half of what Donald Trump says he makes in a single year. His net worth is at least some 20 times that of the Clintons’. Could be more like 50 times their wealth.
Yet, it is Hillary Clinton who is daily eviscerated for her wealth and ridiculed for claiming to have been penniless when she left the White House. Oh, the injustice!
What makes it all so grueling and oppressive is not that it is something she has never encountered before but rather that she has endured it for so, so long.
Remember 2008? When the long, bitter fight was all over, the Democratic Party told her it was time for a black man. Next time, they assured her, it would be HER turn. It would be time for the woman.
Yeah, her turn to get beaten again. This time by an older white guy with an orange comb-over.
• Charles Hurt can be reached at charleshurt@live.com and on Twitter via @charleshurt.
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