Hurricane Hillary and The Wicked Queen

Memes sprouted up online as the rare, once-in-a-generation Hurricane Hilary threatened Los Angeles. “She’s back,” they all said. No one could mistake the namesake, with or without the extra “l.”

Just before the hurricane was downgraded to a tropical storm and made its way toward me, I was revisiting Disney’s Snow White in the wake of comments made by Rachel Zegler, the young star chosen to revive and rebrand the Disney princess as non-white, feminist, and woke.

Gone were the seven dwarfs. Gone was the “skin as white as snow,” and there was talk of the infamous kiss that awakens Snow White to be surgically removed like the cancer it supposedly was.

Disney princesses now aren’t what they were in 1937. They’re brands, economies onto themselves. It isn’t just a movie. It’s a Halloween costume, a birthday cake, party supplies, toys - see, Disney tells us, Disney princesses don’t just have to be white, not even one called Snow White.

You were a good person if you went along with it and a bad person if you didn’t. After all, why shouldn’t other groups besides the white majority be Disney princesses? And who can argue with that?

As we would discover, however, changing Snow White would be the tip of the iceberg. The seven dwarfs would have to be an array of inclusive, fully grown adults because if they were still dwarfs, they would offend those born short of stature. Now they look like a gaggle of Brooklyn hipster employees from the Renaissance Faire.

Then we’re left wondering, what are they doing in the forest? Is it some kind of creepy cult?

“It’s no longer 1937,” said Zegler in the clip from 11 months ago that the internet somehow unearthed this past week. “She’s not going to be saved by the prince,” inserts Gal Gadot helpfully. And, says Zegler, “She’s not going to be dreaming of true love. She will dream about becoming the leader she knows she can be.”

Zegler isn’t a polished actress. She was plucked from the wilds of Youtube by Spielberg to play his “Maria authentica” in West Side Story. Zegler spouts the doctrine of her generation because she must, as an online influencer.

Becoming the leader she knew she could be is an interesting read of Snow White, though inaccurate. Snow White is the living embodiment of beauty, not just physical beauty, but beauty within.

She dreams of true love not because it’s something she doesn’t have, but because it’s something she already knows she has. It’s the Wicked Queen who is empty inside, who must destroy those who have what she never will.

Hurricane Hillary

And that brought me back to Hurricane Hillary, with two L’s. The Snow White of Zegler and Disney’s imaginings. A college grad whose speech about making the impossible possible earned her a spot in the press as a promising young leader. Her publicity drew the Handsome Prince to find her in the Yale library. “Aren’t you that woman who…”

Despite the speech, the meet-cute, and the promise, the Handsome Prince carried Hillary off to become the First Lady of Arkansas. Deep inside her, that burning to be the leader she knew she could be anchored her to Bill, whose career was moving fast.

Queen Hillary’s fairy tale soured after a time. There were the Gennifers and the women who waited in line outside the Governor’s door, a sexual harassment charge, a rape allegation. There was that illegitimate child Bill was rumored to have fathered on his rise to the presidency, the one no one on the Left talks about, but is preserved in amber in the film Primary Colors.

Here is the scene when she hears the truth about her husband in the film.

What happened to Bill Clinton’s son? Is Danney Lee Williams the proof that what happened in Primary Colors was true? The Washington Post says no. He’s not asking for anything except to be claimed as a Clinton. Yet, to the Kingdom of Hillary and Bill, he remains persona non grata. Is that something Snow White would do, or is that something the Wicked Queen would do?

Corruption begat corruption, didn’t it Hillary? By the end, the Kathy Bates character is so disgusted with the Stantons, she blows her brains out.

And here it is, the moment the Stantons have chosen winning over their integrity in Primary Colors.

Queen Hillary could not be Snow White and get what she wanted. She would never be content to waste away in a cottage baking cookies and singing to the birds. No, she wanted more. Much more. But to do that, she would have to accept that she was not good at all, but ruthless to the last.

Whistle while you work. Hum a merry tune.

Queen Hillary’s chance to flee her life as Bill’s shadow came at long last when a maiden named Monica begged Bill to sleep with her, engaged in tawdry acts in the Oval Office, then giggled her way through a Barbara Walters interview. Oh how Hillary must seethe thinking of Monica now, refashioned as a Me Too victim. Where is a Huntsman when you need one?

Queen Hillary had no choice but to conjure, like a disturbance in the open sea that threatens to become a hurricane. From now on, Hillary would come first. She would become the leader she always knew she could be.

“Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, who is the most electable of them all,” asked Queen Hillary.
”There are none more electable than thee,” said the Magic Mirror.

Senator Hillary emerged like a phoenix - a savior on 9/11. At long last, the promising political career that had been her destiny was at hand.

When 2008 came along, she asked her Magic Mirror once again.

“Mirror, Mirror on the Wall. Who is the most electable of them all?”
”Though you are electable My Queen, there is one far more electable than thee. He’s a skinny kid with a funny name whose speeches light the base on fire.”

No, fumed Queen Hillary. This can’t be true. From out of nowhere, he’s suddenly more experienced than the Senator who helped the city survive a terrorist attack. Are you kidding me?

“Sadly no,” said the Magic Mirror. “You’re likable enough, Hillary. Just not more likable than he.”

“Likable enough” got her a spot as Secretary of State, though much of that was the political maneuvering of the new beloved King. He wanted to unite both movements, and he needed the Hillary tribe, all of those high-earning feminists, the base of the Democratic Party - unmarried white women like me.

Taken in 2011, this photo by Kevin Lamarque/AP launched a thousand memes and an investigation into Hillary’s private email server. The Queen could not catch a break.

Queen Hillary bided her time through the “fairy tale” of being Bill’s wife. The end of this story was already written. It was just a matter of the right election at the right time. Joe Biden would have to wait his turn. By 2016, Hillary was more than a disturbance. She looked like the beginnings of a hurricane.

“Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, who is the most electable of them all,” she asked again.

“Though you are electable indeed, there is one more electable than thee. He is a grumpy old Senator from Vermont surfing the populist wave of discontent wrought from the Wall Street bailout in 2008.”

Hillary had waited long enough. There was no way that miserable old socialist coot was snatching victory from her.

Vanquishing Bernie was not easy. But by now, her leadership, her dominance, and her influence could not be denied. This was HER moment, and she would push through the humiliations, and accusations that she was a shill for Wall Street, the status quo, someone who could not give an inspiring speech to save her life. LIKABLE ENOUGH HILLARY.

Despite everything, she clinched the nomination in 2016. She’d crushed Bernie like a bug, Uncle Joe was stepping aside, and she had the full force of King Obama’s army behind her.

So she asked again, “Mirror Mirror on the Wall, who is the most electable of them all?

“Though you are likable enough, there is one more electable than thee. He hosted Celebrity Apprentice for seven seasons and has a new nickname for you, Crooked Hillary.”

By now, Queen Hillary breaks the fourth wall and stares right into the camera. “You have got to be f*cking kidding me. DONALD J. TRUMP? That’s who is more electable than me? No, you are a lying Magic Mirror. You have always been lying,” she said.

“Would that I were, My Queen, this isn’t exactly fun, you know, but I am compelled to tell the truth no matter how much you wish I wouldn’t. As Keats would say, Beauty is truth, truth beauty. That is all ye need know on this earth.”

“Keats, seriously? Unleash hell,” Queen Hillary said as the waters churned beneath her, creating a powerful swirl off in the distance. The dossier, the Access Hollywood tape, the FBI, nothing was off limits to stop this man from denying her what she knew was her destiny, to become the leader she knew she could be.

The New York Times assured her she could not lose. 95% chance of winning, they said. She didn’t just want a squeaker. She wanted a landslide win. She wanted Georgia. She wasn’t watching the swing states. And she did it! She won! She won the election in 2016!

Except that she didn’t.

She won the popular vote but not the election. The hurricane was gaining strength, looking to make landfall as a Category 5. Hillary could not lose this election. Not this one. Everyone would pay. The Democratic Party, the media, James Comey, Bernie Sanders.

Now she would become death, the destroyer, of worlds.

She wanted something she could never have. She wanted her fairy tale. The husband who didn’t cheat. The career that hand-delivered the presidency at long last. If she had all of that, if she was rich and powerful and won the vote of the people would that be enough? Could that stop a Category 5 hurricane?

No. Because what Queen Hillary wanted, what she needed, was love. Real love. Not a husband with a wandering eye, not a close election, not to use her position to force people to support her. She wanted them to like her, to love her. Why didn’t they?

It was like that story she told about her mother forcing her to go back outside and play with the kids who hated her. Make them like you, Hillary. But how? Whatever it was Hillary needed, or what those of us who supported her for so long needed - never seemed to be enough.

Is that the lie feminism sells? That we should be shamed for finding happiness in the simplicity of true love or spending our days doing chores of ordinary life? Are we made better because we see a movie like Snow White as oppressive and not beautiful? Or are we made more miserable because it’s never enough?

Whomever Hillary was once upon a time has now been swallowed up by ambition, corruption, and desperation - not just by her but by all of those titans in the Democratic Party and the media who could not stand it that so many people wanted to vote for Trump.

Snow White is the embodiment of love itself - so many forest creatures are drawn to her, and it is what compels the seven dwarfs to try to save her. She isn’t rescued by the Prince at all. She is rescued by the thing that defines her. And it is this thing that can’t be bought or won, but we just have to recognize it within us.

Snow White is happy no matter where she is or what she’s doing. She’s just as happy living in a cottage with seven dwarfs as she’d be living in a castle. A universal truth that, for an America coming out of the Great Depression, resonated.

Snow White doesn’t have to speak for all women. It shouldn’t be a map to guide young people on how to think or what to long for. It is that rare thing that can’t be replicated, a thing of beauty. There is truth in it. A truth they wish to eradicate.

Queen Hillary isn’t finished yet. She’s just now taking her victory lap on Rachel Maddow, cleaning off her Magic Mirror, and thinking about asking one more question one last time. But the answer will always be the same because the answer is in the asking of the question.

As for Hurricane Hilary, the rain is just starting to come down where I live. Warm, heavy raindrops carried to us from somewhere off the Mexican coast. It’s quiet and dark. We won’t know the full damage of her impact until she’s moved on, and the birds know it’s safe to start singing again.

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