John Podhoretz

John Podhoretz

Opinion

Shucks, we wuz so broke: Clintons’ tale of woe is an insult to working Americans

From the archives of the Westchester County Oral History Project, testimony of Hillary Rodham Clinton:

Times was hard back in ’01. I don’t mind saying. Hard. A — what’s that word? Struggle. That ware whut it was. Our time of struggle.

It waren’t just the lumbago keepin’ me up so bad I’d have to make myself a poultice of witch hazel and neem bark that was learned to me back in Little Rock by Chelsea’s au pair.

It waren’t just Bill pulling the overnight shift with that slave driver Old Man Burkle which made it so he’d only just be coming home to bed on the private plane right when I had to get up to punch my clock over to the Senate.

’Course Bill was up in the Chappaqua double-wide and I was in the Washington lean-to, but I can’t offend the Lord, I allus knew where Bill was on account of the LoJack I had put in him back in ’98.

I didn’t mind we wasn’t together. I reckoned he liked it up there in Westchester because of the special coffee they had there in that place, whatever it was, Starbucks I think it was called — he said you just couldn’t get it anywhere else that tasted the same.

Still, it was lonely for Bill, him there with no one to talk to but the five Secret Service agents and the stews on Old Man Burkle’s Gulfstream. He was sacrificin’, and I knowed it, and he knowed it too.

Also we had to have a place to keep my carpet bag.

Meantimes, I had to be down in DC for to do my piece tendin’ to the young’uns of New York state. Their folks had done the choosin’ of me back to Election Day and dadgum if I waren’t gonna do my all for them kids.

But that was where the strugglin’ come in, you see. It was them two places, the double-wide and the lean-to. Meantime, Chelsea needed the educating, and that school of hers, Stanford, wouldn’t accept our prize pig in trade for the spring tuition.

We was sore beset. Nights I’d take to sobbin’ over the candle starin’ at the ledger, tryin’ to figure out how to make ends meet. Bill had to go vegan cause we couldn’t even afford the jerky.

I mean, what with the presidential pension, the Arkansas governor’s pension, my paycheck from the gummint, add ’em up and that’s only 400K. I mean, thank the Lord for the Medicaid! I was fixing to apply for the Earned Income Tax Credit, was what I was gonna do.

Some clucked their tongues and said I got me a $8 million advance for my book just before we loaded up the truck and skedaddled out’a the White House. Them people don’t know nothin’.

Firstways, you don’t get the whole 8 up front, you only get 2 million of the 8 million, and then your agent skims 200K offa the top a that, so you’re basically left with squat. Chicken feed that ain’t no good even for the chickens.

It waren’t until August 2001 that Bill made his book deal. Yes, it was a big’un, but we didn’t know he was gonna get a $15 million advance! We figgered $20,000 tops.

Even now it’s painin’ me to recall it — the same way it pained me the day I told Diane Sawyer we was “dead broke.”

Diane done paid for it later.