We subscribe to the Hulu streaming service, which I turn on each morning when I come downstairs for breakfast. Imagine my eye-rolling when I turned on the TV and this image popped up on the screen.

Personal image by author.

Yes, Hulu just dropped its much-hyped worship and praise service dedicated to Hillary Clinton. The “Golden Girl,” as they call her in Episode 1.

So what was the media talking about on the morning of its release? Hillary’s umpteenth iteration of why she lost to Donald Trump? Perhaps another excuse she cooked up in her febrile brain while walking through the woods near Chappaqua?

Apparently, the series doesn’t tell us much. Or, as Time flat-out declared: If Only Its Subject Would Tell Us Something New.

However, the media were very interested in the segment which talks about Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky. He kinda, sorta comes clean, but does he publicly apologize to the foolish and naive intern whose life he ruined?

Nope. Oh, he says he feels “terrible” and admits that the liaison “unfairly” defined Monica’s life. But never once does he directly and pointedly tell her he’s sorry.

“Over the years I have watched her trying to get a normal life back again. But you got to decide how to define normal.”

That sounds familiar — rather like his slick lawyerly testimony in front of a grand jury:  That depends on what the meaning of “is,” is. 

But Clinton explains on the Hulu doc that because of the pressures of the presidency, he used his tryst with Monica to “manage my anxieties.”

“You feel like you’re staggering around — you’ve been in a 15-round prizefight that was extended to 30 rounds, and here’s something that’ll take your mind off it for a while. Everybody’s life has pressures and disappointments and terrors, fears of whatever, things I did to manage my anxieties for years.”

Those comments elicited derision at Twitter:

“I just read about how Bill Clinton used his affair to “manage his anxieties” and as a professional anxiousologist I have to say my dude, have you never heard of L-Theanine, meditation, or picking all the skin off of your thumb?”

— Kat Kinsman (@kittenwithawhip) March 5, 2020

Which leads one to wonder: did Hulu discuss Lewinsky’s own comments about the affair, as she did in a 2018 Vanity Fair article? Where she told readers that she has been diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder as a result of the publicity? And that she lived in the “House of Gaslight” for years?

Hulu apparently didn’t bother to talk to Lewinsky, neither about her experiences nor her past comments.

But they focus on how Hillary was so brave for sticking with Bill, rather than sticking it to him via a divorce. And Bill is so thankful:

“I was so grateful that she thought we still had enough to stick it out. God knows the burden she paid for that.”

Well, of course she did. How else would the World’s Most Insufferable Woman (Elizabeth Warren is a close runner-up) been able to be the first woman to run for President had she not held onto Bill’s coattails? Many more normal women would have divorced their husbands after such a public humiliation — Georgina Weinstein, Harvey Weinstein’s estranged wife, says she is “shocked and humiliated.” Plus, he still “disgusts” her.

But as Bill Clinton said, You got to decide how to define normal. And apparently in Clinton World, normal is anything that gets them power and attention.

Will I watch the Hulu documentary? Should I take one for my blogging team? I don’t know. How much Cabernet do we have at home so I can manage my anxieties?

Featured image: Joel Barbee/flickr/cropped/CC BY-ND 2.0.