Where would we stash all the booty?
Or has it all been sold off?
Fork It Over
By MAUREEN DOWD
CHAPPAQUA, N.Y. — It was much
more than a tempest over teapots, a
debate about demitasse spoons and sauce
boats.
The kerfuffle about Hillary Clinton's great
White House gift heist had a serious subtext.
We found ourselves grappling with the same nettlesome issue we have
been dealing with for the last decade, and we will have to deal with for
the indefinite future.
What is Hillary owed?
Reparations must be made, clearly, for what she has suffered in her
marriage and what she has sacrificed by going into public service. But
when will it be enough, for Pete's sake?
Hillary and Bill will be multimillionaires from their book deals. For two
speeches in Florida this week, Bill will earn about the same amount as the
$190,000 cost of the gifts that the Clintons took from the White House
— a cheesy grab that dearly cost them in prestige.
Bill could have given Hillary all the silver and china and chandeliers she
craved just by doing what comes naturally — talking — and it would
never have been an issue.
So why did the Clintons have to be stoned into admitting that greed is not
good?
Because Hillary wanted to make a point: The Clinton haters — the vast
right-wing conspiracy and the media mob — will not cow them into
giving up what is rightfully theirs.
And what is rightfully theirs is anything they choose to take.
In the end, she had to succumb and write checks for $86,000 worth of
tainted loot. But now we know the junior senator from New York has
terribly flawed judgment. And her sense of entitlement knows no bounds.
How do you even suggest that someone give you two coffee tables?
Hillary: Oh, Denise, I just love that coffee table of yours.
Denise: I'll get you one.
Hillary: Two.
I heard about the Hillary secret "shower" just before Christmas. The
story was that Rita Pynoos, the wife of a Beverly Hills businessman,
Morris Pynoos, was talking to other wealthy Clinton supporters about
contributing $5,000 each so Hillary could have all the things she never
had a chance to accrue during her years in public housing.
There were lists of Hillary's china and silver patterns, available at
Borsheim's in Omaha and other stores. Time was of the essence because
Hillary, who had been elected to the Senate, could take expensive gifts
only until she was sworn in and the Senate gift ban went into effect.
Reached on Dec. 23 at home, Mrs. Pynoos said she was "offended" to
be questioned.
After the Clintons publicly disclosed their gifts, and it became clear that
Hillary had been smothered in china and silver on her way out of the
White House, Mrs. Pynoos admitted: "I was going to give her a shower,
and I got sick and had to put it off." She said she hadn't bought the
Clintons the $4,967 worth of flatware until after Christmas Eve. Then she
said she had to get off the phone because she had just gotten out of the
shower — the wet kind.
On Friday night, the Clintons released a list of those they would
reimburse. Besides Rita Pynoos and Denise Rich and Walter Kaye, the
list included all those $5,000 china and flatware donors from L.A.
While Bill doesn't care about Spode and Fabergé, he did get greedy on
his Manhattan office space and had to retrench. Perhaps he saw a
chance to set up a pied-à- terre on the 56th floor of Carnegie Hall Tower
so he could escape from that white elephant house on that dead-end
street in Chappaqua that they had to get because Hillary was owed a
Senate seat to make up for taking a back seat as first lady.
As he hung out on a corner in Chappaqua on Thursday for an hour,
chatting up the locals on enterprise zones, unpacking as "transition
therapy" and W.'s debut, he seemed stranded in suburbia.
He didn't stop Hillary from pigging out because he couldn't. She gets to
decide how they live in this next chapter of their lives. Their neurotic
dance keeps repeating: He acts up. She sends him to his room. But no
sooner does she take charge than she messes up, and he has to clean up
the mess. But as soon as he fixes the politics, he messes up the personal
stuff, and the cycle starts all over again.
Not that I'm suspicious, but I can't help wondering: Will Steven
Spielberg, Walter Kaye, Mary Steenburgen and the others cash their
checks from the Clintons? |
