Patterico's Pontifications

5/2/2019

Bill and Hill Prepare to Do L.A.

Filed under: General — JVW @ 7:02 am



[guest post by JVW]

Friends, we’re just two days away from the top Los Angeles intellectual/cultural/social event of the spring, nay, entire year. I refer of course to “An Evening with the Clintons,” the resumption of their multi-city speaking tour where they promise — just a second while I check the website — ah, yes, “a one-of-a-kind conversation with two individuals who have helped shape our world and had a front seat to some of the most important moments in modern history.” The Los Angeles leg of their multi-city tour takes place on Saturday night at the Forum, where the Lakers won a bunch of NBA titles a generation ago before they built a more modern and luxurious arena downtown. (You think that might be a metaphor for something, perhaps a certain spent political dynasty?)

The show apparently consists of our ex-President and ex-First Lady/Senator/Secretary of State/Inevitable Next President of the United States reminiscing on their long careers in (*cough, cough, cough*) “public service.” The format doesn’t appear to allow you, the piddling little taxpayer, to directly address Their Clintonic Majesties, so a moderator is brought in order to provide the questions and to keep the conversation moving. And what moderators this tour is using! A veritable galaxy of luminaries and public intellectuals like. . . like. . . like Paul Begala (New York)! And Ben Stiller (Detroit)! And Star Jones (Wallingford, CT — hey, you know you’re big time when you’re playing Wallingford)! And, uh, somebody named Tony Goldwyn (Boston), who must be a huge deal if he was given such a plumb gig as this! Here is an exciting tidbit to keep you on the edge of your seat: the Los Angeles moderator has not yet been announced! What major public intellect might be enticed to tease out the Deep Thoughts of Bill and Hillary? Antonio Villaraigosa? Sarah Silverman? Maybe — dare we hope! — Alyssa Milano? In any case, I’m sure the event organizers will have no trouble finding some out-of-work celebrity to come and keep the conversation moving along through the consistent application of predetermined softball questions handily printed on some 4 x 6 cards clutched tightly in the moderator’s hands.

So by now you’re probably pretty bummed that you missed out on your opportunity to attend this once-in-a-lifetime event. Oh sure, you’re probably thinking, I know I’ve read that ticket sales have been lackluster at other venues, but this is Los Angeles — Hollywood! — where Bill is fondly remembered as a Harvey Weinstein who quit while he was ahead and where Hillary won 72% of the vote just 30 months ago. Obviously this event has long been sold out and anyone who wants to catch the Dissembling Duo in action is going to have shell out the big bucks in the resale market, right? Well, maybe not so. As of 8:00 pm Wednesday night, here is a seat map of all of the available seats, with those still available via the box-office shown in blue and those available via the resale market shown in red:

Forum Seat Map for Clintons

Note that a whole lot of tickets are being sold via Ticketmaster on a promotion referred to as “National Concert Week” for the modest rate of $15 each, or in leftist terms, one hour’s mandated wage for a entry-level job. Note too that the upper-most decks of the Forum appear to only have the first two rows available for seating, and no seats behind the stage are apparently being utilized for the event. I’m not taking the time to hand-count what’s left, but it would appear that there are at least 1,500 and perhaps upwards of 2,000 seats on sale, in a venue that is probably configured to hold no more than 10,000 for the event. If you go to the interactive map on Ticketmaster, you can take a moment to feel sorry for suckers trying to sell their seats for $100, having probably paid close to that when the event first went on sale, while tickets right next to them are being discounted by the promoters down to $15.

The Clintons do very well for themselves, but almost everyone who goes into business with them ends up broke or incarcerated. Too bad Live Nation took the bait. All that’s left now to see what sort of hagiographic nonsense review appears in Sunday’s Dog Trainer under the byline of Robin Abcarain or Michael Hitzlik.

– JVW

30 Responses to “Bill and Hill Prepare to Do L.A.”

  1. Those two were thisclose to returning to the White House. Wow.

    JVW (54fd0b)

  2. “The Clintons do very well for themselves, but almost everyone who goes into business with them ends up broke or incarcerated.” (you forgot “dead”)

    rcw3000 (dbe57f)

  3. My best guess is those events are just a way to launder money.

    Frosty, Fp (7540e9)

  4. Why are the Clinton’s doing this, when Wall Street firms and Overseas Corporations will give them $100-250K a speech. Oh wait, that was when she Sec of State and was a lock on being the POTUS. Never mind.

    rcocean (1a839e)

  5. Its incredible to think these two grifters left the White House In Jan 2001 – 18 YEARS Ago. And they’re still in the public eye, appearing on TV, and acting like someone cares. Amazing.

    rcocean (1a839e)

  6. “Tony Goldwyn (Boston)”

    A quick Googling…he played the weaselly bad guy/supposed friend of the dead guy in ‘Ghost’. He also played a morally compromised President on a show named ‘Scandal’. I mean, they may skip over that acting credit when he is introduced at the event. It probably won’t show up in the Playbill.

    Apparently he had a #metoo moment, and must have some ties to Boston, because this isn’t his first political discussion gig.

    Xmas (eafb47)

  7. There is just something so sad and pathetic about their sideshow tour as it exposes a continuing desperation to remain relevant. They are the modern Nora Desmonds, ready for their close-ups, and befuddled and angered if the cameras aren’t ready for their forced smiles masking the underlying their bitterness at being unable to regain what was owed them.

    However, this might have been worth the NY admission price:

    Coverage of this snoozefest was typically respectful and anodyne, yet the most exciting moment of the night made little if any news. Not quite halfway through the event, a man in the front row stood up and interrupted.

    “Bill, this is boring!” he yelled. As he tried asking his question — “Why don’t you talk about — ” Hillary immediately began talking over him, saying that the “important political conversations” they were trying to have could be difficult, especially when interrupted by such “agent provocateurs.”

    “Jeffrey Epstein!” shouted the man.

    Dana (779465)

  8. I just am curious who had the bright idea of using a 10k seat venue that will look completely empty. Versus a 2k venue that will prove handy when they need to talk about a SRO house. (The Boston Opera House, the site of their Boston gig, seats 2600 people.)

    Kishnevi (8c41bd)

  9. This is great for Hillary, she won’t need to find a bathroom as she can squat on a street with the other rabble.

    Kate (689c33)

  10. I just am curious who had the bright idea of using a 10k seat venue that will look completely empty.

    Which is more important to them, looking good or collecting a lot of money “for their Foundation”?

    Kevin M (21ca15)

  11. The Clintons do very well for themselves, but almost everyone who goes into business with them ends up broke or incarcerated.

    You can say something similar about the current White House occupant.

    Which is a sad commentary our current political system and the kinds of candidates that rise to the top.

    Bored Lawyer (998177)

  12. I suspect that this has more to do with remaining relevant. So long as they continue to raise money for the Foundation, they can continue to have their expenses “reimbursed” tax-free AND draw a salary without running afoul of the tax man.

    It would be so karmic if they got audited.

    Kevin M (21ca15)

  13. @6. He also played Neil Armstrong in Tom Hank’s ‘From The Earth To The Moon’ – so what’s your point; if you’re gonna go down the road merging character and professions, start with lying lawyers and begin with Baghdad Barr. There’s zero doubt the Clintons don’t know when to leave the stage, but suspect the one to blame for stoking the flame for attention in 2019 is less the former president who won twice but the former presidential candidate who lost out twice: his tiresome wife. Thumb through a vintage copy of Life, June 20, 1969 — fifty frigging years ago— and along with timely stories about Joe Namath, Apollo 10 and groovy Haight-Ashbury, you’ll find among the essays quilled by ‘top’ protesting students of ‘The Class of ’69’ an opinion piece w/photo from some young, cranky feminist at Wellesley College, named Hillary Rodham:

    “There’s a very strange conservative strain that goes through a lot of the New Left, collegiate protests that I find very intriguing because it harks back to a lot of the old virtues, to the fulfillment of original ideas.” – Hillary Rodham, Life, 6-10-1969

    WTF: pass the bong.

    Today, Broadway Joe is retired and two of the three then young men who flew Apollo 10 around the moon are now dead. Half-a-century of b-tching by this old witch is enough. Go away Hillary. Just go away.

    DCSCA (797bc0)

  14. You get the Clintons, we get The Notorious RBG In Song.

    nk (dbc370)

  15. Tony Goldwyn should be in the “A–h-le” White Character Actor Hall of Fame with Gary Cole, William Fichter and Jeffery Jones (with Riann Wilson in contention if he can get a 2nd memorable role besides Dwight Shrute).

    urbanleftbehind (5eecdb)

  16. I suspect that this has more to do with remaining relevant. So long as they continue to raise money for the Foundation, they can continue to have their expenses “reimbursed” tax-free AND draw a salary without running afoul of the tax man.

    According to a statement on the Foundation website, none of the Clintons have ever drawn a salary from the Foundation.

    As a public charity, the records are open to inspection, and the claim is backed up by these tax documents.

    Dave (1bb933)

  17. Slush money is down lately and silicon valley is funneling money to biden to down play china’s economic threat. Maybe the fbi can send ms tuck to volunteer for biden campaign.

    lany (c10ae2)

  18. My bad the f.b.i. agent sent to spy on trump campaign called herself azra turk.

    lany (c10ae2)

  19. I heard on the radi that Hillary Clinton was on Rachel maddow on MSNBC, and took a softbball question and the answer was played – and she’s now toying with trying to hint (by careful choice of words) that maybe some votes were stolen from her in Florida in 2016.

    And also said:

    ‘China, if you’re listening, why don’t you get Trump’s tax returns?’

    Didn’t I bring up this idea first on Patterico several threads ago? And somebody argued with me that that was different. Except I didn’t mention China specifically.

    Maybe it wasn’t so close:

    https://patterico.com/2019/04/22/is-revealing-truth-important-no-matter-where-the-truth-comes-from

    Comment 243:

    Trumpists: it’s fine that the Russians hacked Democrats’ emails because it revealed truth. Revealing truth is always good no matter how the truth gets out.

    The true opposite is:

    Anti-Trumpists: It’s good somebody leaked information from Trump’s tax returns in 2016 and that members of Congress want to twist a 1924 law, or create problems for Trump’s re-election if his tax returns remain confidential. Revealing truth is always good no matter how the truth gets out.

    Maybe it depends on what the truth is, and how important the truth is.

    Sammy Finkelman (30b6b6) — 4/23/2019 @ 12:43 pm

    I didn mention Chinese intelligence @261, in connection with the woman who came in with malware to Mar-a-lago . And maybe the claim that Trump’s tax returns are different, (because they are supposed to be public I think was the reason) was on another thread.

    It is reasonable to suspect anyway that the Clinton campaign was, in some way, behind the leak to the New York Times of parts of Trump’s state tax returns.

    Sammy Finkelman (102c75)

  20. https://www.politico.com/story/2019/05/01/hillary-clinton-china-tax-returns-1296868

    “Imagine, Rachel, that you had one of the Democratic nominees for 2020 on your show, and that person said, you know, the only other adversary of ours who is anywhere near as good as the Russians is China,” Clinton told Maddow. “So why should Russia have all the fun? And since Russia is clearly backing Republicans, why don’t we ask China to back us?”

    They did, in 1996. But Janet Reno would not appoint a special prosecutor to look into campaign contributions.

    Sammy Finkelman (102c75)

  21. 11. Bored Lawyer (998177) — 5/2/2019 @ 10:19 am

    a sad commentary our current political system and the kinds of candidates that rise to the top.

    Thisiis the result of complex ethics rules and campaign finance reform.

    The New York Times had a front page story about Biden’s son Hunter.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/01/us/politics/biden-son-ukraine.html

    It looks to me like Hunter would not be implicated, bt the company, Burisma Holdings hired him (and maybe other Democrats) as protection. He did nothing. he got paid as high as $50,000 per month
    for being on the Baord of Directors and adbisingh them about good corprorate governance.

    Hunter Biden was not a target. And Joe Biden probably knew nothing. It is not like Manafort who evaded U.S. taxes. But never was charged for any work he did in Ukraine.

    The company was perhaps thought of a as corrupt. So was the prosecutor.

    Giuliani started spreading the story because he thought or was told it was a counter to Russian influence.

    Mr. Giuliani’s involvement raises questions about whether Mr. Trump is endorsing an effort to push a foreign government to proceed with a case that could hurt a political opponent at home.

    Mr. Giuliani has discussed the Burisma investigation, and its intersection with the Bidens, with the ousted Ukrainian prosecutor general and the current prosecutor. He met with the current prosecutor multiple times in New York this year. The current prosecutor general later told associates that, during one of the meetings, Mr. Giuliani called Mr. Trump excitedly to brief him on his findings, according to people familiar with the conversations.

    Mr. Giuliani declined to comment on any such phone call with Mr. Trump, but acknowledged that he has discussed the matter with the president on multiple occasions. Mr. Trump, in turn, recently suggested he would like Attorney General William P. Barr to look into the material gathered by the Ukrainian prosecutors — echoing repeated calls from Mr. Giuliani for the Justice Department to investigate the Bidens’ Ukrainian work and other connections between Ukraine and the United States.

    Mr. Giuliani said he got involved because he was seeking to counter the Mueller investigation with evidence that Democrats conspired with sympathetic Ukrainians to help initiate what became the special counsel’s inquiry.

    You knw. that sounds like a big red herring, possibly spread by some Democrats.

    Sammy Finkelman (102c75)

  22. Re: Venezuela: Have they learned nothing from the Bay of Pigs? That didn’t fail because Fidel Castro was popular but because of lack of any U.S. military support whatsoever.

    This one at least has most military forces neutral. The CIA is claiming Cubans aren’t running things. I suppose like it really was a independent group in Benghazi.

    I think the discussions with high level people in Maduro’s government are real, but they are taking advice entirely from China, which has a fallback plan, to get their money etc. unlike Russia, whcih doesn’t. They were only going to switch sides if Maduro’s cause was absolutely lost but try to make it look like they decided it.

    A plane probably was on the tarmac ready to take Maduro to Cuba but that doesn’t mean he was that close to evacuating.

    Sammy Finkelman (102c75)

  23. @20 We already had an independent counsel in 1996.

    Why are we talking about the Clintons at all? It only extends their relevance.

    Nic (896fdf)

  24. @19 It’s interesting that she picks China for the joke.

    Frosty, Fp (7540e9)

  25. HRC wants some of that coming her way next time: http://heavy.com/news/2019/05/yusi-molly-zhao-yusi-zhao/
    But will the subject student end up getting pimped out and passed around like Zhang Ziyi?

    urbanleftbehind (3fa806)

  26. OT — BOOM!

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scz-fFZT-dI

    SpaceX finally admits “anomaly” destroys their Dragon crew spacecraft last month in a static ground test engine firing at the Cape– after ‘leaked video’ confirms explosion. ‘Anomaly’ is the understatement of the year; had this explosion occurred in flight, the crew would have been killed. It’s a setback for crewed Dragon flights by SpaceX, contracted by NASA, planned for later this year to be sure. Unfortunately, it’s this kind of corporate reticence – being less-than-forthcoming when a problem occurs – that becomes a strike against increased privatization of government run HSF operations. Boeing’s issues w/problems around the 737Max reinforces this kind of misguided mindset managing problems as well.

    Destruction of spacecraft in testing is nothing new- several early Mercury spacecraft suffered similar fates; that’s why they test. But the failures weren’t cloaked w/corporate secrecy. Had this been a full-fledged NASA run ground test- [as w/Apollo 1, for instance] the public would have known almost immediately of the failure rather than being forced to try to figure out what that plume of smoke was rising from the test stand. They’ll fix it and eventually fly, but the public best keep a wary eye on privatized projects and programs of scale.

    DCSCA (797bc0)

  27. I keep telling you but you don’t believe me: Ellon Musk is a con man; his glorified golf carts are nothing that was not already obsoleted by the time of the 1932 Ford coupe; and his space program is best compared to remaking Daniel Boone’s flintlock rifle with ABS and titanium furniture in place of wood and brass.

    nk (dbc370)

  28. Nic @23

    We already had an independent counsel in 1996

    Each one was assigned a spcific case. Janes Reno allowed Keeth Starr to expand into the Monica Lewinsky case because federal judges were going to do that anyway.

    She had refused to appoint one to look into the 1996 campaign.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_United_States_campaign_finance_controversy

    The 1996 United States campaign finance controversy was an alleged effort by the People’s Republic of China to influence domestic American politics prior to and during the Clinton administration and also involved the fund-raising practices of the administration itself.

    While questions regarding the U.S. Democratic Party’s fund-raising activities first arose over a Los Angeles Times article published on September 21, 1996,[1] China’s alleged role in the affair first gained public attention when Bob Woodward and Brian Duffy of The Washington Post published a story stating that a United States Department of Justice investigation into the fund-raising activities had uncovered evidence that agents of China sought to direct contributions from foreign sources to the Democratic National Committee (DNC) before the 1996 presidential campaign…

    ….President Clinton’s FBI Director Louis Freeh wrote in a 22-page memorandum to then Attorney General Janet Reno in November 1997 that “It is difficult to imagine a more compelling situation for appointing an independent counsel.”[46]

    ….Janet Reno declined all requests:

    I try to do one thing: what’s right. I am trying to follow the independent counsel statute as it has been framed by Congress. If you had a lower threshold, then any time somebody said ‘boo’ about a covered person, you’d trigger the independent counsel statute

    —Janet Reno, December 4, 1997.[51]

    A CNN/Time poll taken in May 1998 found 58 percent of Americans felt an independent counsel should have been appointed to investigate the controversy. Thirty-three percent were opposed. The same poll found that 47 percent of Americans believed a quid pro quo existed between the Clinton administration and the PRC government.[52]

    She also prevented the independent counsel investigating Mike Espy and Tyson Foods from following up leads involving Bill Clinton.

    Obstruction of justice by a president never succeeds. Because, when it succeeds, none call it obstruction of justice.

    The Clintons know how to do this – most of the time.

    Sammy Finkelman (30b6b6)

  29. @27. Well, he always chases government funding as seed money to be sure. The vehicle that exploded was the same spacecraft flown on the cargo run earlier this year. Space folk chatter suggests salt water got inside the systems compartment after splash and corroded a fuel tank or lines to same but no ‘official’ cause yet. The vehicle was supposed to be reused on the in-flight abort test later this year but obviously, those plans have gone up in smoke. But it’s the corporate reticence which remains a bit of a red flag for me w/these sort of ‘privatized’ projects of scale.

    DCSCA (797bc0)

  30. @28 We also had a Republican congress who could (and did) investigate.

    Frankly given the amount of time the Clintons have been under investigation and the results of such investigations, my conclusion is that Republicans have an unhealthy obsession with the Clintons and I can’t say that at this point I believe any conspiracy theory about them because the number of times that Wolf! has been yelled only to end up discovering that there were no wolves, maybe a chihuahua somewhere in the next county, has left me supremely unconvinced that the Clintons are anything other than roughly average in their political lack of ethics.

    Nic (896fdf)


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