Hillary Clinton’s memories of a visit to Bosnia (after the war there was over) included having to keep her head down and running to her car because there was sniper fire.
Unfortunately (for her), CBS News documented her arrival at the airport and, as this clip shows, there was no danger at all. As the commentator here remarks: How valuable is Clinton’s “experience” in foreign affairs, if her memories are – at least partly – fictional?
Today’s New York Times has an op-ed article on this:
Frank Rich, “Hillary’s St Patrick’s Day Massacre”
You have to admit that Hillary was a fighter and would stop at nothing to get nominated. In the end it all came to zero. I would just like to add a little extract of Shakespeare:
SCENE V. Dunsinane. Within the castle.
Enter MACBETH, SEYTON, and Soldiers, with drum and colours
MACBETH
Hang out our banners on the outward walls;
The cry is still ‘They come:’ our castle’s strength
Will laugh a siege to scorn: here let them lie
Till famine and the ague eat them up:
Were they not forced with those that should be ours,
We might have met them dareful, beard to beard,
And beat them backward home.
A cry of women within
What is that noise?
SEYTON
It is the cry of women, my good lord.
Exit
MACBETH
I have almost forgot the taste of fears;
The time has been, my senses would have cool’d
To hear a night-shriek; and my fell of hair
Would at a dismal treatise rouse and stir
As life were in’t: I have supp’d full with horrors;
Direness, familiar to my slaughterous thoughts
Cannot once start me.
Re-enter SEYTON
Wherefore was that cry?
SEYTON
The queen, my lord, is dead.
MACBETH
She should have died hereafter;
There would have been a time for such a word.
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
Enter a Messenger
Thou comest to use thy tongue; thy story quickly.
Messenger
Gracious my lord,
I should report that which I say I saw,
But know not how to do it.
MACBETH
Well, say, sir.
Messenger
As I did stand my watch upon the hill,
I look’d toward Birnam, and anon, methought,
The wood began to move.
MACBETH
Liar and slave!
Messenger
Let me endure your wrath, if’t be not so:
Within this three mile may you see it coming;
I say, a moving grove.
MACBETH
If thou speak’st false,
Upon the next tree shalt thou hang alive,
Till famine cling thee: if thy speech be sooth,
I care not if thou dost for me as much.
I pull in resolution, and begin
To doubt the equivocation of the fiend
That lies like truth: ‘Fear not, till Birnam wood
Do come to Dunsinane:’ and now a wood
Comes toward Dunsinane. Arm, arm, and out!
If this which he avouches does appear,
There is nor flying hence nor tarrying here.
I gin to be aweary of the sun,
And wish the estate o’ the world were now undone.
Ring the alarum-bell! Blow, wind! come, wrack!
At least we’ll die with harness on our back.
Exeunt
Well, William – if any Shakespeare, I would have expected Henry V ;-)
Is there a particular reason why you chose that Scottish play – apart from the reference to battle (an allusion to Ms Clinton’s fierce determination?).
What you quoted is a passage I happen to like very much, by the way. It’s the first *really* strong indication (for Macbeth himself – the audience knows more, of course) that Macbeth’s sense of invincibility is unfounded and that his power is crumbling fast.
Tolkien, however, found Shakespeare’s use of a marching wood very weak, since it’s only soldiers carrying branches or little trees in front of them. According to Humphrey Carpenter’s biography, Tolkien decided at a rather early age that one day he wanted to have a *real* wood marching – and he created the Ents in The Lord of the Rings.
Well I suppose ‘Once more unto the breach dear friends……………’ has been used far too often – if indeed that was the passage you were thinking of. Great as that speech is I am taken with the fact that Macbeth’s plans are falling apart and just love the passage anyway. Hillary’s voice & sentiments often reminds me of sound and fury signifying nothing, but isn’t that the case with many politicians anyway?
What wonderful creatures Ents are by the way.
I did not know that Tolkien was thus inspired – or even uninspired! Did you know that Birnam Wood was a favourite holiday destination of Beatrix Potter? Thus Peter Rabbit was created!