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Susiebaby271 was one of my many online alter-egos which I no longer need. “She” created a lament on our times, and two pro-Obama vids “This Time Can Be Different” to try to express what many Obama supporters find inexpressable - just how historic Barack Obama’s candidacy is to our country. And soon after, “Get away from hope, you bitch”, something that was, shall we say, easier to express.

The message that inspired “This Time” prompted Hillary Clinton to take her first step of many down a low road that led deep into the gutter, where she now wallows with impunity. It began with Hillary’s pronouncement at a debate in New Hampshire that Barack’s message of “hope” risked raising “false hopes.” Barack’s response, in his election night speech in New Hampshire, a state he lost, is now the catch-word of this year’s race – “Yes We Can.” That speech provides the verbal audio for “This Time”.

Hillary’s first calculated attempt to dismiss the hope message started an avalanche of Hillary surrogates and their online robots being arrogantly dismissive of the message and those responding to it. They called Obama supporters “cultists”, “disciples”, “brainwashed.” They told us we were naïve, told us all how inexperience and youthful exuberance over our candidate was a kind of childish crush. There, there, they said…hope may be cute, but it doesn’t win an election. You’ll learn.

So in response, I created “This Time Can Be Different”. It uses iconic images from moments of America’s history, starting with the very flag that inspired Francis Scott Key’s “Star Spangled Banner”, which hangs today at the Smithsonian. The flag towers over visitors, a shrine so sacred to America that a Cleveland company was recently commissioned to build a $1.3 million platform out of stainless steel for it. I chose images recognizable to us all - of settlers heading westward in covered wagons, immigrants at Ellis Island, a trench in the Civil War, suffragettes on parade, union protestors, a soldier in the water on D-Day - a man on the moon - a slave - and his heirs at the Lincoln Memorial.

I chose these images for my video because, frankly, we Americans dream. We are the heirs of the dreams that came before us, and the stewards of the dreams that will come after.

All this dreaminess does have its detractors.

One of my long gone British politico friends, Phillip Whitehead, was a legend in film producing in the UK for his work on The World At War, the first major documentary on World War II. The film won an Emmy award, and is the template for every WWII documentary since. I met Phillip in 1997, when he was a member of the European Parliament for the East Midlands.

I talked to Phillip a lot about films and documentaries, because I had some film ideas myself, and wanted some help. He was grandfatherly, and given that he’d helped produce one of the most important documentary films of the 20th century, I paid attention.

No one has more right to be sentimental about their history than Brits do about their finest hour. It is a source of bottomless and justifiable British pride. During WWII, London endured a 9/11 every day, for years. But in spite of documenting his country’s finest hour in one of his country’s finest films, there wasn’t a drop of sentimentality in Phillip, his work, his film’s subject matter, or any of it – at least that he would let me see.

Philip thought there was an odd level of sentimentality in American portrayal of our own history. His filmmaker sensibility pinpointed it with British brutality - we always use sepia tones, slow motion, a lot of flags, music, and emotion. He hated Ken Burns – Phillip found it all a bit undignified. Being, you know, British.

So I tried to explain to him why our history made Americans so sentimental, so dreamy, so etc.…and that’s when Phillip asked me to get him another gin. We laughed, and I went to the bar in total humiliation, with a knowing smile. Americans may be sentimental, but Brits like to remind you that you are, in fact, in Britain.

If only Hillary had just told us to relax and get her another drink. I’d have happily obliged. But unlike Phillip, who noted his observation and moved on without being judgmental about it, Hillary and her supporters saw this utterly American need to believe, and condescended to it, called it names, mocking it. She found that it came naturally to her. And she was just getting started.

This change in tone from Hillary herself, which can be pinpointed to the minute, marked the point at which Hillary’s campaign went from real to fake, from high road to low road, aspirational to angry. The descent has been astounding, to where today, not one racial taboo is left alone, not one rule matters, not one voter matters, unless it helps her win. This progression downward today holds that Barack Obama must be knee-capped, that her surrogates must find their most receptive audience on of all places Fox News, that the least arguable and most absurd “arguments” for her nomination become her most repeated harangues.

She became not a potential president, but yes, a monster. The Undead.

And that’s when I created “Get Away From Hope, You Bitch”.

Many of the variously aggrieved older white women Hillary supporters complain, saying the use of the word “bitch” is just like using the n-word. Which of course is complete nonsense. No matter how frantic the cries for moral equivalency between the n-word and the b-word, such equivalence simply doesn’t exist in fact or otherwise.

Case in point - I took the inspiration for my “bitch” video from the 1986 movie Aliens, whose climactic scene is a woman, yes, a woman, protecting a little girl from the mother alien - very female scene. Sigourney Weaver shouts, “Get away from her, bitch.” It worked in the movie, and it works now, for reasons I’m quite certain the most aggrieved Hillary supporters both applauded while in the theater, but now claim to be repulsive to them.

The fact that Americans dream & hope & want our leaders to do so as well, is central to our being, to our country, to who we are, who we wish ourselves, and our country, to be. Sentimental it may be, but no less real. A man who attacks that central identifying soul, with the calculated abandon which Hillary today displays, can be described in many pitch-perfect ways, none of them safe for children. Asshole. Prick. Dick. Jackass. Mother fucker. Et. Cetera. Go ahead, get creative.

The reason Hillary supporters can’t use any of those words to describe Barack Obama is that they have no relation, either in fact or fantasy, to his actual behavior. Barack Obama, quite to the contrary, has been the epitome of grace and dignity under the kinds of attacks that would rattle anyone else.

Hillary’s behavior is the opposite. A woman, yes, a woman, who acts as Hillary does, can be described most accurately with a particular word, and I use it with total confidence, because Hillary herself, through her actions, has earned this distinction beyond any of my wildest imaginings. I never knew she had this in her, but she rather transparently does, and me pointing that out, as loudly as I can, is not only the truth, but the most accurate, and frankly, socially acceptable description thereof. Hillary supporters like to say “bitch is the new black”, so when I say the bitch is really just a bitch, please spare me the sanctimony.

The music in “This Time Can Be Different” is the score from the 2007 movie Sunshine. In it, a space mission travels to the sun with some of the last survivors on earth. Their mission - to re-ignite our dying star whose last embers are so feeble the earth itself is dying. It is a mission almost entirely based on little but hope.

Right now, Hillary is trying to sabotage that mission. If I were on that mission to the sun, “Get away, bitch,” would be the least of my declarations. I’d be using far stronger words, and far stronger ammunition than a YouTube, to make sure she didn’t succeed.

And so would you.

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