Go Away: Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, Nancy Pelosi
By
Leonard Zwelling
Lewis Black, my idea of a modern philosopher, recently suggested that when you lose, you go away for a while.
It seemed to work well for Al Gore. He went away after having lost his presidential bid and wound up winning an Oscar and a Nobel Prize. Now THAT’S a career move!
Hillary Clinton simply will not go away.
She has been on our case for over 25 years. We have heard all that she has to say and weighed all that she had to offer. It has been rejected. It is time to slip into obscurity for some time until the rest of the world either catches up to you (Gore) or passes you by (Bill Cosby). The ability to attract a publisher does not mean you have anything to write about worth reading. She blew it. That’s all. That’s What Happened. Go away.
Hillary’s husband has been around even longer and we are long over him. His legacy is getting a fresh look in the throes of the sexual harassment allegations of late. Many are wondering whether or not allowing him to remain president was a wise move and surely whether his post-presidency drive for wealth should have been as well subsidized as it was for someone who preyed on the young and then lied about it. Bill is a shadow of his former self now anyway. (Too much time on cardiac by-pass pump?) Time to move from shadow to wisp. Go away.
Finally, talk about someone we have been stuck with for too long. Nancy Pelosi really needs to retire. On Meet the Press Sunday, she as much as defended the behavior of John Conyers, an 88-year-old senior House leader who had reached an out of court settlement using tax payer money with a staffer who accused him of misbehavior, while Pelosi was slamming Roy Moore and Donald Trump.
http://www.cnn.com/2017/11/27/politics/nancy-pelosi-john-conyers/index.html
They all need to go away.
This is not to say that each has not made contributions. They have. That doesn’t mean you get to do so in perpetuity. Even at MD Anderson there is seven-year term tenure that must be earned on a regular basis. I lost mine and with good reason. Once I was no longer making administrative contributions and surely had passed any probability that I would do the same in the clinic or lab, it was time for me to go. I had exceeded my “Sell By” date. I actually left a year earlier than I had to and might have been able to stretch it further had I been willing to stop writing the blog as I was requested to do. Never was going to happen!
People have life cycles on Earth and in their professions. That does not mean that any one person cannot change his or her direction. It does suggest that staying in the same direction for a long period of time requires continued productivity and utility. We accept this in sports; less so in politics and the professions.
Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Clinton and Ms. Pelosi have overstayed their welcomes in the court of public opinion. They need to move on, but then again, so does Dr. DePinho although in his case, it is very unclear that he ever made a contribution to MD Anderson and in that, he is a rarity among the faculty.
There really is a circle of life. Try to beat it and you may find out it bites back.
