This is billed at the Hill as a “lifetime achievement award,” which seems even more absurd for a 37-year-old known best known for being a First Daughter, but it’s actually an award co-sponsored by the Lifetime Network (and Variety). Even so, kissing the Clintons’ ass in 2017 by giving Chelsea an undeserved award is like trying to curry favor with Moscow in 1918 by honoring the Romanovs. Sure, sure, unlike the Romanovs there’s still technically next-generation dynasty potential here. But let’s be real: Chelsea’s even less charismatic than her famously uncharismatic mother, and after last year’s debacle, it’ll be roughly a thousand years before the left is willing to gamble on another national run by a Clinton.
She’s got a shot at winning a Senate seat in New York someday by dint of name recognition and mom’s and dad’s popularity, but even then she’ll face fierce resistance from local Berniebros. If nothing else good comes from the Democratic Party lurching leftward, it should at least give them the revolutionary zeal required to topple their own monarchies.
Variety will hand out its lifetime achievement awards during its annual “Women in Power” luncheon at the ritzy Cipriani restaurant in midtown Manhattan on April 18.
Other winners this year include Gayle King of “CBS This Morning,” actresses Jessica Chastain, Blake Lively and Audra McDonald and media executive Shari Redstone.
According to Variety, Clinton is being honored “for her work with Alliance for a Healthier Generation, which empowers kids to develop lifelong healthy habits.”
You can sort of understand why they’d want Chelsea to round out that crowd. Without her, it’s just a smattering of actresses and media people; in the strange, tragic world we live in, adding a Clinton who was best known during her flirtation with journalism for interviewing the Geico gecko brings a note of gravitas to the proceedings. If you’re a mainstream Democrat who wants to signal that you believe The Right Things but you don’t have the cachet to book ex-President Bill or deposed Queen Hillary (c’mon, she’s not getting out of bed for a Lifetime event), you book Chelsea. She’s the Frank Sinatra Jr of the Democratic Party: A shadow of her father, but with just enough celebrity by association to provide a bit of a draw. If you doubt me, consider that the Hill is running an average of two stories per week on her since late January. Somebody out there is clicking those links. I’m sure she’ll deliver at the Lifetime event with only the choicest woke feminist banalities.
In lieu of an exit question, here’s a useful reminder that the entirety of Clinton’s adult life is a product of transparent patronage. The only difference now, with her mother having faded into ignominy, is that the patronage will increasingly be aimed at courting Chelsea herself in case the electorate develops an appetite for Clintons again someday rather than at her courting her parents.
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