Stop Her Now: An Exploration

In Matt Taibbi’s latest article in Rolling Stone, “Giuliani: Worse Than Bush,” he mentions an anti-Hilary group called Stop Her Now.

“Chris Henick, formerly Karl Rove’s most trusted deputy, is now a key aide at Giuliani Partners, the security firm set up by the mayor to cash in on his 9/11 image. One of his top donors, Richard Collins, is a longtime Bush supporter who was instrumental in setting up “Stop Her Now,” a 527 group modeled on Swift Boat Veterans for Truth that will be used to attack Hillary Clinton. And the money for the smear campaign comes from the same Texas sources behind the Swift Boaters, including oilman T. Boone Pickens and Houston home builder Bob Perry.’”

The Swift Boat ads were monstrously effective in distracting voters and John Kerry. They were also pretty dastardly, so I was expecting something equally insidious and effective out of Stop Her Now. I’m sad to say that there really isn’t much to it at this point. But there are some hilarious attempts at hilarity… or Hilary-ity as I call it. Now, I know what you’re thinking: Laugh out loud! And true, that type of humor is all good fun, but keep in mind that it also establishes me as a humor expert.

Anyway, let’s begin with the mission statement of Stop Her Now, since there are only about three sections of the website to begin with. In their mission statement they attempt some sarcasm:

“We’re out to expose her as a confirmed left-wing radical and life-long liberal who long ago sold her soul to the divisive, radical and ultra-liberal special interest groups who see everyone as “victims” and want to use your tax dollars and the power of the state to make things right.”

Unfortunately, I didn’t really get their tone on the first read through and assumed “the power of the state to make things right” was a Non-Sarcastic Statement or NSS as we call them in the (thriving) business of comedy analysis. Usually to distinguish NSSs from sarcastic statements (never to be referred to as SSs) there should be some indicator of tomfoolery. In speech this would be a droll voice and some comedically pursed lips. In writing it’s usually quotation marks or the insanely geeky html sarcasm tags. Because I did not share in the viewpoints and in-jokes of right-wing society, I felt left out of the circle. The beauty of the swift-boat ads is that anyone could appreciate them, but I’m afraid the common upper-middle class college-aged white male will be left behind by the complex humor of Stop Her Now.

Another showcase of wonder is something called “The Hilary Show”– a trendy Jib-Jab meets the Larry Sanders show (minus the animation skills and good writing). To my amazement it’s not nearly as bad as it could be, though it suffers from several flaws. Strangely, the character of Hilary is unsympathetic to her liberal cohorts and kills them all with a giant hammer, as she offers an anti-liberal approach to their concerns. Why is Hilary so unsympathetic? Does she share the same right-leaning viewpoints of the creators of Stop Her Now? Not quite that simple. Instead Hilary is a tragic hero with the flaw of conceit– she is only interested in self-promotion. She scoffs at the killing of Al Gore’s endangered central park spotted owl. She rolls her eyes and refers to her colleagues as “typical left-wing liberals.” This makes her enticingly complex, as is her audience which seems to laugh and clap at random intervals.

While an interesting approach is taken for Hilary, the rest of the characters are just two-dimensional editorial page dropouts and the series really falls flat after the first episode you see. Howard Dean yells, Barbara Streisand has a big nose, Bill Clinton is horny, etc. The humor is catch phrase based and physical. There’s hardly anything revolutionary here, no whiffs of swift boat glory except the damming implication that Hilary Clinton eats other people’s owls. If The Hilary Show wants to get attention it needs to focus less on easy laughs and more on character development. Maybe move it from a three camera to a mockumentary format and get rid of the laugh track.

The blog section of the site was similarly disappointing, though you can’t fault them for thoroughness. Nearly every article on Google News with some negative mention of Hilary Clinton is linked, and every positive article is critiqued. It’s mind-numbing to consider the dedication of the writers and readers of the blog have to hating Hilary Clinton. I am no fan of Dick Cheney, but I could hardly see myself updating a blog that focuses solely on him or reading one for that matter. But we all have our passions.

The blog uses “LOL” awkwardly, but is clearly written by someone with experience in blogs, probably a 30-something balding republican that you could be casual friends with but would avoid any prolonged conversations with lest he mention his extreme dislike of Hilary Clinton and list her most recent google news updates on his blackberry.

For me, the title is the only innovative part of Stop Her Now– the very mention of “Her” draws an image of that machiavellian sharp-toothed villain from The Hilary Show, and also slyly underscores an anti-feminist message, plus you’ve got to love those Orwellian black red and white images. Yet, as a result of the lackluster content and poorly constructed humor, Matt Taibbi has overestimated: I see no swift boat level attacks on the horizon from this group.