Hillary's Tale--a Semiotics QuestionI have an issue that starts with a political tale, so this post will begin in the politics section. (Actually I decided to add it under Jack Scribe's post, which he posted while I was creating mine, and the topic is close enough. The Frank Rich article can also be found at
The New York Times website.)
Through the winter, Sen. Hillary Clinton, running for the Democratic nomination for President, has been telling the tale of a visit to Tuzla, Bosnia, fret with difficult landings and reception under sniper fire. Her St. Patrick's Day telling of it went like this:
QUOTE
I certainly do remember that trip to Bosnia, and as Togo said, there was a saying around the White House that if a place was too small, too poor, or too dangerous, the president couldn't go, so send the First Lady. That’s where we went. I remember landing under sniper fire. There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base. But it was a moment of great pride for me to visit our troops, not only in our main base as Tuzla, but also at two outposts where they were serving in so many capacities to deactivate and remove landmines, to hunt and seek out those who had not complied with the Dayton Accords and put down their arms, and to build relationships with the people that might lead to a peace for them and their children.
Now, the story has been thoroughly discredited as a fabrication by several participants, including the pilot of plane that brought her there, entertainers who accompanied her, and journalists who covered the event. (Daughter Chelsea Clinton was also present on the trip, but kept her mouth shut this winter when asked about the tale's truthfulness.) Film footage from CBS of the visit showed the fallacy of the tale, and is viewable on YouTube. (Frank Rich's article above has clickable links.) Sen. Clinton has backed off at last (after 3 months), attributing it to a "mis-speaking." Because the story didn't happen in real life, it has raised questions of her tale-bearing and done political damage.
But what I want to discuss here among writers are issues with the veracity of the fiction. She spins the narrative from first-person, bragging about herself as some kind of war-hero (or at least diplomacy-hero) unafraid to face sniper fire if that's what it takes to get the job done. But looking at the complete tale, a reader notices dramatic ironies at odds with the narrator's intention. Hillary brought along her then-teenaged daughter, Chelsea. What kind of mother willfully brings her child into such a perilous situation? Why are entertainers like Sinbad and Sheryl Crow being brought along if the situation on the ground is so unsettled? A true tale of a perilous visit to Bosnia, complete with sniper fire at the airport, was reported by Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME), but Sen. Snowe's visit was the previous year, before Bosnia had been pacified and made safe. Snowe's version involves neither entertainers nor children; recycling Snowe's tale with the addition of Chelsea and Sinbad refocuses the tale and ruins its point, even if Hillary the narrator doesn't put them center-stage.
How often have you written a story and presented it to others to look at, and your readers find some embarrassing subtext involving secondary characters which you hadn't noticed, and which completely ruins the point of your story? There's a fatal plot flaw that can't be corrected by minor re-writing, because the objections raised are fundamental defects in the narrative.
This has happened to me in the past, and I think it probably happened to Hillary Clinton. It's not just that her story isn't true (in the sense of being non-fiction), it's that elements of it aren't true-to-life.
--Rigel (who, for the record, loves Frank Rich)
