This summer Hulu announced that the streaming service will be producing a new drama called Rodham.
The show will imagine an alternate version of Hillary Rodham's life in which she never married Bill Clinton. It's interesting enough as a premise, and it will probably get a lot of buzz. My only problem is that I already watched it in March, back when it was called Tiger King.
I'm hardly the first person to draw this comparison. This spring the parallels between Tiger King and the 2016 election—with Joe Exotic standing in for Donald Trump and Carole Baskin representing Hillary Clinton—were a common topic of think pieces.
But while these analyses may get to the heart of some deep-seated misogyny that causes American audiences to prefer crass, violent men over competent, cagey women, the analogy is necessarily superficial. It doesn't sustain more than a cursory assessment, because Donald Trump and Joe Exotic are just too different.
For all his flaws—and they are many—Joe Exotic seems to have a genuine zeal for life. He is driven by passion and seems to have at least a basic concept of regret. Donald Trump, by contrast, hates everything but himself, believes he can do no wrong, and is driven purely by the desire to force the world to recognize the flawless being he sees in the mirror.
But once you let the weaker half of the analogy melt away, you are left with the undeniable truth of the Clinton-Baskin synthesis. The two are so fundamentally linked that now—nearly eight months since first being introduced to Carole Baskin, even after she joined the cast of Dancing With the Stars (with her ex-husband's family offering a reward for information against her during the commercial breaks) and was quickly eliminated—I can no longer separate the two. They are permanently fused in my mind as a single entity.
I can already hear the objections: "That's not a fair comparison! Your sources aren't objective! She's been the target of character assassination by crazy, right-wing conspiracy theorists for years!" To that I say: I absolutely agree. I'm just not sure which one you're talking about.
Did Carole Baskin murder former husband Don Lewis? Did Hillary Clinton have deputy White House Counsel Vince Foster assassinated? Depending who you ask, one may be more likely than the other, but we really don't have strong evidence in either case—just vaguely suspicious circumstances and a lot of speculation. But that won't stop people from saying in each case, "She definitely did it!"
Both women married men who helped propel them into a male-dominated field, where they have sometimes been compelled to fight dirty. That willingness, coupled with a sense of hypocrisy in their publicly cheerful, benevolent personas, have led to both women being labeled "just as bad" as their opponents and detractors—an obvious falsehood.
Their facial expressions are endlessly scrutinized for evidence of deceit–in ways that men are never questioned. Both women know how to make Washington politics work for them. And both women, whatever they had to do to get where they are, have generally aimed to use their positions for good ends—though they don't always seem concerned about collateral damage.
Both women have dealt with infidelity, and have been accused of having domineering relationships with their husbands. Both have been encouraged to publicly show off their dance moves. Kate McKinnon is the actress of choice to portray either one. And both have dramatically revised their inhumane stances on "super predators"...
While their styles are dramatically different, you don't have to look back far to see where Hillary could have gone full-on flowerchild, or Carole could have adopted a buttoned-up professionalism.
Also, they kind of look similar.
In other words, there is no Hillary Clinton, and there is no Carole Baskin. Not in my mind. There is only Carilly Clintskin, and you can see her each week on DWTS, or look out for Hulu's forthcoming Drama Jonedham, which imagines a world in which Carrilly never married Dill Lewnton.