Now, only a couple of months down the road, it’s a little
hard to remember how, towards the end of last year, Hillary
and Bill Clinton were being described as having “passed some
point where they’re no longer just politicians. They’re rock
stars.” I confess to having been among those who indulged
myself in a certain amount of head-shaking and
tongue-clucking about this description of them at the time
(See “Clooney Tunes” in The New Criterion of December,
2007). Who was to know that it could all change so swiftly?
I seem to feel the chill wind of mortality brushing the back
of my neck as I reflect on the evanescence of something so
solid-seeming—aren’t both rocks and stars by-words for
permanence?—as “rock star” status. Or is it possible that,
having been a metaphorical rock star, you can suddenly
become something very much less exalted, and then hope to
resume rock-star status again?

If so, the Clintons are likely to be the first to show us
how it’s done, but at the time of writing there is no one in
the media—and, very few out of it, I imagine—who would
describe them as rock stars. Is this because Barack Obama
has quite clearly become (once again I stress that this is
at the time of writing) the Democratic rock star in the
presidential race, and there is only room for one rock star
at a time? Or is it all because of Bill Clinton’s
crypto-racist slur against Mr.