DEFINING OUR CULTURE – AT 9:08 A.M. ET:  Much talk this past week about America's culture, with the liberal left celebrating the "rapid" changes.  The Washington Post breathlessly asked whether the Republican Party can keep up with the changes.  Nothing like a little bias to start us off.

But, in fairness to the Post, it is also chronicling another aspect of our culture, a shameful one, and that is the mass marketing of the Clintons.  They are in the influence business, and selling their influence by selling themselves is part of the racket.  The thought that this family should return to the White House should sicken anyone with a moral compass.  From WaPo: 

When the University of Missouri at Kansas City was looking for a celebrity speaker to headline its gala luncheon marking the opening of a women’s hall of fame, one name came to mind: Hillary Rodham Clinton.

But when the former secretary of state’s representatives quoted a fee of $275,000, officials at the public university balked. “Yikes!” one e-mailed another.

So the school turned to the next best option: her daughter, Chelsea.

The university paid $65,000 for Chelsea Clinton’s brief appearance Feb. 24, 2014, a demonstration of the celebrity appeal and marketability that the former and possibly second-time first daughter employs on behalf of her mother’s presidential campaign and family’s global charitable empire.

More than 500 pages of e-mails, contracts and other internal documents obtained by The Washington Post from the university under Missouri public record laws detail the school’s long courtship of the Clintons.

Chelsea Clinton, second from left, appears with her parents and husband, Marc Mezvinsky, at mother Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign kick-off rally June 13 in New York City. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post)

They also show the meticulous efforts by Chelsea Clinton’s image-makers to exert tight control over the visit, ranging from close editing of marketing materials and the introductory remarks of a high school student to limits on the amount of time she spent on campus.

The schedule she negotiated called for her to speak for 10 minutes, participate in a 20-minute, moderated question-and-answer session and spend a half-hour posing for pictures with VIPs offstage.

As with Hillary Clinton’s paid speeches at universities, Chelsea Clinton made no personal income from the appearance, her spokesman said, and directed her fee to the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation.

COMMENT:  Oh yes, the Foundation.  That's the place that gets funding from a lot of strange foreign sources, all of whom are sincerely interested in improving the world (choke). 

It's sickening.  It really is.  And the soldiers of the left, who tolerate this kind of thing among their own, are the first to decry the influence of "big money" in American politics.

June 30,  2015