Henrietta Hay's Column

A fable for the 90's: Once upon a time there was a little girl who lived on the shores of Lake Michigan. She was very smart, but she was also a typical little girl in the second grade. One day at lunch when the little boy sitting next to her was shooting a spit wad at somebody, she grabbed his cheese sandwich and ate it. Then she said she didn't do it.

Many years later she was living in a white house in Washington and somebody told Senator Tomato about the sandwich. He was horrified, and called for a committee investigation into the matter. Later he appointed a special counsel and spent millions of dollars of taxpayer money trying to prove that she was a crook.

End of fable, but not end of story.

I was talking to some friends recently who are working mothers. We tried to imagine the pressures of trying to live a fairly normal life in the confines of that big white house on Pennsylvania Avenue.

Back in 1993 Time magazine had a cover story on Hillary Clinton in its May 10 issue. It said, "A Republican consultant told a network newscaster that his job was to make sure Hillary Clinton is discredited before the 1996 campaign. Each day anti=Hilary talking points go out to talk show hosts. The rumor machine is cranking out bogus stories about her face (lifted), her sex life (either non-existent or all too active) and her marriage (a sham)” The story could have been written yesterday.

I don't know what Hillary Clinton is really like, although I have read that she likes crossword puzzles, goes to Chelsea's soccer games and is nice to Socks. I do know that her husband's political opponents cannot tolerate a pushy broad in the White House - or anyplace else.

Unless she has actually committed a crime, which nobody has quite accused her of although it was suggested that she may have had something to do with murdering Vince Foster, I think she is getting a dirty deal.

One might think that there are enough major problems facing our country now that they could let up a little bit on personal vituperation.