Turns out it didn't come from Hill, didn't come from Bill, though not for lack of trying. Drawing from an embarrassment of riches, conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh cited the point during Thursday's final night of the Democrats' convention when millions of viewers gasped in unison, you've got to be kidding.
That precious moment -- there are just so many from the Clintons, aren't there? -- came during actor Morgan Freeman's hagio-voiceover of the gooey video about Hillary Clinton just before she appeared on stage, bedecked in a white pantsuit while the Democrat faithful feigned adoration.
After obligatory praise for Clinton from President Obama and not one but two 9/11 survivors, the Shonda Rhimes-produced video turned to Hillary's early life -- her upbringing in Park Ridge, Ill., and lessons learned from the hardscrabble childhood of her mother and her no-nonsense Navy vet dad. Then came Freeman's curious take on what followed after Hillary completed her formal education --
Here is a woman, making her first marks on the world. She is, we all know, bright and promising, an achiever. And yet, extraordinarily, what is most striking about the young woman is her heart.
After another gush from Obama -- "her commitment to making people's lives better ..." -- Freeman said this --
She could have joined a big law firm, been a corporate bigwig. Instead she chose the Children's Defense Fund. There she went door-to-door, gathering stories to help children with disabilities who were denied schooling. She challenged a system that kept teen boys in the same jails as grown men. She went undercover as a housewife to prove that Alabama was defying the law to keep its schools all-white. She was successful at all three.
And here is Limbaugh's withering takedown the following day --
It'd be hard to pick out one whopper from last night that stands out above all other whoppers. But I thought Morgan Freeman's was especially noteworthy. Did you hear what Morgan Freeman said? Well, you see, here we go again. Morgan Freeman has automatically been assigned the voice of God by the entertainment press and by the media, the rest of the media, so when he speaks it's with the authoritativeness of God. And the thing that I heard him say, and I'll be honest, I didn't listen much before 10 o'clock. Folks, I know what I'm going to hear, I just, i don't want to subject myself to it. I turned it on at 10 o'clock 'cause I knew I had to watch the lovely and gracious Chelsea and then I had to watched Marshmallow Woman come out and do her speech. But oh, you know why she wore white? It wasn't that she wanted to look like the Michelin Man, it's 'cause it was the contrast with Trump being dark, dark, dark, dar, dark, so he comes bright Hillary. But I thought, my gosh, it's gonna do a marshmallow roast here.
Anyway, Morgan Freeman (Limbaugh mimics Freeman), she coulda joined a law firm! Hillary Rodham Clinton coulda joined a law firm but instead she went to work (pause) for children. I'm saying, what? Ever heard of the Rose Law Firm, Morgan? She did join a law firm! She sat on the board of directors at Wal-Mart! She went to Arkansas because she flunked the bar in DC and she was fired from the Watergate committee! Do you know why she was fired from the Watergate committee? Because she stole some documents that the committee owned and took them home in an effort to railroad Nixon! (House Judiciary Committee chairman) Peter Rodino found out about it, she was canned! She flunked the DC bar and remembered this hayseed hick that'd been stalking her up at Yale so she calls him up, he grabs the phone before Gennifer can pick it up, says (mimics Bill Clinton), hey, hey, hello, and it's her and makes her way to Arkansas and the rest is history.
Yes, Clinton did work for the Children's Defense Fund after receiving her law degree from Yale in 1973, and as of 1974 she's also working on the House Judiciary Committee while it investigated possible grounds for Nixon's impeachment during the Watergate scandal.
But according to the Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture, Clinton started working at the Rose Law Firm in Little Rock in February 1977, roughly a year and a half after the Clintons married and a mere three months after Bill Clinton was elected the state's attorney general. (What a coincidence!).
Especially amusing is the New York Times' description of the Rose Law Firm from an article in February 1994 --
The Rose Law Firm bills itself as the oldest legal establishment west of the Mississippi, tracing its history to 1820. It gets its name from the founder of the American Bar Association, U.M. Rose, who joined the firm at the end of the Civil War.
Among Arkansas families, Rose is viewed as the whitest of the white shoes. It is dominated by white men, most of whom came from privileged families in the state and graduated from one of the two accredited law schools in the state. Only a handful of women, and no blacks, have been made partners.
A bastion of diversity it's not, or at least wasn't circa '94. But suffice it to say the Rose Law Firm does qualify as the type of "big law firm" that Hillary was congenitally incapable of joining, or so we're told, lest it interfere with her life's work of Saving The Children. More from the Times on Hillary's inexplicable decision to join the Rose -
She became a partner at the age of 32, in 1979, just as her husband was being inaugurated as the nation's youngest governor.
Another amazing coincidence! Gee, think those doing the hiring knew who the incoming guv was?
In case you're wondering, Freeman never did circle back during the 12-minute video and say, hmm, come to think of it, Hillary did join what some might actually consider a big law firm. (Clinton to Rhimes during the video's production ... let's not go there, agreed ...?). Clinton remained at the Rose until 1992, the year her husband was elected president. Some people might suggest that 15 years with the same employer does constitute working for them, in this case a law firm of considerable prestige and clout.
And it's understandable why Clinton's work on the House Judiciary Committee would get passed over lest it anger Republicans who don't like Trump and are possible crossover voters. But any accurate retelling of Clinton's life story can't leave out the cynical lesson she drew from Watergate -- Nixon didn't burn the tapes, and it cost him the presidency. Clinton deleted those 30,000 emails, rather than risk the Clinton Restoration if they were ever made public.
