Schadenfreude, schadenfreude, oh beautiful, beautiful schadenfreude!
You will soon be able to enjoy some great Election Night 2016 schadenfreude again in the form of HBO's documentary, The Final Year, which will soon be broadcast on that network. As you can see from the trailer below it appears to be mostly a big borefest of Obama administration hype about how wonderful and wise they were. However, its saving grace is that the HBO film crew was at a Hillary "victory" party hosted by former UN Ambassador Samantha Power to celebrate Hillary Clinton winning the election. When it did not turn out as expected the meltdown of Power and her guests, including 37 fellow female ambassadors, was recorded for all posterity (and our enjoyment).
You can get a hint of the entertaining meltdown starting at the 1:30 mark of the trailer when it was revealed that the winner was...NOT Hillary.
Power elaborates on what happened on that night of meltdowns at her party in a January 15 Politico interview conducted by Susan Glasser:
SUSAN GLASSER: We’re having this conversation here in Washington, not quite exactly one year after the inauguration of President Trump. The movie ends with the inauguration of President Trump. I won’t spoil the ending for those of you who—
SAMANTHA POWER: He wins.
GLASSER: Well, yes, actually, okay. So, Samantha, we might as well start with that, then, probably the most memorable scene to some people certainly—this incredible moment of election night in your big apartment in New York City, where you’re the ambassador to the United Nations. Tell us about that scene.
POWER: Well, I’ve had a lot of bad ideas in my life, but none as immortalized as this one. I decided on election night to invite the 37 women ambassadors to the U.N., many of whom face struggles in their own foreign service, or at the U.N. of a kind that, as an American, I never did. And I thought what an amazing night for them. I mean, that’s what America represents to the world, when a glass ceiling is shattered in our country, it creates a whole new sense of possibility for people everywhere.
And so, I invited them. Most of them came, and we gathered with Madeleine Albright, our first woman secretary of state; Gloria Steinem, who is not only an icon here, of course, but all around the world, and we went through the same process, if you want to call it that, that so many people did at their election parties. As the host, I was kind of hoping it wouldn’t be quite the blowout that it was anticipated to be, because I wanted to make sure that people had a chance to interact with Gloria Steinem, and one of—
Don't worry. It wasn't quite the blowout you expected but I don't think your guests were in much of a mood to interact with Gloria Steinem, or anybody else in a rational manner, when the night was over.
GLASSER: So, your concern was that actually that the evening was going to be over early.
POWER: Too soon. I wanted to milk the soft power dividend of this moment, and instead, and HBO was there, I guess unfortunately or fortunately, to capture it all, but instead, you really see what so many people went through, which was all of that sense of promise and excitement, and frankly, a dose of complacency. And then, it slowly dawning on us that not only was this going to be much closer than anybody anticipated, but that it was not going to end well.
And for me, every time I see that, I am haunted most, actually, by the images of my children, who were running around the apartment for much of the night, but when the election is called, my daughter, who at that time is four, is just lying in my lap, kind of like this pale, Irish statue, and there’s something about the way she’s lying, I don’t know, that just makes her look like she’s the one who’s going to inherit—
It sounds like wanting "to milk the soft power dividend of this moment" is what the ancient Greeks meant by "hubris." My advice to HBO is to cut out the boring pro-Obama adminstration propaganda and focus on that Samantha Power party by including all outtakes. Just when we thought we saw all the available Election Night meltdowns out there, we will be entertained again by the meltdowns of Samantha Power and her Hillary "victory" party guests.
