by Judi McLeod
august 23, 2004
The His and Hers etiquette of Bill and Hillary Clinton goes far beyond monogrammed towels in ensuite powder rooms. For the Clintons, His and Hers goes all the way to authorship; separate books, written by the ex-President and his New York Senator wife, are being toted to the cottage during these dwindling days of summer.
While Hillary Rodham Clinton, as a darling of the media keeps CNN-current, trophies and accolades like The Grammy keep the ex-President from becoming just another has-been.
Basking in the success of being an unlikely recipient of one of the music world’s top accolades, Bill Clinton wowed Torontonians with a Bay Street walkabout earlier this month after signing copies of his autobiography, My Life.
along with ex-Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and actress Sophia Loren, Clinton picked up a Grammy for their recording of the Russian folk tale, Peter and the Wolf.
In days gone by, narrators told children bedtime stories starring bogeymen. Now the bogeymen are the narrators.
The bedtime story for this trio took the prize for Best Spoken World album for Children. Take that Charlie and the Chocolate Factory!
In the award-winning recording, Clinton gets to re-tell the age-old Russian fairytale from the wolf’s perspective.
Detractors would say that Hillary’s hubby never had to try overly hard to coax himself into wolf mode.
actual recording was conducted at the premises of the Gorbachev Foundation in Moscow, and in Geneva where conductor Kent Nagano worked with Clinton and Loren.
Ex-politicians were chosen, said Nagano, to make use of their "great ability to communicate". (ain’t that the truth)?
New music was required for Peter and the Wolf, Gorbachev, Clinton and Loren style and was commissioned by the Russian National Orchestra (RNO) from French composer Jean-Pascal Beintus, while new text came from U.S. writer Walt Kraemer.
There may be some that wonder that if Peter and the Wolf wasn’t broken, then why did they want to fix it?
Well, the Moscow-Geneva recording was only one of a series of events being organized in Russia to mark the 50th anniversary of Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev. Historians will remember that Prokofiev died on March 5, 1953--and somehow find it important to point out that the composer died within a few hours of the death of Joseph Stalin.
But Stalin, whose wife committed suicide, whose son, killed during the war went ungrieved by his father and whose daughter died an alcoholic, never departed Mother Earth as far as Clinton fellow Grammy winner Mikhail Gorbachev is concerned.
Back in World War 11 days, Stalin was sending 300 bottles of brandy a year to Winston Churchill. When Gorbachev colleague Canadian Maurice Strong, his co-writer of the Earth Charter came to call years later, the Soviet leader gave him Stalin brandy in a glass bottle fashioned in the form of a sword.
Gorbachev may be the first former Soviet leader to be honoured with a Grammy, but Clinton isn’t the first ex-President to be so honoured. Jimmy Carter came before him.
None of them can carry a tune outside of the shower.
No one knows what the senator made of her spouse coming home toting his Grammy.
Does anyone but Canadafreepress.com find it ironic that Hillary Rodham Clinton, who was herself Grammy-nominated for her work, Living History lost out to al Franken with Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: a Fair and Balanced Look at the Right?
Meanwhile, in the world of music and politicians life is often stranger than fiction.
Canada Free Press founding editor Most recent by Judi McLeod is an award-winning journalist with 30 years experience in the print media. Her work has appeared on Newsmax.com, Drudge Report, Foxnews.com, Glenn Beck. Judi can be reached at: judi@canadafreepress.com
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