We're getting a new Star Wars movie this year. If you're like the Rude Pundit, your first thought when you heard about it was "C'mon. How about coming up with something new, fer chrissake?" See, once The Phantom Menace, the fourth one (or the first, depending on your level of geek), came out in 1999, most anyone except the stupid, the children, and the most devoted, completist fans stopped giving a shit about Star Wars, feeling it was better to live on with your memories of the original three, however skewed those are by the distance of time. Besides, along came Harry Potter in book and movie form around the same time, and, holy crap, that was so much bolder and original than the dumb new Star Wars flicks. It was something different, something that would take you to places you didn't know, or places that were familiar but presented in a new way. How cool is that? Fuck boring Anakin Skywalker.
Of course, the Harry Potter series ended, as it had to, and while it was fine, it certainly didn't live up to the magic of the start, at least not to the Rude Pundit. It promised more than it could fulfill, some of the subplots were worthless, and the end was so unsurprising as to be tedious. However, when it was good, it was transcendent, and that's enough.
This year, the first teaser-trailer for The Force Awakens came out, and the Rude Pundit thought, "Okay, fine, that looks fun as hell. Maybe the time is finally right, the people working on it finally know what they're doing, and it'll be good. Sign me up." It's not exactly "Fuck yeah, let's get our motherfuckin' Jedi on." It's more of "Yeah, I'm ready for the comforts and potential thrills of a new Star Wars."
The second yesterday that Hillary Clinton made it official that she's running for president, the race was over. Barring anything health-related, Hillary Clinton will be elected president in 2016. It doesn't matter who the GOP nominates. This is now as predictable a race as 2012.
Oh, sure, we'll pretend. Already, you have writers and prognosticators saying that Clinton is not "inevitable," even people the Rude Pundit admires and agrees with. You have others writing about how Clinton's last campaign was dysfunctional or how she's her own worst enemy or how we're going to have the unending Clinton "drama," a storyline concocted and propagated by the media. We'll act like any of the avaricious charlatans, craven whores, and scabby lepers running for the Republican nomination stand a chance. We'll have to see absurd articles like how Marco Rubio could win. We'll have to play this tedious, depressing race for the next year-and-a-half, punishing the public with nonstop messaging. All of it will amount to nothing because the ending of this story is written, like St. Peter's book on your life at the gates of a Calvinist heaven.
Simply put, there is no argument out there that makes any sense as to how she could lose. While there are places in the U.S. that might want a gay marriage-opposing, Obamacare-eliminating, climate change-denying, abortion rights-overturning, immigrant-bashing leader, these positions make no sense to the majority of the country. On the other side of that, most of the nation also doesn't give a fuck about the stuff that gets us in Left Blogsylvania all distressed about Clinton: her coziness with Wall Street and her more-hawkish-than-Obama foreign policy. And if you think there are still skeletons in her closet that are big enough to sink her, you must think that Vince Foster was murdered and that Hillary stood there and laughed while Bill raped women in front of her.
Clinton's inevitability isn't a good thing. It isn't a bad thing. It's just what it is. It's more tangible than the inevitability of Bob Dole or John McCain or Mitt Romney because they were inevitable nominees. Clinton is the inevitable winner.
If the Rude Pundit were advising the GOP, he'd tell it to forget about the presidency. Concentrate on keeping your backwards-ass local and state elections in your win column. Until you come up with a Harry Potter of your own, we'll gladly return to Star Wars.
