Clinton Compares Herself to ‘Rocky’
“Let me tell you something, when it comes to finishing a fight, Rocky and I have a lot in common. I never quit. I never give up.”
Not to rain on your parade Sen. Clinton, but Rocky loses to Apollo Creed at the end of the movie. But lest we get caught up in the minutia, let think for a moment about the larger metaphor of this film.
Rocky is a young nobody, comes from nothing, everyone thinks he’s a bum. Apollo is the heavy-weight champion of the world and is scheduled to fight a big shot challenger. The challenger backs out and Apollo taps Rocky to take his place, not because of any quality he has, but because Apollo likes his nickname, “The Italian Stallion”
The fact the Rocky gets a shot, an opportunity, ignites his drive and turns him into the dawn jogging, meat punching, jump roping, chicken catching, stair climbing, fist raising, beast of a man we all love. However, it takes more than a ripped body to best the champ, and Rocky is still rattled with doubts. So he walks the streets of Philadelphia on the night before the fight and thinks.
He comes back to Adrian, confesses that he can’t beat Apollo, and delivers one of the most honest and real lines ever:
“Ah come on, Adrian, it’s true. I was nobody. But that don’t matter either, you know? ‘Cause I was thinkin’, it really don’t matter if I lose this fight. It really don’t matter if this guy opens my head, either. ‘Cause all I wanna do is go the distance. Nobody’s ever gone the distance with Creed, and if I can go that distance, you see, and that bell rings and I’m still standin’, I’m gonna know for the first time in my life, see, that I weren’t just another bum from the neighborhood.”
So for 15 rounds, Rocky and Apollo wail on each other. In the end, Apollo wins by decision. The fact that Rocky loses that fight doesn’t invalidate the experience, in fact in enhances it. The movie was NEVER about winning, it’s about self-respect and the things we human beings do to find it.
Whatever Sen. Clinton is fighting for now, it isn’t self-respect.
If we were looking for a more apt analogy, Rocky II would be a good place to start. But Sen. Clinton wouldn’t be Rocky she’d be Apollo. The aging champ with a superiority complex against the character-driven young upstart with loads of potential. It’s another vicious fight, but the champ is a step too slow and weak and gets knocked out in the final round.
Nobody quit in that movie either, but I don’t think Sen. Clinton would like the way it ends.
