Hollywood Effie, yes. Real-life Effie, not so much.

Yes, Flo didn’t get the happy ending she so deserved. I’ve always thought it would have been great for her to have a great comeback.

But then, I’m a sucker for a happy ending. And I have a tendency to root for the underdogs, and to sympathize with the people in the background.

I don’t know what the Diana Rosses of the world have to deal with. I have more in common with the Flo Ballards and Mary Wilsons. Their stories I understand a bit better — to have a dream, an aspiration, and have it appear to be just within reach, only to realize you’re not going to be the one to grasp it.

I never got to see Jennifer Holiday perform as Effie on Broadway, I will confess that I had tears in my eyes when Jennifer Hudson belted out that last note.

And again, at the end of the second act.

Terrance, I love you. I wish we weren’t so far apart, but this post really made me smile ’cause I’m grateful I have you, even if you’re only as close as D.C.

From there, you can let the above sink in before going to explain that there is a second act, and Effie wins big in the end. But it was not to be in the first act.

Hollywood Effie, yes. Real-life Effie, not so much.

Besides, if she bows out now she loses the leverage she needs for a Supreme Court nomination.

EnK

If you’re going to be perceived as a racist, egomaniacal bitch (along with your husband), then I don’t think there’s really much to do: there’s no way for her to be judged as having been gracious.

If she leaves now, it’ll be said that she left because she had to, not because she was being gracious. When her political star later rises (which it will, of course), it’ll be said that her having left ‘graciously’ was a slick political move for which she should be condemned; another Clinton ‘trick.’

Everything she does is always seen through the lens of cynical opportunism and machiavellian machinations. Witness the overnight Ferraro-is-a-racist meme.

If that’s how the ‘effete liberals’ (as Rush Limbaugh so deliberately rudely put it) and large parts of the black community are going to see her, then I suspect she’ll simply use this time to take shots at Obama and wait for a scandal to break.

When it’s over, her political star will rise anyway no matter how she acts now.

If she acts bitchy now, her political star will rise later anyway but be saddled with aspects of people hating her guts for having held on so long and ruined Obama’s chances.

If instead she leaves gracefully, her political star will rise later anyway and still be saddled with aspects of people hating her guts for having held on so long and ruined Obama’s chances.

Hence, I think she stays in now. And deal with whatever comes.

It should also be remembered that in this campaign she’s been called a fake-crying liar who didn’t cry about the plight of the black community in Katrina implying something rather ugly (by Jesse Jackson, Jr.), a blatant panderer and opportunist, a ‘deeply flawed candidate’ that can’t win in the general election by the Obama campaign (I wonder what would happen if her campaign now released a similar release stating that Obama is a ‘deeply flawed candidate’ for the general election that can’t win?), etc., etc., etc.

All, of course, by the campaign that’s said it’s not playing the old politics of “division and distraction.”

Welcome, President McCain.