ZadekpediaShe appears as a reference point in discussions of childhood play, campaign finance law, foreign policy, charter cities, and election-related speech.
The nanny state and childhood play
In a December 2014 episode with Lenore Skenazy, Bob Zadek invoked Clinton while criticizing California’s regulatory culture, saying she “said it best”: “It takes a bureaucrat to raise a child.” Zadek framed this as a summary of what he called creeping liberalism and a nanny state Lenore Skenazy: World’s Worst Mom (2014).
Skenazy, in the same episode, drew on the psychologist Peter Gray’s book Free to Learn, which opens by describing different people’s play histories. One of those histories, she said, belongs to Clinton, who remembered playing outside from dawn to dusk, with several blocks’ worth of children playing capture the flag under rules worked out in long negotiations. Skenazy found it interesting that Clinton’s childhood of organizing large groups carried into her adulthood, and said the idea of a village raising a child is not a bad one — something she associated with the 1950s. She attributed the decline of that village in part to fear of tort lawyers and of other parents’ reactions. Zadek responded with his own account of growing up in Queens on a block of 38 houses with enough children to field a full football game, where everyone knew where every child was Lenore Skenazy: World’s Worst Mom (2014).
Campaign finance and Citizens United
In a January 2015 episode with Mike Munger, Clinton figured in the origins of a campaign-finance case. Munger described a 75-minute documentary arguing that Clinton was a bad candidate, which the Federal Election Commission barred from theaters and television within 60 days of the 2008 election under McCain-Feingold. Munger called the FEC’s interpretation correct under the law, which he called unconstitutional, and noted the law had been upheld in McConnell v. FEC. The film, he said, mentioned Clinton’s name and expressed advocacy. He recounted that the Supreme Court was asked what would happen if a book from a press like Cambridge University Press contained the sentence that Clinton was a good or bad candidate within 60 days of an election; the Solicitor General, Munger said, answered that the book would be banned. The Court reheard the case, and Anthony Kennedy’s opinion expanded the issue from nonprofit to for-profit corporations and overturned McConnell. Munger stressed that the decision rested on freedom of association, not on any notion that corporations are people, quoting Kennedy that the First Amendment prohibits Congress from fining or jailing associations of citizens for political speech. Zadek added that if one person has freedom of speech, a group has the same freedom Who Wants to Buy a Politician? With Mike Munger (2015).
Foreign policy and Libya
In an October 2017 episode with John Glaser, a caller asked about Clark Air Force Base and Subic Bay Naval Base and whether they deterred Chinese expansion. Glaser said he was more concerned about the present, warning that inadvertent escalation between China and its neighbors could entangle the United States. On the question of non-defense experts overruling defense experts, Glaser said the Obama administration got pushback from the military, particularly the Joint Chiefs of Staff, against the air war in Libya against the Gaddafi regime, but that it was pushed by Clinton, Samantha Power, and what he called humanitarian interventionists, who prevailed. Once engaged, he said, the military supported the effort Rethinking Pax Americana with John Glaser (2017).
Charter cities
In a June 2018 episode with Mark Lutter, Clinton appeared in a discussion of why a Honduran charter-city project failed politically. Lutter said the project was branded as libertarian, alarming people on the left, and argued that center-left figures share high-minded principles about rule of law and property rights. As an example, he said that during her presidential campaign Clinton did not say it publicly but a leaked speech to bankers mentioned that she wanted open borders and free trade in the Western Hemisphere. He used this to argue that potential center-left allies were not brought into the project The End of Nation-States? (2018).
Election memes and free speech
In a March 2021 episode with Eugene Volokh, Clinton appeared in the facts of a prosecution. Volokh described Ricky Vaughn, the pseudonym of Douglas Mackey, who posted memes during the 2016 election. One meme showed a smiling Clinton, then the Democratic nominee, and instructed people to vote from home by posting the word “Hillary” with a hashtag to Twitter or Facebook between 7:00 a.m. and 9:00 p.m. Eastern on November 8th. Volokh noted that voting by hashtag is impossible and obvious to most people, but said there was some reason to think Mackey deliberately tried to mislead a very few people into not voting the legally authorized way, potentially diminishing turnout for Clinton Criminal Memes: The Ballad of Ricky Vaughn (2021).
Across episodes
The episodes show no development in the treatment of Clinton across episodes. She is invoked in five separate episodes — for a childhood play history, for the Hillary: The Movie litigation, for Libya, for leaked remarks on open borders, and for a voter-suppression meme — with no episode returning to a question raised in another.