Willie P
An open letter to Chelsea Clinton’s unborn child
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Chelsea Clinton announces her pregnancy at the Clinton Foundation's No Ceilings: The Full Participation Project on April 17.Photo: Getty Images
Chelsea Clinton and her husband, hedge fund manager Marc Mezvinsky, are expecting their first child. Clinton, 34, made the announcement in the exact same way you would, in a speech she gave together with her mother at a Lower East Side event promoting the Clinton Foundation’s effort to empower girls. The baby is due sometime this fall.
Dear Baby Clinton-Mezvinsky:
Welcome to advanced gestation! Since you’re new around here, I thought you’d like to know a little bit about what makes you so special. The reason is, you’re going to live your whole life in make-believe!
Do you know the fairy stories about a princess in a castle? Well, you get to be that real-life prince or princess, in a real-life castle where Mommy Chelsea is also a princess, Grandma is about to be crowned Queen, and Grandpa Bill is a retired ex-King with lots of helpful advice on ruling the kingdom, er, monarchy. (Your other grandma and grandpa were both a kind of court vassal called Congressmen. Oopsies, other grandpa, Edward Mezvinsky, even went to something called “prison,” which is kind of like a big, cozy crib! Can you say “wire fraud”? Good, you can’t! Don’t! Around here we pretend Grandpa isn’t a criminal!)
Inside the castle towers you will find that Mommy, Mommy’s mommy and Mommy’s daddy Bill are all really good at make-believe games. So you get to pretend all the time! Mommy’s mommy and Mommy’s daddy even pretend to still be married even though they’ve been living hundreds of miles apart for 14 years!
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Chelsea with mom Hillary at the Clinton Foundation’s No Ceilings: The Full Participation Project.Photo: Getty Images
Before you were even born your mommy’s mommy pretended that it’s a completely normal thing to announce your own grandchild’s birth to the world at a joint press appearance with your mom, hosted on Skype and live-streamed. With America Ferrera!
Although you will at all times pretend to be a normal baby, you actually already have your very own career, like doctor or fireman or lobbyist! Can you say “Campaign Asset”? Good, now let’s learn about skill sets! You only need one talent. Ready? It’s “Soften the Candidate”! Sort of like human bubble bath.
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The Clintons discuss the Clinton Global Initiative during the 2014 meeting at Arizona State University on March 22.Photo: Reuters
Now, even though you have a busy life, sleeping 18 hours a day, nursing and learning to roll over, all of this comes second to being a stage prop to the grandma they call “Hillary” or “Madame President” or “Lady Pantsuit.” When big, scary men with huge, glowing boxes on their shoulders come around, don’t be afraid! They’re only here to shine blinding lights into your widdle eyes. Kind of like a dozen suns shining at the same time! Just think of them as the Sunshine Men. They will be accompanied by nice pretend journalists who are actually castle-outreach people named Katie or Oprah or Diane, whose job it is to make you and Grandma look good, so don’t cry so much, and only on cue! (Example: When Grandma Hillary says, “That ol’ John Boehner sure gets upset when he doesn’t get what he wants,” start wailing!)
There are a few special little things you need to know about. For instance, if you are a girl, mean people will mail you blue Gap dresses. You don’t need to worry about where they came from, because the castle’s shining knights will go after them. These knights work for a castle security program called the IRS. Those blue Gap dresses are a reference to something unfortunate that happened a long, long time ago that we all pretend didn’t happen and anyway was all the fault of barbarians and trolls living outside the castle. We call these twisted creatures Republicans.
In two years or so, when most babies are just learning to crawl, you will be hitting the road! Grandma Hillary is going to need you to smile and coo whenever there are Sunshine Men around. So play nice and don’t projectile vomit. Grandma is not what grown-ups call “maternal,” and was busy turning $1,000 into $100,000 in the magical cow trading market when your mommy was a baby, so she will have to make believe she is really “helping out” with you. No crying if she gets the diaper on the wrong end!
When you’re a teenager, you may start getting strange invitations from Grandpa Bill. Don’t be surprised if he asks you to invite all of your girl friends and their bikinis over to his house for a pool party. Grandpa Bill loves young people, especially young female people frolicking in the sunshine!
The best part of your make-believe Clinton-Mezvinsky life is that people will pretend you’re good at things and give you gifts like high-paying consultancy gigs when you just got out of college, jobs reporting for NBC News when you have as much camera-awareness as a smoked flounder, and the leadership of the free world because you “deserve it.” Learn to accept everything as your due, baby Clinton-Mezvinsky, and maybe Mommy and you will be the third and fourth Clintons to rule the kingdom!
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