If Homer Framed Marge

"But In The End Truth Will Out" - William Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice

If you've watched The Simpsons as much as I have, the idea that Marge Simpson (the show's mom) would be guilty of anything beyond a petty mistake is preposterous.  She's as normal a character on the show as any.  And she almost always plays by the rules.

Imagine: Hillary Clinton as Marge.  Can you?  Why not?  Most people would probably say that Hillary can't be trusted the way Marge can.  But what if Homer were to frame Marge, and the evidence seemed impossible to ignore... until the program's final few minutes when all's revealed.

If Hillary's public career were equivalent to such an episode of The Simpsons, Hillary's untrustworthiness would build from 1991 to 2016, but would then evaporate in a mighty flash about now (26 years plus another 4 years as president = 30-year career = 30-minute show).

I herewith expose the unfair framing that drove Hillary's trustworthy numbers into the ground.  And that issue is of course the e-mails on her personal server from when she was Secretary of State.  The latest revelations from that 'scandal' exonerate her completely in my mind, and furnish us with the ultimate Marge Simpson plot twist:

  *** When she apologized for using a private server she claimed that this happened 

          because she wanted to carry only one device, rather than two--one for official 

          business and one for personal calls.  At the time, this sounded fishy to me; but,

          if you click the above link, it pans out.
  *** And the multiple phones it turns out she used?  She used 16 phones over the course
          of four years, but they were used consecutively, perhaps as a precaution to avoid
          bugging  

  *** The 'classified' e-mails at the heart of the matter?  They were messages her
          subordinates were sending her.  Most were being written in real time (with the
          sender omitting any perceived secrets) and had not yet been deemed classified
          or not.
  *** The one except to this, in over four years of messages, was at the lowest level
          of classification, had already been classified prior to sending, and was indeed
          improperly sent.  But to my mind, it was the exception that proves the rule:
          every human will goof occasionally.

This e-mail 'scandal' turned out to be a nothingburger, but only after seriously compromising Hillary Clinton's public standing.  And that, of course, is the pattern.  Because her husband did in fact engage in unfortunate personal behavior when president, and because that behavior only came to light because of an investigation into yet another 'scandal' that wasn't, the press is inclined to look closely into the Clintons' affairs, even if Hillary herself has never been found to be seriously wanting.

Where might all this lead?  Because her formative years were spent as a lawyer, she is very unlikely to  have seriously slipped up--since there was so much at stake.  So, there's likely little more for her detractors to hit her with.  More likely is a gradual realization on the part of our most prominent journalists that this pattern of false accusations not only plays into a charge of sexism, but is unfair in a political sense, and must be idled.