How Petra Nemcova Could Have Obtained Another Million For Her Happy Hearts Fund

The very attractive Petra Nemcova apparently yielded, after twice being turned down by busy Bill Clinton, and — “whisp’ring that she’d ne’er consent — consented” — agreed to donate $500,000 to the Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton Foundation,, run by and for the three beady-eyed members of the Clinton family who, as Tom Lehrer noted of the Old Dope Peddler, are “doing well by doing good.” She did this in order to have the smooth-voiced charmer Bill Clinton appear on-stage at her own charity’s fund-raising event,  the charity in question being the Happy Hearts Fund, which builds schools for the victims of that famous tsunami of a decade ago which Nemcova experienced and survived.

There was a missed opportunity here. She need not have bribed Clinton in this indirect foundation-fashion, to appear. This worldy ormer model might have agreed instead  that  if, instead of demanding a donation carved out  whatever was raised that night by Nemcova’s gala, it would be the Clinton Foundation that would make a donation to  Nemcova’s Happy Hearts Fund of the previously-agreed-upon sum of $500,000,  and she, in turn,  would make the two-backed beast with that very famous man  that very night, or on any night of his choosing, depending on what was in their respective agenda-books and when they could find the time. Nemcova could in this way have come out ahead by  extra million (the $500,000 she did not have to donate, the $500,000 she received) for those poor kids she cares so much about,  Clinton would have been very happy (one more thing not to tell the grandkids about),  and a good time could be had by all. Or doesn’t she care enough about those poor kids just to lie back and think of Hrad?any Castle?

Why don’t people think these things through in time?  Why is it always a case, not exactly of staircase wit, but of staircase solutions? Why didn’t Bill Clinton think of it himself? Perhaps he did. And perhaps the you-scratch-my-back-and-I’ll-scratch-yours behavior of the founders of these vanity foundations led to a decision by the two principals to keep secret — oh people are so judgmental, aren’t they? — a clause that specified a piquant little lagniappe for the endlessly greedy, but also limitlessly ithyphallic, and newly fit, cheat and charmer, William Jefferson Clinton.