Deep End | Shame Patrol: A search of Hillary’s innards comes up with only bile. 

In recent weeks, as Mrs. Clinton tried to reinvent herself as a redneck, dropping her g’s and sprinkling her discourse with gonnas and wouldas and drawing out her flat Midwestern vowels into dipsy-doodle Deep South diphthongs, political commentators across the nation have expressed shock at her shameless pandering to know-nothing bumpkins and bigots.

There she was, night after night, on the evening news, singing love songs to hard-working white Americans, white Americans who have made this nation great, white Americans who are nonblack, white Americans who work hard while nonwhite Americans just laze about listening to phony speeches by a nonwhite seemingly American guy, who, by the way, is not a Muslim, at least as far as Mrs. Clinton knows, implying, of course, that he might be a Muslim, so you’d better watch out.

It was assumed that Mrs. Clinton might have some shame left, and wouldn’t resort to blatant racist appeals to the redneck demographic. That assumption rested on another assumption: that Mrs. Clinton was endowed by her creator with shame in the first place. But attempts to locate Mrs. Clinton’s shame have proved futile. Search teams have made heroic efforts to locate Mrs. Clinton’s shame, but have returned to search headquarters empty-handed.

Said one exhausted searcher, “The last time I felt so discouraged was during Monicagate and I went looking for shame somewhere in the interstices of Bill Clinton’s soul. As you know, it was nowhere to be found. Today, we have better search tools, and we were initially optimistic that we might find some shame, however vestigial, in the labyrinthine interior of Bill’s wife.

“But, no such luck. We scoured the anterior cingulate, delved into the hippocampus, and scanned the crevices of the frontal cortex. Previous explorations had determined that her heart was a barren waste where shame could not take root, so we bypassed that territory and circled the spleen and pancreas and made our way to the islets of Langerhans. We even paddled our way through the small intestine and trudged through the large bowel before exiting in through the southern passage.

“Alas, not a trace of shame was to be found, though there were abundant quantities of bile and gall.”

A forthcoming publication will lay out the conclusion that Mrs. Clinton is one of those rare creatures in whom no shame resides.

When asked to comment on the findings regarding her lack of shame, Mrs. Clinton let out her trademark horselaugh.

“I (pronounced “Ah,” in her new manner) really don’t know what all the fuss is about. Anybody, yuh know, who’s followed my career knows I never had any shame, yuh know, to begin with. Let me put it this way. From Day 1, I’ve exhibited a dearth of shame. Shame has been totally absent. There has been a complete and absolute lack of shame throughout, yuh know, my life.”

Mrs. Clinton laughed again, a kind of attenuated horselaugh, this time suggesting just a hint of feminine vulnerability.

“You know, I mean, yuh know, if I had any shame, I would have ditched ol’ Bill a long time ago, long before he was getting his kicks with his chubby intern. But I always kept my eye on the big prize, which is the presidency. I knew that big clown was my ticket to the top, though I admit that his purple-face fits haven’t been such a great asset to me in this campaign.

“The Senate was my reward for standin’ by mah man, and now I’m entitled, yuh know, to the presidency. No way I’m lettin’ this fancy-pants uppity smoothie take it away from me. Listen, you and I both know that what your average redneck hates worse than an effin’ bitch, which is what I am, is an uppity, well, you know what, it rhymes with jigger. I played that card for all it’s worth, but it looks like it didn’t work, at least for now.”

Asked what her next move might be, Mrs. Clinton smoothed out the wrinkles in her pantsuit and began nodding her head in her trademark head nod.

“Just because I lost the Democratic nomination doesn’t mean I’ve lost the general election. McCain hasn’t chosen his vice president yet, and you can bet your patootie that I can make him see things my way and put me on the ticket.

“Here’s a news flash for you: Next week I’m ditchin’ my joke of a husband, joining the Republican party, and going after Johnny-boy. Don’t bet against me.”