Clinton News Update: Bill Writes a Book, Hillary Gives a Speech

Former President Bill Clinton, a longtime Hamptons regular, is coauthoring a novel with bestselling author James Patterson. The President Is Missing, a thrilling mystery about a president who vanishes, will be co-published by Alfred A. Knopf and Little, Brown and Co. Clinton and Patterson will sign copies of the book at the Book Revue in Huntington on June 6 at noon. Tickets are $30 and go on sale May 7.

The television rights to the book have already been snatched by Showtime, who plan to adapt the thriller into a full TV series. David Nevins, President and CEO of Showtime Networks Inc. said in a September press release, “The pairing of President Clinton with fiction’s most gripping storyteller promises a kinetic experience, one that the book world has salivated over for months and that now will dovetail perfectly into a politically relevant, character-based action series for our network.”

In other Clinton news, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton spoke to a crowd of 5,000 at Rutgers University in New Jersey on Thursday, March 29. While she has customarily required a six-figure endowment for public speeches, she agreed to speak at the college for only $25,000, which, bizarrely enough, was $7,000 less than Rutgers agreed to pay Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi of Jersey Shore infamy in 2011.

Among other topics, such as Russian meddling in the 2016 election, Clinton discussed some of the trials and tribulations she has faced as a woman in politics. Although, she admitted that some of the struggles faced during the election were stemmed from a negative public opinion of her, not women in general. “You’ve heard people say, ‘I’d vote for a woman, just not that woman,’” she said. “I’m often that woman.” When asked about the increased pressure from critics to leave the public stage for good, Clinton said, “It’s about time that women were allowed to be themselves the way men are allowed to be themselves.”