Charity concerts used to be organized to raise money for starving children. But no more. On January 15, John Bon Jovi is headlining a concert in New York City to raise money for our next Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton. Senator Clinton and her husband, who collectively made over $109 million in the past seven years, will be on-site to pose for pictures with concert attendees paying $1000 and up. Hillary’s failed presidential campaign is still in debt to the tune of $6 million and she needs a bailout. But seeing as she’s already loaned her campaign around $6 million (after she was certain to lose), you have to wonder who concert-goers are paying back – and why.

Hillary Clinton drove her supposedly unstoppable candidacy into an embarrassing, self-indulgent, self-funded ditch before even reaching the general election — and has been reaping the rewards ever since. Pundits across the political spectrum have taken to discussing her abject failure as if it were a career high point. After baldly lying about a goodwill trip overseas, she was appointed Secretary of State. And after lending her own primary campaign $6 million when everyone knew she had lost to Barack Obama, she will get Hillary-Aid and pose for snapshots at $1000 a pop two weeks before taking the top spot at the State Department. When Bill Clinton won in 1992, did Ross Perot come looking for handouts to retroactively fund his primetime infomercials?

The unseemly spectacle of Hillary Clinton’s candidacy, with its familial privilege, its personal financing, and its final high-profile appointment, is really just a distillation of all the other Democratic dramas going on around the country. But unlike Rod Blagojevich or Bill Richardson or Caroline Kennedy, who all face some measure of criticism or censure, Hillary is being celebrated and bankrolled for starring in her own distasteful saga. Say “cheese!”