Greil Marcus has been writing about popular music for over 30 years. He worked for Rolling Stone and Creem in the 1970s and has written extensively for Artforum, the Village Voice, Interview, the New Yorker and the New York Times. Marcus is also the author of "Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock 'n' Roll Music," "Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the 20th Century," and "Invisible Republic: Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes."
In his latest book, "Double Trouble: Bill Clinton and Elvis Presley in a Land of No Alternatives," Marcus explores the bizarre kinship between America's president and America's king of rock 'n' roll.
In this excerpt Greil revisits Hillary Rodham Clinton's fearless, hard-edged speech at Wellesley in 1969 in support of student protests, and her defense of her husband facing impeachment in 1998, a performance that "revealed how impoverished our political speech has become" and how scared it is of what it might say.
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