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JOURNAL
THE HATRED OF HILLARY
“Al Gore and Bill and Hillary Clinton go to Heaven and God addresses Al first. ''Al, what do you believe in?''
Al replies: "Well, I believe that I won that election, but that it was your will that I did not serve. And I've come to understand that now.''
God thinks for a second and says: "Very good. Come and sit at my left.''
God then addresses Bill. "Bill, what do you believe in?''
Bill Replies: "I believe in forgiveness. I've sinned, but I've never held a grudge against my fellow man, and I hope no grudges are held against me.''
God thinks for a second and says: "You are forgiven, my son. Come and sit at my right.'
Then God addresses Hillary. "Hillary, what do you believe in?''
She replies: "I believe you're in my chair.''”
This is the kind of joke that has tapped into the fear in men’s hearts since the story of Adam and Eve: Eve, that know-it-all who had to play God and ruined men’s lives in the process. Old traditions and old fears linger for a long time.
This wouldn’t have been a joke if it had been about a man. What about George W. Bush, who has listened to nobody but his top aides and run roughshod over the Constitution, the will of the people and other countries for six years, with that smug smirk on his face. Did these same men who sent this email accuse him of playing God? And, if so, was it funny? Or just expected because he’s a man?
These guys say it’s just Hillary they hate but that they’d vote for another woman, like maybe Condoleeza Rice or Susan Collins from Maine. But to run against the old boys club in this country requires toughness and a thick skin (which Hillary has taken a lifetime to develop), and if these other women had it, they’d run--and be hated for it.
It has been my contention all along that, back in 1998, when Bill Clinton said, “I did not have sex with that woman, Miss Lewinsky,” he wasn’t fearing the consequences of a Congressional rebuke, a perjury trial, the Supreme Court or impeachment. He was more scared of Hillary than all of them and that’s why he said it! Admit it, guys--you are more afraid of your wife than anything else!
In a recent column, none other than ultraconservative Bill O’Reilly posed the question, “What is it about Sen. Clinton that causes so much animosity? . . . Why do so many folks despise this woman?” After all, for starters, she wasn’t the one caught in the Oval Office with her pants down.
O’Reilly asked his listeners and the answers boiled down to three: First, many don’t like her because they feel she made a deal with her husband. I must ask, is there not dealmaking going on in marriage every day? Don’t you think Richard Nixon had to make a deal with Pat in order to run for President (she didn’t look like a happy First Lady)? I venture to say that, with
the statistics on cheating spouses, more women stay with their philandering husbands than leave them, so she is in the majority on that score. And who’s to say her career wouldn’t have been even bigger if she’d left him? Is it possible that sometimes the smartest people are the dumbest in love, and that she fell for the louse way back when and she’s still in love with him? A reading of her book “Living History” would seem to point to that. It’s hard to fake that stuff on the page.
The second complaint was that people object to her leftist ideology. She was certainly more leftist in her younger, post-college days--as were many of us--but her voting record in Congress is much more to the center than that of John Edwards or Barack Obama.
The third gripe was that she was “a cold, calculating woman with a sense of entitlement.” Wow--other than the woman part, doesn’t that describe Dick Cheney, Donald Trump, Michael Bloomberg, Rudy Giuliani, Ted Kennedy--come to think of it, almost any politician you can name?
Even O’Reilly concludes that all of this doesn’t rise to the level of hatred that is directed towards her, and that he reserves that hatred for true villains like Saddam Hussein and Fidel Castro.
There are many reasons to dislike Hillary for her policies, and she often has the same annoying tendency as her husband to follow the polls to find her political positions. Still, leaders as varied as tough Judge Judy (a big Giuliani fan), Mayor Michael Bloomberg, former Sen. Al D’Amato, Ed Koch and others across the country have acknowledged that she’s a workhorse and has been an extremely effective senator for New York. She got a lot of upstate Republican votes and the endorsement of the NYPD and Firefighters (both of whom hated her in 2000).
And for those who think she lacks courage, remember her finest moments: volunteering to tackle the entire healthcare industry and getting nothing but ridicule for it; as First Lady, standing in front of the Chinese government and berating them for the human rights violations against women in China; constantly advocating for the rights of children; conducting herself with dignity during a national embarrassment; just days after 9/11 saying she wanted to have a study to make sure those working at Ground Zero would not suffer from ill health in the future (at the time EPA’s Christie Whitman was saying “The air is fine”) and making sure their voices have been heard ever since; and traveling to Baghdad herself to visit the troops.
But courage in a woman is not what some guys want. They want to go back to 1955 middle America, with the smiling woman in a pretty dress baking cookies.
Someone has to step up and break through the glass ceiling. It may as well be the most hated woman in America. The ones who follow will be thanking her for years to come, for taking on the slings and arrows.
What's Your Opinion?
KevScoHall@Verizon.net