Friday, September 16, 2016

Oh the Hillarity

I've been waiting for just the right moment to dump on Hillary Clinton, and this week probably is as good as any since we now have little less than two months before this election is finally over!

(Wait, why dis Hills, you ask? Isn't the Busy Black Woman all in, with her, etc? Well, yes but no one is above ridicule...)

On the BBW Facebook page I bemoaned the media obsession with Hillary secretly having walking pneumonia for two days. Clearly this was one of those non-stories that is only good for fueling a scandal-less 24-hour news cycle. Because on any given day of the week, half the women you know are dealing with some form of chronic illness or pain. A story would have been Hillary actually fainting and having to be rushed to the hospital and needing a blood transfusion and the only compatible match being Melania T. That is newsworthy.

Also newsworthy is how sexist Maxy has been in his attacks on Hills by alluding to her supposed poor health and mental instability. It is also newsworthy that he released his medical records on the talk show of a guy named Oz (anybody, anybody) and that the quack who performed his physical examination looks like a roadie for the Grateful Dead. It is also newsworthy that Maxy held a news conference to announce that he finally believes that President Obama is an American and then promptly blamed Hillary for giving him the idea to become a birther in the first place.

Now, none of that is really about Hills, but it totally is because according to some of the polls she and Maxy are in a tight race! How is it even possible that she could LOSE to THIS dude?

I was enthusiastic about Hillary 20 years ago when I was a college student (actually, I was a law student then), back when I was a young idealist who wanted to change the world. Hillary was one of several icons of feminist achievement who were taking center stage at that time: Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Carol Mosely Braun, Donna Brazille, Janet Reno, Marian Wright Edelman, Madeline Albright, Murphy Brown, Barbara Streisand...too many to remember.

And we loved Bill because he seemed to get it so we all cast our first votes for them. And all was okay until Bill's messiness was uncovered and became a distraction and then an impediment to getting anything meaningful accomplished. She defended him by claiming that there was a vast right wing conspiracy organized against them. Which was probably true, but he was screwing an intern. Instead of doing the self-respecting feminist thing and kicking his impeached a$$ to the curb, she chose to run for Senate.

So we shrugged and agreed that whatever arrangement they had was their business. We had our suspicions about Bill's decision to set up his foundation in Harlem--like really needing to be within walking distance to Sylvia's, that new Starbucks, or just wanting to be surrounded by brown and black people who loved him unconditionally...while she lived in Chappaqua.

And though we understood that Hill's new gig in the Senate was merely a set up for loftier goals, we figured that after 9/11 when she really had to care about New Yorkers, she might check her ambition and really care about New Yorkers. And then in 2004 when John Kerry got upstaged by that unknown dude with the African name, we assumed that she would change course and spend her twilight years as the liberal lioness of the Senate. She would succeed an aging Ted Kennedy and mentor promising up-and-coming political minds and send them off into the world as policy wonks, political operatives, and elected officials.

So eight years ago, as she hinted at the possibility of a candidacy that she had been planning since 1972, I was not with her. Historical prospects aside, I understood her pain, but had no desire to ping pong back and forth between Presidents named Bush or Clinton. Surely there was someone else waiting in the wings...besides John Edwards (and seriously who other than his mistress and his wife got excited over John Edwards)? Enter Barack Obama.

I will need to devote another post to my position eight years ago, so I will skip ahead to where we are today and the fact that I am with Hill...as of four months ago. Not that there were better options, but DC had the last primary election so I decided to feel the Bern.

And I will conclude by stating my belief that Hill might be the unluckiest person to run for President since Thomas Dewey. She might win, but she might also lose. And seriously, if she loses to THIS guy then God help America.

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