While searching for the image appearing above, by entering various permutations of the words Clinton, Hillary, cry, tear, tears, New Hampshire, and weep into a Google Image search, I encountered the (expected) pictorial disparagements of Ms. Clinton, such as but by no means limited to Hillary with superimposed red airbrushed horns, Hillary with adjacent thought bubbles referring to purported lesbianism of same, various caricaturized Hillaries "cuckolded" by wolf-eyed and salivating Bills (with and without splattered Monicas in the margins), and even a cut-out of Hillary's beaming, senatorial face pasted sloppily, with little respect for the niceties of sound graphic design, over an image of Darth Vader's helmet, cape, and red-buttoned candy-box chest piece.
This blog entry is a subset neither of disparagement (a.k.a. hatin') nor of endorsement but is concerned more properly what it means to be the first viable female American presidential candidate. (I had to add "viable" to weed out the pesky and, one would suspect, long-suffering Elizabeth Dole, whom fate has consigned the thankless task of being mounted--however occasionally--by her pharmaceutically-refortified octogenarian husband. But I digress, precipitously toward the macabre.)
People who are apt to hate Hillary do not deign to go about it in any kind of wishy-washy, half-assed, or midgrade way; they really, really, really, really hate Hillary with a passion resembling only that directed toward Jar-Jar Binks and Milli Vanilla, post-LipSyncGate. With only slight embellishment, I might (and do) claim that Stalin is more beloved, if only because he slaughtered more communists--more efficiently--than any American president could ever dream of.
While recently in the presence (unwillingly) of adamant Hillary detractors, I dared to pose the most simplistic of questions: "What is it about this particular person that is so loathsome to a particular demographic, i.e., you and your ilk?" In response, I received some of the typical anti-Hill rejoinders: She's a calculating shrew, a ball-breaker, a socialist, a liar, a back-pedaler, a dyke, a terrorist-lover, an opportunist, a power-tripper, and a good old-fashioned cunt. To these epithets, I must reply that, if you excise the specifically liberal-baiting appositives, you've described nearly any major politician. (Are you, for instance, trying to tell me that Dick Cheney isn't a cunt? Methinks, Gentle Reader, he invented cuntness.)
What we have here is what I like to call, for lack of a more clinical-sounding name, the Kathy Lee Syndrome--in which case we have (1) a female (2) who is not considered sexually desirable, in the prevailing median opinions thereof and (3) who is considered aggressive and/or assertive. Kathy Lee Gifford, yes, I will grant you, could in fact be irritating in her incessant ramblings about Cody and Dippy (or whatever her kids' names were) on that Regis TV show thing she co-hosted, but to single out Kathy Lee for such intense and vitriolic animosity as was often directed at her is to ignore what a barking, tedious, buffoon Regis himself is. More pointedly, having somewhat recently been ill in bed and thereby catching a fragment of vapid banter between Regis and Kathy Lee's replacement, Kelly, I can assure all and everyone concerned that, via the transitive axiom of equality, Kelly is in fact Kathy Lee, only younger and more sexually desirable. So if we factor in all the controls of our experiment, the variables, the margin of error, etc., the brute, stubborn equation remains that a "good woman" is best seen (preferably with her top off and her jugs oiled up) and not heard, and especially not heard talking about foreign policy or economic recovery.
Where was I? Oh, yes, Hillary... Well, earlier this week, as everyone knows, Hillary got choked up or dewy-eyed or something at a campaign stop in New Hampshire, and by Wednesday morning the media was atitter with the probability that this display of humanity (subtext: stereotypical femininity) may have won her the primary because, in the past, she had generally been perceived as a tightly-coiffed humanoid bent on cold, calculated world domination (i.e., a man). Now I must ask you... Would a candidate such as a McCain or an Obama or--dare I say?--a Rudy have (seemed to have) benefited from a display of desperate emotion? (That's rhetorical, but if anyone were dumb enought to answer yes, I think I might be subject to an imminent display of desperate emotion.)
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