I'm listening to the ABC Debate tonight (WHERE'S DENNIS KUCINICH??!!), and feeling a bit exasperated at the media's bleating repetition about these younger guys being better agents of change than Hillary Clinton.
Hmm, let me think for a second. Hillary Clinton was a tough feminist in the 1970s women's movement who put her money where her mouth was, GOING BACK AT LEAST 30 YEARS that I know about, and that's not just experience, that's called A TRACK RECORD.
Right, plenty of candidates trot out stuff they've done while in the national campaign spotlight. Hillary did it when there was NO campaign watching her, did it when there was no direct benefit for her politically WHATSOEVER.
She just did it because things were bad, and they needed a change. Case in point: I took this photo below in 1989. It was not the first time I met Hillary Clinton, nor was it the last, but it is by far my favorite picture of her.
What is she doing here? Oh, she's opening an on-site daycare center at Fayetteville High School in Arkansas, for pregnant teenagers who choose to keep their babies. And she didn't just stand out stiffly at the ribbon cutting and then bug out. She was in there, meeting and talking with the girls. I think she's wearing a corsage because this event happened on Mother's Day.
How many people in Arkansas gave a damn about what she did that day, besides those teenagers and their parents (or any of the other things this initiative she worked on did, besides the high school day care centers)? Or rather, how UNPOPULAR would you think such a thing was among those freaked-out conservatives that dominate the parents of any given high school class? I taught Arkansas high school students for 7 years and MET those those parents at conferences.
This thing didn't win her any brownie points in the state. It didn't win her political points because she wasn't anyone more at the time than a small state governor's wife who happened to be a feminist, has always been a feminist, and took stands as a feminist WHEN IT COST POLITICAL POINTS TO DO SO.
Where are the change agents now? I'd like to talk to them. No, actually, I'd like to get a roomful of women I think are utter goddesses, 70s feminist movement women, people who participated in REAL political movements, who would not sit still until the world changed, changes that have been forgotten, wholesale, in the 35 years since. I'd sit them down with these blathering, posturing MALE political candidates, and have them GIVE A LESSON IN WHAT IT MEANS TO BE A CHANGE AGENT.
Say what you like about how the Clintons are "too centrist." That's right, they are, and I don't like that much.
But Hillary Rodham Clinton is an old school feminist, and I can't NOT back the woman with the kind of guts she has, who is going to become our first woman president! Whoo-yah!
I wasn't a feminist in the 1970s and 1980s not to be here for her when the chips are down, no way no how!
Sorry: not buying it. Voting for Hilary gets us one step closer to oligarchy: Bush/Clinton/Bush/((not Clinton)). Two families in charge ... for how long? And Hilary's accomplishments? Do we really want the first female president to have been first lady as her primary accomplishment?
Besides, it seems HIlary has a cloud of corruption around her like pigpen's veil of dust.
Hilary vs. (Anyone) probably keeps me home in November. Well, maybe not, but I might just vote Independent.
Posted by: ms | January 06, 2008 at 08:37 PM