I watched the news last week (or was it the week before?) with rapt attention to the play Hillary got for her "outburst of emotion."
"Oh," exclaimed one male reporter. "This is definitely going to affect her run for the presidency. It could be very damaging. I don't think there's any way she can win now, after THIS."
Of course, I'm reciting that from memory. He may not have said exactly that. But he did indicate that she just might not make it now that she's shown some emotion. God forbid anyone should act the least bit human, let the facade down for a minute, especially a woman.
Then there was the woman who asked Hillary the question that brought on the emotions. After that show of humanism, she didn't vote for Hillary. She said something like, "I really appreciated that she showed some emotion. But in the end. . . she recovered too soon, and I just didn't like it."
God forbid she should actually put her professional face back on. She's damned if she does. . . Damned if she doesn't.
On a related note, the other night I was talking to my very astute friend John from West Virginia. He's pretty soft-spoken, and people probably underestimate him at times. But once in a while he says something so on-the-point that he stops me in my tracks. He was asking me about how people over here in Europe felt about the assassination of Pakistani Premier Bhutto. I knew about it, to be sure. I'd watched coverage of it on CNN International day after day after day.
John said he was troubled by the lack of media attention to this in the US. He used to be a reporter himself, so he tends to tune into those things. He felt like the media were downplaying the importance of the murder of this strong woman and leader who was working to solve some of the problems in that part of the world, some of which are our problems, too.
John said, "Why aren't more women protesting and speaking out? Why are women just sitting there and watching this poor coverage of the assassination? And why aren't they saying something about the comments made about Hillary? [We'd spoken about that, too.]. . . Why are you all just LYING THERE?"
I made a lot of excuses, but the truth is that I don't know. Where are the women who used to speak out about such things? Are they now the "older generation" and tired and waiting for US to do something? And the younger women. . . if the ones I taught in classes are any indication, because they never lived through equal rights struggles, frankly. . . they didn't think any issues currently existed. "Things are just fine," was their attitude.
And what about us? We followed those strong women and let them do the work. Is it our turn now?
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Just had a conversation today with a 60-something friend. We agreed that, indeed, young women today don't know the struggle we experienced for equal pay for equal work, to be taken seriously as we inched toward typically "male" jobs, the sexual harassment we endured. Then I talked to our 40-year old daughter who has a 6-year old daughter. She is amazed, as are we, that our choice for President likely will be either a black person or a woman. She said she's glad her youngster will be able to "take for granted" that women can run for the highest office in America! This IS what us 60-something women yearned to see.
I disagree with John. I think the media coverage of the assassination was quite large and in-depth here. He may be on point that people were not generally discussing it, but it was given good attention.
I feel that Hillary is being stuffed down my throat by the media.
And while I am developing my media manipulation argument, check out CNN to a story suggesting that black women have a dilemma about which Democratic frontrunner to support.
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