Back to Bill Safire’s diagnosis. On television this morning, I saw a clip of a talk Chelsea Clinton gave to a Young Democrats group. In it she decried the sexism that her mother has faced while on the campaign trail. She had a couple examples of other women expressing sexist views. It was her description of the iron my shirt guys that caught my attention: “a couple of young men said with all seriousness, ‘iron my shirt.’” The victim theme is one the Clinton campaign pushes when it doesn’t have anything else to say, so it is not surprising that Chelsea Clinton would argue that her mother, a woman whose achievements are inextricably bound up with her husband’s political advancement (but not vice versa), is the victim of sexism. It is her description of the iron my shirt incident that makes me believe she is every bit as delusional as her mother. “A couple of young men said with all seriousness, ‘iron my shirt.’” Can she even believe that comment for one second–with all seriousness? Did these young men specify how much starch or when they needed their shirts back? Are we really to believe that these guys thought the junior senator from New York was going to do their laundry? These young men were crude, rude, and, yes, sexist. What they weren’t were serious. Like her mother, Chelsea Clinton just couldn’t stick with the truth, she just had to paint the lily.
The Acorn, the Tree, and Laundry
By Hostile WitnessBill Safire once called Hillary Clinton a congenital liar. I wonder if he was right. Most recently, Hillary was caught out in an elaborate lie about a visit to Bosnia. It was an astounding incident because Clinton surely new she was lying, yet she repeated the story on several occasions. I don’t know whether there is a single word for what incidents like these say about Clinton’s character. Certainly, she shares some of Bill’s recklessness. After all, this story was easily and conclusively disproved. Short-sided: the brief benefit to her experience argument was drowned by the days’ long negative publicity the incident received and continued to receive. Self-centered and delusional: the display of pique at having to address the issue and her excuse of sleep deprivation and being human was both entertaining and painful to watch.
