General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region Forumsthe LIKABILITY of Hillary Clinton (considering some of the crap we are hearing these days)
Last edited Fri Sep 15, 2017, 02:11 PM - Edit history (1)
(a repost from last year, and still relevant, considering the hysteria and angst with the publication of her new book):
http://sadydoyle.tumblr.com/post/135664586198/likable
My first book, "Trainwreck: The Women We Love to Hate, Mock and Fear... and Why," is coming September 2016 from Melville House. Pre-order here to read the book people have described as "I have no idea what's in there, I have to pre-order:" http://www.mhpbooks.com/books/trainwreck/
5 months ago (4,014 notes)
Likable
My affection for Hillary Clinton is hard to explain. It wins no fights and earns you no friends to admit it: Actual warmth, even protectiveness, toward this impossible, frustrating, contradictory, polarizing, disappointing woman. My finding Hillary intensely likable is weird, and I admit it. It doesnt signify universal approval of her decisions. I can and do disagree with Hillary Clinton, regularly and strongly. But some part of me also hopes that Hillary Clinton is having a nice day.
Ive come to believe that, in some ways, saying nice things about Hillary Clinton is a subversive act. I spent much of this year working on a long project on how women are demonized in the media. Hillary Clinton was a fairly large part of that story she had to be; if you want to talk women that people hate, shes kind of unavoidable and I spent a while sorting through Clintoniana, dating back to the early 90s, to find nasty things people had said about her, or common narratives about her personality. It wasnt pretty the worst stuff for Hillary was way worse than Id expected, and there was way more of it than I expected to find but it was also illuminating, in some key ways. I got a better sense of the pressures that she has to live with, and how theyve informed her decisions.
I also realized that, unless you really take a look at those pressures, the narrative around Hillary Clintons likability is doomed to be inaccurate, in some way. She might even be very easy to dislike, if you werent looking at those narratives, or if you underestimated their severity. But, in my experience, trying to parse Hillary Clinton without also parsing Hillary-Hate is like trying to drink water without touching the glass. As long as you refuse to deal with the container, the actual substance tends to stay permanently out of reach.
For example: Female politicians are stereotyped as soft and incompetent when it comes to foreign policy and national security. Its a basic, entrenched form of sexism: Only boys know how to fight, or play with guns. So, in order to be taken seriously, Hillary has to prove that shes as tough as any man, or tougher. But she cant actually be as tough as any man, or tougher; that plays into the stereotype that women are fonts of petty malevolence, prone to irresponsibly starting conflicts for no reason. (Heres a joke I first heard from my father, and heard from many men throughout my lifetime: Why cant you elect a female President? Because, when she gets her period, shell launch the nukes.) She has to look either soft and passive, or hard and aggressive. Either one is bad for her.
This plays out on the level of personal expression, too: Women are supposedly over-emotional, whereas men make stern, logical, intelligent judgments. So, if Hillary raises her voice, gets angry, cries, or (apparently) even makes a sarcastic joke at a mans expense, she will be seen as bitchy, crazy, cruel and dangerous. (Remember the NO WONDER BILLS AFRAID headlines after she raised her voice at a Benghazi hearing; remember the mass freak-out over her emotional meltdown when someone thought she might be crying during a concession speech.) She absolutely cannot express negative emotion in public. But people have emotions, and women are supposed to have more of them than men, so if Hillary avoids them if she speaks strictly in calm, logical, detached terms, to avoid being seen as crazy we find her cold, call her robotic and calculating, and wonder why she doesnt express her feminine side. Again, shes going to be faulted for feminine weakness or lack of femininity, and both are damaging.
Okay, so she can never be sad, angry, or impatient. Thats not a ban on all emotion, right? Youd think the one clear path to avoiding the bitchy or cold descriptors would be to put on a happy face, and admit to emotions only when they are positive. Youd think that, and youd be wrong: It turns out, people fucking hate it when Hillary Clinton smiles or laughs in public. Hillary Clintons laugh gets played in attack ads; it has routinely been called a cackle (like a witch, right? Because shes old, and female, like a witch); frozen stills of Hillary laughing are routinely used to make her look crazy in conservative media. She cant be sad or angry, but she also cant be happy or amused, and she also cant refrain from expressing any of those emotions. There is literally no way out of this one. Anything she does is wrong.
And we should linger on the witch thing, because this is important. Women supposedly have an expiration date, typically in their thirties or forties, and Hillary Clinton is sixty-eight years old. One of the key lines Republicans ran against her candidacy, early on, is that she was out of touch, senile, forgetful, too old for the Presidency, representative of the twentieth century (unlike that charming young twenty-first century whippersnapper Marco Rubio). Images where she looks her age have routinely been used to discredit her: On Rush Limbaughs blog, a photo of an exhausted-looking Hillary on the campaign trail was posted, next to the argument that she couldnt be President because people shouldnt be forced to stare at an aging woman. So Hillary Clinton cant look or act her age. On the other hand, if she acts more youthful by paying special attention to her appearance, or making youth-culture references its pathetic, pandering, and desperate. Shes running the thirstiest campaign, trying too hard to get the youth vote. Conservatives whisper about Hillary Clintons secret face-lift; progressives cant stand the frivolity of her answering a question about Beyonce, or running a social media account that uses Buzzfeed-popularized slang. Shes a useless old biddy if she looks or acts her age, and a pathetic, desperate old cougar if she looks or acts any younger. Again, there is no right age for Hillary Clinton to be.
There are no right politics for Hillary Clinton to have, either. As an openly feminist woman on the national stage, she has been accused since 1992 of radical feminism, far-left wingnuttery (she knew Saul Alinsky! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!!!!) and a multitude of progressive sins up to and including, yes, socialism. ( Shes a Marxist. - Conservative criticism of Hillary Clinton, circa 2007.) So if she wants people to take her seriously, shes got to prove that shes not a Maoist hippie, and that she can cooperate with the opposition. On the other hand, if she does that, shes No True Liberal, a secret conservative, a compromiser, no different than a Republican. She must disprove the Thatcher Theorem because one female head of state was a wretched conservative, all female heads of state will be wretched conservatives and appeal to the further left members of her party (including, yes, you and me). But she must also be moderate enough to win over the centrists who comprise the majority of her party, carry a national election, and be taken seriously as a representative of something other than the radical fringe.
Because Hillary Clinton, you see, would like to be President. And the thing is, theres no right way for her to do that, either. The problem is that, if she campaigns too hard, or works too much, she (again) looks pathologically ambitious, obsessive, ruthless, selfish, and over-confident in her own abilities. (Unlike, say, anyone else who thought they deserved to be the leader of the free world.) On the other hand, if she actually wins anything, or succeeds in any way, everyone is pretty certain that she didnt earn it: She slept her way to the top! The media is being unfair to Bernie! This whole thing is rigged!!!! She works too hard, and wants to succeed too much, but when she succeeds, its apparently never due to all that hard work. The only way for her to campaign appropriately, in this scheme, is to sit back and let a male opponent win. Or to not run at all.
And finally: Youd think, given the impressive amount of unfair and often cruelly personal scrutiny this woman faces from the media, it would make sense for her to be pretty cautious about how she presents herself in public. Any misstep or miscalculation will result in a flood of negative headlines, and stands to damage her. Well, apparently, that doesnt make sense at all. Hillary Clinton, you see, has a reputation for seeming distant to the press, not open enough to media exposure, secretive, paranoid. That public presence of hers sure does seem calculating. I mean: Its almost like, after over twenty straight years of being attacked for her appearance, personality, and every waking move, breath and word, Hillary Clinton is highly conscious of how she is perceived and portrayed, and is trying really hard to monitor her own behavior and behave in ways people will accept. Which is disgusting, of course. Nowadays, we want authentic candidates. Hillary Clinton isnt trustworthy. She doesnt seem real.
Again: Remind me of exactly how well the public and/or the media reacted the last time she showed up in public without makeup. Or raised her voice. Or laughed. Or went to the goddamn bathroom. Or did any authentic thing that a real life person does every day.
Hillary Clinton is the impossible woman. The pressures she lives under, every moment of her life, are so numerous and so all-encompassing that she barely has room to breathe. She doesnt have an inch of leeway, a single safe option; there is no version of Hillary Clinton that wont receive visceral hatred, and loud, personal criticism. And the version of Hillary Clinton we get this conflicted, conflict-inspiring candidate, the woman who has a genius-level recall of global politics but has to assure the world shell spend her Presidency picking out flowers and china, the lady who books a guest spot on Broad City but cant pronounce Beyonce, the woman who was twenty years ahead of the curve on womens rights but somehow thinks its a good idea to throw in a Bush-esque 9/11 reference at a debate is the inevitable product of these pressures.
And so is the fact that I like her. My apparent new career as Hillary Clintons self-appointed Anger Translator is a weird choice, maybe even a self-destructive choice, but honestly, ask yourself: How long would you make it, if people treated you the way you treat Hillary Clinton? Would you not just be furious, by now? Would you not have reached levels of blood-vessel popping, shit-losing rage, or despair? Because the fact that shes dealt with it at all, and kept her shit together, is admirable. The fact that shes been dealing with it for decades, and keeps voluntarily subjecting herself to it, and, knowing exactly how bad it will get, and exactly what well do to her, is running for President again, and (heres the part I love, the part that I find hard to even wrap my head around) actually winning? To me, that is awe-inspiring.
And her story moves me, on that level, simply as an example of a woman who got every misogynist trick in the world thrown at her, and who didnt let it slow her down. On that level, shes actually become a bit of a personal role model: When people yell at me, or dislike me, I no longer think oh, how horrible this is for me. I now think, well, if Hillary can do it. Seriously. If Hillary Clinton can be called an evil hag by major media outlets for most of her adult life and run for President, I can deal with blocking ten or twenty guys on Twitter. Shes dealt with more shit than I have. Shes still going. I really have no excuse not to do the same.
But she shouldnt have to deal with it. This is all the byproduct of a misogynist culture. If you can cut through those expectations, or change them, a different woman potentially a very different candidate would emerge on the other side. So saying nice things about Hillary Clinton, for me, isnt just something I do because I feel good about her. Its not even something I do to piss people off. Its a way to shift cultural dialogue, to allow for a world where women arent suffocated or crushed by our expectations of them a world where Hillary, and every future female President or Presidential candidate, can focus on the task at hand, and not have to climb over a barbed-wire fence of hatred in order to change the world.
eleny
(46,166 posts)LisaM
(27,811 posts)Of course, I've seen her in person, which helps a lot, but overall, I've always found her inordinately likable. She seems smart, funny, witty, caring, and devoted. WTF is not to like?
I think back to that video of Bernie Sanders yelling at someone in his audience to "shut up! shut up!" and again, I'm seriously gobsmacked that she was the one who had to take a question in a town hall from some smarmy little kid about how people didn't like her.
niyad
(113,302 posts)for a lot of dislike.
have never met her in person, but it has always been clear to me that she is intelligent, competent, self-aware, loving, witty, and truly decent. but then, I don't listen to the brainwashing machine.
mountain grammy
(26,620 posts)LisaM
(27,811 posts)Last edited Fri Sep 15, 2017, 02:31 PM - Edit history (1)
Don't sweat it.
bettyellen
(47,209 posts)mountain grammy
(26,620 posts)bettyellen
(47,209 posts)Life isn't fair- and people hate to think or talk about it, but it's so important we do.
mountain grammy
(26,620 posts)The relentless attacks on Hillary were deliberate It's all about keeping women powerless.
LisaM
(27,811 posts)I could probably find clips of other candidates that I also find unlikeable; that one just came to mind.
lunamagica
(9,967 posts)Baconator
(1,459 posts)... some people don't.
LisaM
(27,811 posts)My BF and I were discussing Reagan the other day. He was considered genial and likable, but he made my skin absolutely crawl, to the extent that Donald Trump does. If he came on TV, I had to leave the room. The pictures were bad enough, but his voice was completely revulsive to me (still is). I could not understand his appeal. It's difficult to combat something when you literally can't get your thoughts around it.
Baconator
(1,459 posts)Some people appeal to a significant percentage...
Bill had it... Hillary did not...
She had lots of other stuff but that wasn't one of them...
LisaM
(27,811 posts)She has a warmth that the camera takes away.
JI7
(89,249 posts)Elections
... but I would suggest that has more to do with his opponents. Ross Perot etc...
It was also prior to the days of 24/7 media.
As a general rule, Bill Clinton is famous for his personality.
JI7
(89,249 posts)Bill is great at speeches.
But Hillary is better one a personal level. Many people who did not like him did like her a lot.
She gets more loyalty including even now for a reason.
Also there is too much focus on what certain groups find appealing over others.
Most non white people love her and found reagan to be creepy while white peoole found him charismatic.
Baconator
(1,459 posts)... but I think you're really stretching this into something you'd like it to be but it really isn't...
This story is mostly wrong. Trump did not win because he was more attractive to this base of white voters. He won because Hillary Clinton was less attractive to the traditional Democratic base of urban, minorities, and more educated voters. This is a profound fact, because Democratic voters were so extraordinarily repelled by Trump that they were supposed to have the extra motivation to turn out. Running against Trump, any Democratic candidate should have ridden a wave of anti-Trump sentiment among these voters. It therefore took a strong distaste for Hillary Clinton among the Democratic base to not only undo this wave, but to lose many additional liberal votes."
https://www.forbes.com/sites/omribenshahar/2016/11/17/the-non-voters-who-decided-the-election-trump-won-because-of-lower-democratic-turnout/#1713f19453ab
JI7
(89,249 posts)Obama got fewer votes than in 2008. It's always going to be more difficult for the party in power after 8 years kin office.
She got millions more votes and things like russia, Comey, media played a huge role.
And trumps bigotry WAS a factor. It wasn't just him against Clinton. He easily beat multiple republican candidates in the primary. And those candidates were not attacked the way Clinton was who still ended up with millions more votes.
There is also the issue of voter suppression and end of voting rights.
That article is the usual excuse making i have seen for trump.
Baconator
(1,459 posts)... but the reality is that he was literally the most unliked candidate in modern history.
It shouldn't have been close let alone on such a slim margin that Russian facebook ads and a blip in the news stream could have tipped it.
JI7
(89,249 posts)And in that case it wasn't even close.
Baconator
(1,459 posts)What's the point?
JI7
(89,249 posts)Baconator
(1,459 posts)... but this little tête-à-tête is representative of the party at large.
It wasn't that there was anything wrong with the organization, the candidate, the message or the policies...
Nope, it was James Comey and the Russians so why would anything change?
I expect a lot of heartbreak every two years or so until folks wise up.
JI7
(89,249 posts)Wising up includes admitting attacks on the elections, voter supression etc.
Baconator
(1,459 posts)... when your engine block fell out two blocks back.
JI7
(89,249 posts)Lol
niyad
(113,302 posts)on her, meaning many people here, and all around the world, find her warm, witty, and absolutely delightful. not to mention being one of the most admired women in the world for many, many years.
but hey, to each her own.
Baconator
(1,459 posts)Anyone who doesn't find her to be "warm, witty, and absolutely delightful" must be a 30 year consumer of right wing media.
What a load...
Standing by for "Anyone who doesn't like her is a misogynist"...
niyad
(113,302 posts)Baconator
(1,459 posts)... and why 2020 is shaping up to be the same way.
Condescending and broad brush bullshit...
dembotoz
(16,804 posts)that being said
i did vote for her
i did support her
i did work for her
as for bill
i did vote for him
i did support him
i did work for him
were they better than what the gop offered? obviously
but this hero worship is getting old
please remember you can be a strong dem and still not like hrc....that seems forgotten somehow
LisaM
(27,811 posts)what is it that she does or is that you find unlikeable?
Obviously, you don't need to answer if you don't want to, but what exactly is it you dislike? She seems engaged, smart, funny, warm, and to genuinely like other people.
I didn't particularly "like" Obama as a candidate, but I had reasons - I found him to be aloof at times, and I really didn't like how, at rallies, he'd go into an evangelistic cadence of speech. Of course I voted for him, and I thought he was very serviceable and dependable as President, but I can't say that I "liked" his persona as a candidate (from what I've seen in little snippets, I probably would very much like him as a friend, when he unbends and lets his sense of humor come out).
dembotoz
(16,804 posts)welfare reform or gee how republican can we act and still get dem votes
unpardonable sin and that is a BIG part of it
saw hrc a couple of times and quite honestly she just sets off red flags
i just don't get it.
years ago robert reich i think it was portrayed them more as rockerfeller republicans than dem
she is just to damn centrist....
leaves me cold
like i said...i voted for her
i worked for her
and i supported her
but i do not like her
LisaM
(27,811 posts)I, of course, do not imbue Hillary with all of Bill's characteristics, nor do I blame her for his legislative actions, but that aside, back in 1992, Bill Clinton was my next-to-last choice of all the primary candidates (the one below him was Tsongas).
At one of the debates, however, I realized that Bill Clinton was a funny and likeable person. Jerry Brown, in his humorless way, inserted his 800 number ("we take $5 donations and you can call....."..) and the moderator made some mild objection, and Bill Clinton burst out laughing and said, "oh, we all know Jerry's 800 number". In fact, he almost seemed disposed to give it out himself.
I think if I ever spent any time with Bill Clinton, I'd enjoy it. He likes other people and he's smart and funny. I remember seeing him sit down with Roger Ebert once and talk about movies for a full hour and his breadth of knowledge was amazing.
I like people who, themselves, like other people and can talk on a variety of subjects.
And, an endearing image I have of Bill Clinton is that, after 9/11, he rushed to New York and went out on the street to comfort people. He looked stricken.
treestar
(82,383 posts)It's the underpinning of why you don't like her. Could that be affected by a double standard?
FakeNoose
(32,639 posts)I believe that is the rule concerning excerpts from another website - we should not quote more than 4 paragraphs of the material. Has that rule been changed recently? If so I'm not aware of it.
I've been corrected when my post exceeded the limit (a few months ago.) Please realize that I'm not criticizing the subject matter or the reason for the post, only that too many paragraphs have been copied and pasted here. When you provide the link to the prevously published material, we can jump to read the rest of the article on the other website.
Thanks
niyad
(113,302 posts)smirkymonkey
(63,221 posts)tblue37
(65,342 posts)Aristus
(66,349 posts)I started to look for a window to throw them out of.
I don't give a shit about likable. I wanted someone qualified for the job. And she filled the bill like no other candidate in US history...
niyad
(113,302 posts)Response to niyad (Original post)
Post removed
Arazi
(6,829 posts)Tammy Duckworth for example could never be slotted into this essay. Or Elizabeth Warren, Gabby Giffords or Kamala Harris.
It's unfair dammit but it's real. Time to acknowledge it and move the fuck on
bettyellen
(47,209 posts)Hillary herself took huge dips when running and then bounced back after she won. The phenomenon has actually been studied widely. The press treated her horribly, repeating again and again how unlikable "other" people thought she was till half the country was convinced that- and that it should matter!
treestar
(82,383 posts)The same thing will happen. The double standards. Things will be found for the right to use to make the wrong no matter what they do.
Snackshack
(2,541 posts)President, still might someday. I have the upmost respect for her and all she has accomplished over the decades. She's an amazing lady.
But there is no denying the fact that she is one of the most polarizing figures in politics.
niyad
(113,302 posts)reichwing hate machine.
lindysalsagal
(20,683 posts)Her churchiness and hawkishness worried me, yet she's labelled a socialist? That's absurd. But the hate is real and so is the ensuing corruption of everything.
No, I don't share the author's fondness, but I voted for her and would put her in the Whitehouse ahead of all of them save Bernie.
It would have been a great presidency, but she would have spent it in defence mode 24/7. The hatred would have been even worse than it was for Obama, and that's saying something. I wanted her seating the supremes, more than anything else. Not sure she would have gotten healthcare fixed: I suspect she was in big pharma's pocket.
Awsi Dooger
(14,565 posts)For me it's ruining broccoli with cheese. I'll never understand why anyone would want to do that.
The double standards are at the core of misogyny. We can all identify with that. Some women just accept them rather than fight them, which could lead to anger, which we know, as women, that if we are angry we are "crazy."
I recall my mother saying you should not show any interest in a young man, lest he thinks you are "chasing him." Which of course, he won't like. I remember a friend saying I was too "aloof" and acted like I did not care, which of course, men don't like. And these were females! They just accepted and enforced the whole idea that we are always wrong; it's what the men want that matters. We have to cater to the individual male and be what he wants. Who we are does not matter.
It is hilarious to hear left wing people say Hillary is no different from a Republican and on the same day hear some right winger call her a Marxist. She has to be what the person wants, or she is wrong.
mopinko
(70,102 posts)such a deep seated thing in humans.
i am the very definition of a crone, and often describe the bs around my farm as- i am stuck in a disney movie.
just dare to be an old woman w property, w some money, and look out. you will make enemies. people who never even met you will hate you.
i always understood the box that hillary was in. in another time, she would have been drowned to see if she was a witch.
sigh. we have such a long way to go.
niyad
(113,302 posts)crone power!!!
niyad
(113,302 posts)mopinko
(70,102 posts)dont know if this is correct, but i once read that a lot of the women were single, monied and landed. such a horrifying combination to the average knuckle dragger, then and now.
niyad
(113,302 posts)some property, or refused to bow to the authority of the rcc. don't forget, that when a person was arrested for witchcraft, all property was seized--so one aspect was a massive land and goods grab.
niyad
(113,302 posts)Burning Times
In the cool of the evening, they used to gather,
'neath the stars in the meadow circling an old oak tree.
At the times appointed by the seasons of the earth and
the phases of the moon.
In the center, often stood a woman, equal with the others
respected for her word.
One of the many they call the witches, the healers and
the teachers of the wisdom of the Earth.
And the people grew in the knowledge she gave them,
herbs to heal their bodies, smells to make their spirits whole.
Hear them chanting healing incantations, calling for the wise ones
celebrating in dance and song.
Isis, Astarte, Diana, Hecate, Demeter, Kali, Inanna
There were those who came to power, through domination.
They were bonded in their worship of a dead man on a cross.
They sought control of the common people by demanding allegiance
to the church of Rome.
And the Pope he commenced the inquisition, as war against the women
whose powers they feared.
In this holocaust, in this age of evil, nine million European
women they died.
And a tale is told of those who by the hundreds, holding hands together
chose their deaths in the sea.
While chanting the praises of the Mother Goddess, their refusal of betrayal
women were dying to be free.
Isis, Astarte, Diana, Hecate, Demeter, Kali, Inanna
Now the Earth is a witch, and we still burn her. Stripping her down
with mining and the poison from our wars.
Still to us the Earth is a healer, a teacher and a mother.
The weaver of a web of light that keeps us all alive.
She gives us the vision to see through the chaos,
she gives us the courage, it is our will to survive!
Isis, Astarte, Diana, Hecate, Demeter, Kali, Inanna
ZX
oct99
niyad
(113,302 posts)aikoaiko
(34,169 posts)Last edited Mon Sep 18, 2017, 05:51 PM - Edit history (1)
I can't really say that I like her as much as Sady Doyle likes her, the author of the piece in the OP.
I can't really say that I was or am with her because I never really had the impression she was with me.
I do respect HRC and I wish she were president. I voted for her.
Orsino
(37,428 posts)Implicitly acknowledges that some of the best politicians become symbols, and may resist categorization.
niyad
(113,302 posts)samnsara
(17,622 posts)niyad
(113,302 posts)mercuryblues
(14,531 posts)Hillary is a woman who has had friends since primary school and her college days. An unlikable person would not have a group of friends for over 50 years. She never had a high turnover rate of employees. IOW she created great a work environment and people stayed with her for years and they still correspond with her, as evident in her released emails. You don't normally do that unless you like the boss.
I have found her to be a very humble person, when she succeeds, she always says it was a team effort and named people the went above and beyond toward the common goal. What I took from her recent campaign is that she is uncomfortable tooting her own horn and when others compliment her. Maybe that is the result of hearing nothing but negative spins and outright lies about herself in the media for decades.
I will admit that I did not vote for her in the 2008 primaries. About a week or 2 after my primary I watched a debate between her, Obama and Edwards. I immediately wished I could take my (Edwards)vote back and vote for her. Then the shit hit the fan with Edwards and I was pissed at myself for voting for him.
Has she made mistakes, yes. So did Obama n his campaigns and those were not held against him by Democrats, yet hers were.
She dared not to sit down and shut up.