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Sarah Vowell: Hillary Clinton Made Me Cry
I was planning to vote for Mrs. Clinton for the boring reason that she had been my senator in New York, and though I didn’t always agree with her, I thought she did a commendable job. Just as I voted for the president not because he was a transformative racial messiah but because he seemed like a sensible Democrat with emotional intelligence who sure could string a sentence together. That and some of us actually like the people of Hawaii.
But the other night when the D.N.C. rolled that montage of non-dame presidential faces I wept so hard I had to open a new box of tissues. I cried like a 14-year-old girl for the 14-year-old girl I once was and because Geraldine Ferraro and Jeannette Rankin did not live to see it. Feeling represented does matter in a representative democracy. (But it matters more to elect the candidate who is not bonkers.)
Turns out, there is such a thing as progress. Now we have our first major-party female presidential candidate. Someday we’ll have another, and we might not have to sit through speeches, however charming, about how she’s datable and maternal. Though we might enjoy speeches about how she is at least as datable and maternal as Richard Nixon.
We have had our first black president, but he’s the son of an African goat herder. Being the great-granddaughter of a half-Seminole shepherd during the Texas range wars, I am proud that mixed-race heirs of livestock caretakers have finally stormed the executive branch. But getting a commander in chief who is the progeny of the wound of slavery is still on this country’s to-do list. As Michelle Obama pointed out in her convention speech, it’s a very big deal that her daughters, descendants of their mother’s slave ancestors, play with their dogs on the White House lawn, and some day it will be another big deal when we elect the kin of slaves to sit behind the Resolute Desk.
But the other night when the D.N.C. rolled that montage of non-dame presidential faces I wept so hard I had to open a new box of tissues. I cried like a 14-year-old girl for the 14-year-old girl I once was and because Geraldine Ferraro and Jeannette Rankin did not live to see it. Feeling represented does matter in a representative democracy. (But it matters more to elect the candidate who is not bonkers.)
Turns out, there is such a thing as progress. Now we have our first major-party female presidential candidate. Someday we’ll have another, and we might not have to sit through speeches, however charming, about how she’s datable and maternal. Though we might enjoy speeches about how she is at least as datable and maternal as Richard Nixon.
We have had our first black president, but he’s the son of an African goat herder. Being the great-granddaughter of a half-Seminole shepherd during the Texas range wars, I am proud that mixed-race heirs of livestock caretakers have finally stormed the executive branch. But getting a commander in chief who is the progeny of the wound of slavery is still on this country’s to-do list. As Michelle Obama pointed out in her convention speech, it’s a very big deal that her daughters, descendants of their mother’s slave ancestors, play with their dogs on the White House lawn, and some day it will be another big deal when we elect the kin of slaves to sit behind the Resolute Desk.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/01/opinion/campaign-stops/hillary-clinton-made-me-cry.html?smid=tw-share&_r=1
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