Why We Love to Hate Hillary

[zippy890]

By Jack Hitt, Mother Jones
http://www.alternet.org/story/46237/


"Hillary Clinton is like our national Rorschach: She stokes our every emotion, from our deepest fears to our darkest hatreds."
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"Hillary-hating is such a national pastime, for both Democrats and Republicans, that it should be its own verb: "Hillarating." "
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"The source of the strong feelings goes all the way back to when we were introduced to her as Bill Clinton's copresident," says Nora Bredes, director of the Susan B. Anthony Center for Women's Leadership in Rochester, New York. After the health care defeat in 1993, Hillary retreated into being a wife and then a proper first lady before emerging again "as an international leader and then in the late '90s re-creating herself as a victim of his infidelity and then again stepping out as a candidate for the Senate," says Bredes. "People get uncomfortable when it's not a neat story. Is she a progressive feminist or a cautious moderate? People don't know exactly who she is, and so different reactions are almost invited."
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"She is a Cosmo quiz of an enigma, so let's cut right to the answer key in the back pages and find out what kind of Hillary you see.:

The Martha Stewart Hillary: For you, the New York senator is, as Newt Gingrich's mother once observed, "a bitch," or, as William Safire phrased it, "a congenital liar." You tend to relish the catty details that reveal her as a petty-minded overachiever, like when she peevishly denied her ghostwriters writing credit....

The Tammy Wynette Hillary: The famous invocation of the country-western singer happened during a 60 Minutes interview in 1992. Hillary defended her husband's philandering by saying, "I'm not sitting here some little woman, standing by my man like Tammy Wynette." And this is where it can get tricky. Most people forget Hillary's next line: "I'm sitting here because I love him." The cognitive dissonance is confusing, because, of course, that is the Tammy Wynette position....

The Eleanor Roosevelt Hillary: This Hillary first emerged at her 1969 college graduation, when her commencement speech was considered so controversially feminist that it landed her in the pages of Life magazine...

The Dianne Feinstein Hillary: You see her as a phony centrist always triangulating toward the ideological middle, willing to betray her true liberal self for power.
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The Lisa Simpson Hillary: We're seeing of lot of this conscientious Hillary lately.

The Diana Prince Hillary: Bill's wife is the secret identity of Wonder Woman. Is there anything she can't do? Even if you hate her, you admire her fundraising ability and her $8 million book advance...

The Lady Macbeth Hillary: You fixate on pictures of Hillary wearing big dark sunglasses, behind which she conspires to take over the world.

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I recommend reading this whole article - the gist of it is that sexism plays a big role in people's attitude toward Hillary. even liberals and democrats.

I was discussing Hillary Clinton with a feminist friend of mine recently, and the thing that bothered her the most about Hillary, which she couldn't let go of, was the question " Why didn't she leave Bill after the Monica thing?"

I'n not a big fan of Hillary, but this article made me rethink some of my own criticisms of her and what lies beneath it.