posted on Jan, 11 2008 @ 02:55 AM
Quietly minding their own business and reading a book doesn't sound like a feminist or a nazi to me, nor am I sure why reading at a football game is
disrespectful.
Football players have thick skin. They can deal with half naked fat men yelling at them while they're trying to do their jobs, and they can deal with
their fans leaving in the middle of their performance to get beer and nachos... I think they can handle someone reading a book.
Hillary strikes me as an unlikable person. That much I will admit. I see her that way because the phrase "near-messianic personal ambition" seems
very appropriate to her. But thats politics for you. I could say the same thing of George W. Bush, Al Gore, John Kerry, Bill Richardson (Richardson is
the worst offender in the whole field), Fred Thompson, and to a lesser degree Ron Paul and Barrack Obama... and that's just the list of people in
whom I really saw that quality all at once. I'm sure the others possess it to some degree or another as well.
Obama pretty much came out and said it in his book, and he was right- running for office is an inherently arrogant exercise. You've got to be just a
little bit of a self-aggrandizing jerk to think that your country needs you, wants you, or could even survive you. A normal person with a healthy dose
of humility would probably say that its best that they aren't running for office (i'm guessing on that one though, because I'm a poli sci major and
I'm one of those self-aggrandizing jerks).
I think Hillary gets unfairly singled out on this because she's a woman. I know some people will say I'm just playing the sexism card, but I'm not
going to try and deny centuries upon centuries of social precedent.
Western civilization has put the fairer sex on a pedestal, and then stuck that pedestal in the back corner of the basement for hundreds of years.
Even those of us who respect women and don't think of ourselves as having any trace of misogyny in us have still learned the things we know from a
culture that hasn't quite accepted women as equals yet.
I know this because I can see what that external quote in the first post is saying and I want to agree with it at first glance, but when I think
critically, I realize that Bill Richardson is actually a bigger offender and yet he infuriates me less.
So I temper my dislike for Hillary. Do I want her to be my president. No. I think she's been dishonest, I think her ideas are inferior to those of
Barrack Obama in some respects, I believe that her popularity is owed in some portion to the simplicity of the American electorate, and I think she's
a polarizing figure who will strengthen the Republican party and create a stalemate between them and the Democrats, resulting in inaction at a time
that desperately demands action.
But in all of that she is no worse than Ron Paul or Rudy Guilliani (incidentally, those are the names of men who don't have a snowball's chance in
hell. Hillary Rodham would be a third such name, if not for having Clinton affixed). So if she is no worse than Ron Paul or Rudy Guilliani, I think it
is only fair that I despise her no more than them, and react no differently in the event that she does become president.
So cut Hillary a little extra slack- not a lot necessarily- just a few feet more than you are initially inclined to, however much or little that might
be.