Every single Pennsylvanian should see this video by next Tuesday. Seriously.
Hillary Clinton, 1992, dismissing stay-at-home moms:
Talk about hypocrisy and elitism.
A brief update: I may have buried the essential point of this diary, so I'm going to highlight it here for the sake of clarity:
My point here isn't to agree with William Safire.
Rather, my point is that $109 million later, Hillary Clinton has become William Safire.
In other words: It's the hypocrisy, stupid. It's the unprincipled willingness to do or say anything to win.
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Transcript:
"Those of us who have tried to have a career, tried to have an independent life, certainly somebody like myself...you know, I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas but what I decided to do was fulfill my profession which I entered before my husband was in public life."
First, let me say that my mom raised me mostly as a single parent. I spent time with my dad, but most of my time was under my mom's roof. Obviously, she worked. She's a feminist, and she raised me as a feminist. (I'm a man -- we can be feminists too!) One of my best friends spent three years as a stay-at-home dad. What I'm saying is that while Clinton's comments were indeed dismissive, on the larger question of whether women should have the freedom to choose their own career paths, I completely agree.
But that's not the issue here. The issue here is Hillary Clinton's utter hypocrisy -- and her utter "me-first" selfishness.
After Clinton made her comments, the conservative media attacked Clinton harshly for her words. Here's what William Safire (a very conservative NYT columnist at the time) wrote:
Her first gaffe, derogating the Tammy Wynette stand-by-your-man pose, can
be excused as an unfortunate choice of words under incredible pressure.
But Mrs. Clinton's second outbreak of foot-in-mouth disease -- "I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas" -- betrayed ignorance of the fundamentals of campaigning: You do not defend yourself from a conflict-of-interest charge by insulting a large segment of the voting public.
The cookies-and-tea stereotype is elitism in action. Even the columnist Ellen Goodman, a grass-roots feminist, was moved to comment: "Ouch."
My point here isn't to agree with William Safire.
Rather, my point is that $109 million later, Hillary Clinton has become William Safire.
Now she's the one attacking Barack Obama as an elitist. Now
she's the one saying that he is enabling the right-wing machine. Is there no
principle she finds sacred?
Is there anything she will not say or do?
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A big shout out to Carthage (who is a kossack after all! you know who you are) for finding this video!
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Also posted at The Jed Report. You can digg it there here.