Month: August 2016

THE DIFFICULT HUSBANDRY OF HILLARY AND HUMA

 

There was media speculation today that Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign might be jeopardized by the fact that both she and her top aide are married to men who cheated on them.  I wouldn’t have given that nonsense a second thought if it had appeared in the National Enquirer, the official organ of the Trump campaign.  Instead, it was on the front page of the New York Times. It  was in a piece about Anthony Weiner once again getting caught with his iPhone at crotch level.   The sexting former congressman is married to Huma Abedin, Clinton’s longtime assistant. This from the Times:

“Mr. Weiner’s extramarital behavior also threatens to remind voters about the troubles in the Clinton’s own marriage over the decades, including Mrs. Clinton’s much-debated decision to remain with then-President Bill Clinton after revelations of his relationship with Monica Lewinsky.”

Really?  Does our culture change that slowly?  It took 144 years for women to win the right to vote in this country.  They’ve been given a ballot since 1920, but until a few weeks  ago, not one of them has ever been nominated for president by a major political party.  Hillary Clinton finally breaks through the ceiling’s last shard of glass, only to be told that she should have kept her husband from straying if she wanted to be president.  Either that, or divorce him.

Bill Clinton not only cheated and lied about it, he was subsequently rewarded with a 73% approval rating in his second term.  But Hillary is somehow disqualified  because she didn’t stand on her man or kick him to the curb.  And now poor Huma is in the same sinking boat, a powerful woman too busy with her career to properly service her poor husband, who had to go out and find an app for that.

This is all very reflective of American life in the 19th century, except for the app part.  Marriage was an asymmetrical institution, more about property rights than partnership.  A wife was supposed to tend to her husband’s every need in exchange for his bringing home the bacon or, in vegan households, an appropriate soybean substitute.  A husband who frequently strayed from the marital bed brought disrepute upon his wife for not taking sufficient care of him.

I totally get where we have been.  What I don’t understand is why is it taking us so long to move on?  Hillary Clinton and Huma Abedin are among the most powerful people in this country.  To blame them for the caddish and ribald choices their husbands made seems so yesterday.

Look, this is not a paid political advertisement for the Clinton campaign.  Although I look forward to voting for her, I respect legitimate objections to her candidacy.  Many of her public choices have landed her in jams she could and should have avoided.  If you don’t trust her, don’t vote for her.  If you don’t like her position on trade, don’t vote for her.  If you don’t like her tax plan, don’t vote for her. But rejecting Hillary Clinton on the basis of her husband’s sins is taking us back to a place we should have left a long time ago.

IN THE BEGINNING

And so it came to pass, in the twelfth month of retirement: I started a damn blog!  It was either that or take up Jewel Dash, and all of those sparkling colors give me a headache.

Well, it was a little more than that. It all started with Facebook, the gateway drug for verbal sharing addicts.  After a lengthy hiatus, I returned to the site in June.  Like the prodigal son, I tried to make it right.  Okay, the truth is that I broke a couple of ribs and could barely move without screaming.  I needed something to take my mind off the pain.  Percocet worked, but Facebook had fewer side effects.

For the first couple of weeks, I quietly lurked about, trying to absorb the culture of social media.  I checked out the baby and cat pictures, the political diatribes, the casserole recipes and the weather reports from various vacation spots.  I knew, at some point, that I needed to yield to that little box at the top of the page, the one that kept asking the same question:  “What’s on your mind?”  That was a challenge for me.  It wasn’t that I had nothing to say; the problem was figuring out how to say it to a diverse audience.

At last count, I had 252 Facebook friends from a variety of demographic sources:  relatives, neighbors, former classmates, people I worked with.  Their ages span at least four generations.  In that mix are Republicans, Democrats, Independents, Libertarians and Socialists.  There are those who think Donald Trump is an idiot and those who see him as a gift from God.  Some of these friends have been personally and viscerally pained by police shootings of young black men this summer. Others are proud family members of police officers, concerned about the tarnishing of those they love with a brush they don’t deserve.

How, I wondered, do I say what’s on my mind without hurting people I care about, without adding more divisive noise to a world that seems to be drowning in it?  So I decided to violate Facebook protocol and write in paragraphs instead of sentences.  I knew I shouldn’t take up a lot of space on a site designed more for rapid scrolling than ponderous reading. Still, I needed more than a bumper sticker if I was going to explain my thoughts in a way that would not scorch any earth with those who held a contrary view.

I’ve been a FB pontificator now for almost three months, waxing away on issues of the day, everything from Trump to lesbian farmers, from the death of a governor I once covered to the transformative powers of a summer rainbow.  The ribs healed several weeks ago but I continued to write.  As I did, I received a number of kind comments suggesting that I start a blog.  I suspect this was a gentle way of saying I was writing way too long for FB, and I was.

So here I am, on the verge of turning 67, struggling my way through yet another technological adventure.  In my quick research, I was stunned to learn that almost everyone already has a blog. At least it seems that way.  There are blogs about yeast infections, overactive bladders, anger management and adult men who are way too involved with My Little Pony.  Those bloggers – and you – have my solemn word that I will never touch those subjects in this space.

Instead, I will do what I had been doing on Facebook. I will give you a few paragraphs of prose every now and then, crafted, if I’m lucky, with a tablespoon or two of insight, along with an occasional dash of irony and wit.   If you are looking for a shrill voice to slap down those with contrary opinions, this isn’t the place.  You may, instead, want to check out one of the anger management blogs. Or, better yet, the My Little Pony sites.