Tuesday, February 26, 2008

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Of course Chelsea Clinton has every right to campaign for her mother, in whatever way she likes. Just as every other American has a right to an opinion, about that or any other thing a public person does in public. An opinion of their own, not something that the campaign put out, and expected everyone to echo, like were all drones. She put herself out there. Or her mother’s campaign pimped Chelsea out there.

Of course we’re all going to say that now. Again and again. Why, because we can, and because it’s true. Besides, it reminds us all how old and out of touch the Clintons really are. How desperate the campaign was to have some sort of win, even at the cost of Hillary and Chelsea Clinton’s names being eternally linked with the words “pimped out” forever made immortal by Mrs. Shuster’s baby boy. Why should we assume that he doesn’t have a mother too?

Hillary Rodham Clinton (yes, that is how she signed that nasty letter to MSNBC) reacted to David Shuster’s comments and observations not as a mother, but as a flailing candidate who thought she could get some mileage out of it. She simply misjudged the tenor of the times. Again. Go figure.

I think she signed her name that way because as a faux feminist, she needed to dog whistle the actual feminists of the country, to come riding to her rescue, and a few of them bless their poor aching, betrayed, hearts, did.

I was most struck by an opinion penned by Susan Estrich, comparing the Chelsea Clinton of today to her own son, back in the day when he was a small child, and a pro-lifer went a bit nuts on her in front of said small child. Apple seed, meet orange tree.

Susan Estrich, whether or not you agree with her positions, her attitude or her personal air of superiority, has in fact spent her adult life promoting a cause she regarded as very important, not a small point. Yet she decided to undermine all that effort, cave to peer pressure in support of the good ol’ girl network. She tried to justify an irrational public tantrum by Hillary Clinton. Stunning heartbreak. Ouch! I’m angry about it. Estrich is likely smarting over a self-inflicted wound. She has her reasons, to be sure, but what if a man; any man had penned Susan Estrich’s opinion?

Shuster did not attack Chelsea Clinton. Chelsea was the object of the sentence, not the subject; that was the campaign.

Chelsea Clinton is in her late twenties. She works for Clinton benefactors, making six-figures a year. She entered the workforce fewer than five years ago, and has always made six figures a year. Now she has the temerity to talk publicly about a glass ceiling? Disgusting.

I don’t fault Chelsea Clinton for banking money while she can. I don’t fault her for working on the campaign, but I do think the press has shown too much deference to Chelsea. Not that the space that she was given as a child bothers me at all, but now she and her parents feel entitled to keep everything a one way kind of relationship. The Clintons are entitled to try, but nobody owes them anything. When you show open contempt to an entire industry, often times you get back what you give. It is not unethical to buddy up to super-delegates and snub the very reporters even a nine year- old child. But to expect those whom you snub to say only nice, reverent words about you is not realistic.

Poor Wolfie. I mean that, really, I really do.

Chelsea Clinton isn’t any more or less precious than anybody else’s adult offspring. She does not merit special reverence. Mrs. Lewinsky’s little girl didn’t seek the spot light either. Pity neither she nor her mother, had the foresight to attend Wellesley.

If Chelsea Clinton were any kind of a person, she would have put a stop to this before her mother sent that nasty letter. Before that nasty letter was signed, Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Now we hear that she prefers to be called Senator Clinton. Fine, so perhaps somebody in the campaign could mention that to their printer, put that on the signs and bumper stickers. Consistency would create less confusion.

What you can’t do, is brag about breaking the highest, hardest glass ceiling in this nation and expect to do it unscathed. Doing something for the very first time is hard, whatever the thing is. Ask the first girl who went to military school, was it hard? Was everybody kind and fair? Did she have to be better, smarter than the boys? To be a pioneer is to take the arrows. Also it’s best to keep the whining private.

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