Did you ever go on a date with one of those guys who thinks that if one splash of cologne is sexy, eight will be positively irresistible? After you've crawled, gasping, onto the street and the blue tone has faded from your lips and fingernails, you kind of want to go back and explain to him, gently, that many things in this world are really best in moderation. Not enough to actually swim back into that overpowering miasma of Polo, mind you. But as you walk home, you are sort of wrapped in a wistful longing that someone would set him straight.
I'm getting that feeling about Hillary. Cry once, you're human. Cry all the time, and it's a schtick. A schtick, moreover, that suggests you're a cynical, manipulative woman who uses tears to get what you want.
Remember when, a few weeks (months?) ago, Hillary did all of the Sunday morning talk shows on the same day? What I recall is that she brought out a particular laugh that day. On every one of the shows, at some point she made a point of giving a long, drawn out laugh that was supposed to appear spontaneous and a bit girlish. Some of them weren't badly done but others really were painful.
Ann,
Here, again, is the youtube montage of what you're referring to:
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Hillary+cackle
"It seems like the southern belle Hillary Clinton is back again. We picked this audio tip off of The Drudge Report. The link will take you directly to the You Tube link. It’s pretty funny. Obviously Hillary believes that whenever she talks to blacks, she must degrade and insult them by adopting a southern twang. Does Hillary actually believe that African Americans can’t understand plain English spoken without an accent? How condescending can a political candidate be?"
http://shoptheright.com/justsayno/?cat=16
60% of the time it works every time.
Damn. I predicted a new crying episode in the comments of one of these blogs a couple of days ago. I didn't think it would be an old lady in Reno who'd cause her to choke up again. I predicted a young hispanic boy in Las Vegas.
Come to think of it, that wasn't a very bold prediction. Didn't we all know a new "emotional moment" was coming down the pike?
Maybe it's just the time of the month?
Politicians are all manipulative - that's what they do. Some are just more obvious at it than others. They all work with focus groups and media people to figure out how to manipulate public opinion. Anyone who thinks Clinton is more manipulative than any other major candidate on either side is deluding themselves.
Whether there are real principles under the layers of presentation is a valid question, but hard to know. I think Edwards has a real long term interest in issues of economic justice. Gore clearly has genuine environmental concerns. Ron Paul means what he says. But in general, you're better off focusing on their positions on the issues, and how competent and effective they'll be in office.
All this focus on style, from big name newspapers through blogs, is one reason we have disasters like Bush. Whether Clinton (or any other candidate) has what it takes to deal with all the players in the health care area and come out at the other end with a decent bill is an infinitely more important question than whether the tears were genuine.
"Whether Clinton ... has what it takes to deal with all the players in the health care area and come out at the other end with a decent bill is an infinitely more important question than whether the tears were genuine."
Uh, bad news there too:
"My two cents' worth -- and I think it is the two cents' worth of everybody who worked for the Clinton Administration health care reform effort of 1993-1994 -- is that Hillary Rodham Clinton needs to be kept very far away from the White House for the rest of her life. Heading up health-care reform was the only major administrative job she has ever tried to do. And she was a complete flop at it. She had neither the grasp of policy substance, the managerial skills, nor the political smarts to do the job she was then given."
http://econ161.berkeley.edu/movable_type/2003_archives/001600.html
By now I bet Brad DeLong wishes he could somehow make that post go down the memory hole -- but there it is.
Peter, of course, is correct. The art of politics is to manipulate the voters into thinking you support their positions. This involves acting and lying. The winner is the one that does it best.
Where's the actually clip of her doing this? You link to a linkless blog post and I can't find it on youtube.
Please tell me, Megan, you actually saw this. I know you wouldn't repost a silly anecdote that would be irrelevant even if it were proven true. Surely you must've seen it myself.
And as someone else mentions above, of course politicians act differently on camera than they would otherwise. Maybe if superficial idiots didn't over analyze everything from where they put their hands to how they laugh to what makes them show emotion, they wouldn't worry about it so much.
"Why is television so devoid of intelligent thought, mommy?"
"Shut up, baby, I'm watching American Idol!"
Erich Schwarz's post is an example of exactly the kind of argument those who oppose Clinton should be making. Those who support her can argue back that she's learned a lot and is now likely to be more effective than than the other candidates. The voters can decide.
THAT's a real election - unlike the crap we get with crying, and laughs, and $400 haircuts and all the rest.
Please, for god's sakes, stop talking about the candidates' facial expressions. It's the earth tones of the 2008 campaign. We are witnessing, again, the idiocification of the presidential campaign.
Whatever. Obama had a fundraiser invited on the Laura Ingraham radio show between the Iowa and NH votes. "Hope, idealism" he said and luckily didn't swoon so bad he needed to be revived. OTOH that might have been better than what happened next. Asked about the success of the surge in Iraq, this basker in the light of all that is ideal and wonderful said that 'It was inevitable that the Shia and Sunni would fight a civil war in Iraq (so let's just leave them to it).' I think that really is the first time I have thought of a political position, 'That's not Christian. We shouldn't do that.' I don't think Hillary would make the 'idealistic' mistake suggested for Obama. Her crying is a signal she feels she needs the support of the people.
In a perfect world, I agree that whether Hillary's tears are genuine or fake should be irrelevant.
But in this world, there is good evidence that a lot of voters went for Hillary in New Hampshire because they thought she cried genuine tears that gave them genuine insight into her soul. If repeated crying episodes reveal that those tears were not genuine, then that's highly relevant.
Put differently, the smart commentators on this board may already "know" that Hillary, like all politicians, is fake and manipulative. But there are obviously lots of voters who don't know that about Hillary, so it's perfectly legitimate to point that out.
star, that's absurd. You just said "we know that everything they do is fake. some people don't. therefore, we must argue about whether or not it is fake because some people don't think it its."
If everything they do is fake, why are we only arguing about this?
Also, someone please point to a poll that says "I voted for hillary because she cried" was responded to in the affirmative.
Given the crying and good outcome in NH, the question isn't "why is Hillary crying," it's "How long till Edwards and Obama are sniffling for the cameras, too?" And maybe some of the Republicans could get into the act, too? Imagine McCain tearfully asking why the American people don't want to stick their d--ks further into the Iraqi sausage grinder, or Romney dabbing at his eyes while he complains that being called "insincere" hurts his feelings (and besides, his insincerity was last week--he's changed all that since then).