The obituary does include the women-in-hell quote:
In 2016, Ms. Albright again supported Mrs. Clinton for the presidency. At a campaign stop for the New Hampshire primary, Ms. Albright told a crowd, “There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other.” The line went viral. She had used it previously without objections. But some voters now found it offensive, taking it as a rebuke to younger women who supported a Clinton rival, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont.
An ardent feminist, Ms. Albright apologized in an opinion article in The Times. “I did not mean to argue that women should support a particular candidate based on gender,” she wrote. “But I understand that I came across as condemning those who disagree with my political preferences. If heaven were open only to those who agreed on politics, I imagine it would be largely unoccupied.”
On April 28, 1945 — 73 years ago — Italians hung the corpse of their former dictator Benito Mussolini upside down next to a gas station in Milan....
"Will We Stop Trump Before It’s Too Late?" has coy deniability. But why on earth would you go straight to dangling the upside down corpse of Benito Mussolini unless you meant to say violence is necessary?
The next 2 sentences also present death as the solution:
Two days later, Adolf Hitler committed suicide in his bunker beneath the streets of war-ravaged Berlin. Fascism, it appeared, was dead.
What's going on?! If you stick with the op-ed for 8 more paragraphs, you'll get to a paragraph that begins: "What is to be done?" (I can't understand why Albright used that phrase, which is the title of a famous pamphlet by Lenin.) Anyway, Albright answers the question with some nonviolent ideas:
First, defend the truth. A free press... is the protector of the American people. Second, we must reinforce the principle that no one, not even the president, is above the law. Third, we should each do our part to energize the democratic process by registering new voters, listening respectfully to those with whom we disagree, knocking on doors for favored candidates... We should also reflect on the definition of greatness.
Well, that's the opposite of violent. It's utterly bland! It doesn't even follow through on the "Before It’s Too Late" business in the title. There's no sense of urgent time pressure. She probably didn't write the title, so she may be out of the loop about the synergy between the title and the first paragraph. Once you get past that, you've got an op-ed that's too dull to print. It seems like some boilerplate speech of hers. Ridiculous, but actually also appalling, because the invitation to violence is plainly there and ought never to have been published.
Should you want to be the guy Bret Easton Ellis wants to write a novel about?
If you don't know what he's talking about, here's the hilarious/painful interchange between Miller (the Trump adviser) and Acosta (of CNN):
Selected quotes:
Acosta: “What the president is proposing here does not sound like it’s in keeping with American tradition when it comes to immigration. The Statue of Liberty says, ‘Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.’”
Miller: “I don’t want to get off into a whole thing about history here, but the Statue of Liberty is a symbol of liberty and lighting the world. It’s a symbol of American liberty lighting the world. The poem that you’re referring to, that was added later, is not actually a part of the original Statue of Liberty.”
Aside from his suitability as a character in a novel, Miller is certainly right that Acosta is conflating the Emma Lazarus poem with the Statue and that the original historical meaning of the statue precedes and is not the same as those famous lines in the poem. WaPo points that out:
“New Colossus” was not part of the original statue built by the French and given to the American people as a gift to celebrate the country’s centennial. Poet Emma Lazarus was asked to compose the poem in 1883 as part of a fundraising effort to build the statue’s base.... In 1903, 16 years after Lazarus’ death, the poem was inscribed on the statue’s base, just as millions of immigrants were streaming into New York harbor....
Earlier this year Rush Limbaugh blamed Lazarus for the false connection. “The Statue of Liberty had absolutely nothing to do with immigration,” Limbaugh said on a January 31 broadcast. “So why do people think that it does? Well, there was a socialist poet.”...
It was originally intended to be delivered to celebrate the centennial of the Declaration, the American Revolution.... The statue was not intended to recognize immigration. It was intended to recognize liberty and freedom. If you think they’re intertwined, don’t be misled.
Rush proceeds to mock Madeleine Albright for saying that Trump's immigration policy is making the Statue of Liberty cry:
The statue doesn’t cry. The statue is a statue. It’s made out of bronze. It doesn’t cry. There aren’t any tears coming from the eyes of the Statue of Liberty ’cause there aren’t any eyes, and the Statue of Liberty is not welcoming immigrants. What it represents is the beacon of liberty and freedom!
Yeah, well, maybe, but it's not made out of bronze. It's pure copper. We're just all misreading everything. But there's a continuum from misreading to interpretation. I can say for a fact that the statue is made out of copper, but the meaning of the statue is cultural, and it means what it has come to mean in the hearts of Americans. What the French had specifically in mind when they sent it to us is relevant if that's what's in our hearts.
"American Psycho"/I tried reading that a few months ago, and speaking of run-on sentences and that silly "grade" metric, I stopped reading after a two-page sentence which painfully detailed all the products and actions the guy used in his morning routine.
And yet, it you gave me 2 pages right now of Bret Easton Ellis's description of what he imagines Stephen Miller does and uses in his morning routine, I'd eagerly, happily read every word of it. I assume it would be... completely compelling.
"... not only on the sex cover-ups but the money grabs: You can have our bright public service side as long as you accept our dark sketchy side. Young women today, though, are playing by a different set of rules. And they don’t like the Clintons setting themselves above the rules."
Here's one of the highest-rated comments there (at the NYT):
Okay, so I'm supporting Bernie (as a Jewish male, I'm obligated to do so — right, Ms. Albright?). Even so, it's clear that none of Hillary's enemies in the top echelons of the GOP have anything on Maureen Dowd when it comes to pure, obsessive, unadulterated contempt. How many of these relentless screeds will The Times have to publish before its contractual obligations to their author are finally fulfilled? Whether it's an election year, an off-year or the (Chinese) Year of the Shrew there are simply no limits to the amount of spleen that Ms. Dowd has proven herself ready to vent when it comes to the affairs of Clinton and Clinton, Assassins at Large. I can't imagine just how many of the writer's loved ones have been bumped off over the years by this 21st Century version of the Borgias but the number must truly be immense. In any case, there's absolutely nothing in this op/ed piece that has anything new to say about Maureen's personal bête noirs. It may simply be time for her to knock off for a while, spend a few weeks (at least) on a beach in Cancun and try to find some other target for her all-consuming wrath. There IS another political party out there, after all, whose presidential candidates make Hillary look like Mother Teresa, particularly insofar as the rights of women are concerned.
"But last Saturday, in the excitement of a campaign event for Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire, that is essentially what I did, when I delivered a line I have uttered a thousand times to applause, nodding heads and laughter: 'There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other.' It is a phrase I first used almost 25 years ago, when I was the United States ambassador to the United Nations and worked closely with the six other female U.N. ambassadors. But this time, to my surprise, it went viral."
What does "the excitement of a campaign event for Hillary Clinton" have to do with it? She didn't blurt out something unusual in a moment of excitement. She repeated an old line that had worked over and over before audiences where people have nodded, applauded, and laughed. It was tested and true.
The op-ed, in the NYT, is titled "My Undiplomatic Moment." But how is a line "uttered a thousand times" characterizable as a "moment"? How can Albright portray it as a momentary deviation within a long career, when she's been saying it consistently?
I absolutely believe what I said, that women should help one another, but this was the wrong context and the wrong time to use that line.
But all those other times were appropriate, because the audience gave her a warm reception? She set the heads nodding, the ladies chuckling. Pivoting from her nonexplanation for her go-to-hell gaffe, Albright proceeds to get back to condescending to young women:
And while young women may not want to hear anything more from this aging feminist, I feel it is important to speak to women coming of age at a time when a viable female presidential candidate, once inconceivable, is a reality.
When was it inconceivable? It was certainly always conceivable to me. I was born in 1951 and grew up hearing that Margaret Chase Smith could be President. Maybe I'm not picking up the inconceivable/reality distinction.
[In the comments, rhhardin calls attention to the 2 abortion-related words in "a viable female presidential candidate, once inconceivable, is a reality." Within that metaphor, if Hillary is viable, then it's too late to abort her.]
Albright moves on to her concern about "the tone of the debate." Not her tone, telling women who don't support Hillary that there's a special place in Hell for them, but the tone those of other people. What's wrong with the tone? Here, she — absurdly — has nothing. She just muses that people are "complacent" about the gains women have made and that we need "an informed dialogue that crosses generations."
Albright badly embarrassed herself and lacks the skill and grace to talk her way into a good light. It makes me want to go back and review what she achieved for us as Secretary of State (other than being the first female Secretary of State).
I’m sure that my delight was shared by other dissident feminists everywhere....
Indeed!
As for Madeleine Albright, who said "There’s a special place in Hell for women who don’t help other women," Paglia says: "Waspishly policing the earth was evidently insufficient for the feminist politburo, who are now barging into the salvation and damnation game."
Yes, [Hillary's] been handed job after job, but primarily due to her very unfeminist association with a man. As a senator, she initiated nothing of substance, and as Secretary of State, she stumbled into one disastrous fiasco after another, escalating the destabilization of North Africa and the Mideast.
And she was handed an unopposed path to the Democratic Party nomination. Why?! She lost to Obama. She never proved she had what it takes to be a dominating campaigner. Everyone just cleared out of her way. But some old man had the nerve to step into the path and prove the inanity of the everyone else's deference to the ex-President's wife.
Hillary Clinton, in contrast, is a time-server and trimmer who cynically panders to every audience and who shuffles through policy positions like playing cards.
A trimmer. That's a rather British word, meaning someone who "inclines to each of two opposite sides as interest dictates," according to the OED, which attributes this usage "to Lord Halifax and those associated with him (1680–90), but by him accepted in the sense ‘one who keeps even the ship of state’; hence ‘one who changes sides to balance parties’ (Johnson)." Example from 1682: "A Trimmer, one neither Whigg nor Tory, is a Hater of Anti-christ, an Abominator of Enthusiasm."
Paglia wonders how Hillary ever got to be thought of as "a feminist icon." As for Gloria Steinem:
It was precisely because of the borderline lunacy of so many of those women [feminists, circa 1970] that I became a fan of Gloria Steinem from the moment she appeared on the national scene.
With her chic aviator shades, hip-huggers, and flowing, streaked-blonde hair, the telegenic Steinem normalized the public image of feminism and made it palatable to a vast mainstream. She projected steadiness and cordiality and presented feminist goals as utterly reasonable....
Former fandom renders Paglia, in her own eyes, an apt critic. Steinem resorted to "male-bashing." She alienated women who stayed home with their children and those who maintained a moral objection to abortion. She "and the leaders of the National Organization for Women... became backstage secret agents for the Democratic party," notably giving "Bill Clinton a free pass for his gross violation of fundamental sexual harassment principle." And Steinem denounced Paglia's magnum opus "Sexual Personae," comparing it to "Mein Kampf."
For nearly 25 years, Hillary Clinton, with her simmering subtext of contemptuous bitterness about men, has been pushed along and protected by a host of powerful women journalists in print and TV, Steinem chums or sympathizers who have a lot to answer for.
Hillary Clinton was there, clapping and laughing and — as the NYT put it — taking "a large sip of her beverage." Gruesome!
This is so wrong on so many levels, but I'm going to isolate one: Don't talk about Hell. Mixing religion and politics is a tricky matter. It can be the best of politics and the best of religion. It can be Martin Luther King Jr. orating about the Promised Land. But mostly it's bad politics and bad religion or just banality that soothes some people and makes others vaguely uneasy. But when you switch from religion as uplift — God bless America, Jesus calls us to love one another, etc. — to religion as condemnation — there’s a special place in hell — you've debased yourself and debased religion.
Do Madeleine Albright and Hillary Clinton believe in torturing their political enemies? That's what Hell is. Eternal torture. Maybe you think it's just a big joke or no one could take it literally. Well, if you don't believe in the religion that other people cling to, just leave it alone.
I listened to the whole thing — here — after seeing (on Instapundit and elsewhere) that she got "testy."
"Testy" is an interesting word to use to describe a woman. To me, it resonates with Hillary Clinton's discussion, in the "Fresh Air" interview, that as Secretary of State she was regarded, in those countries that don't recognize women's rights, as an "honorary man." ("When you're a secretary of state, as [Condoleezza] Rice and Madeleine Albright and I have discussed — it's perhaps unfortunate, but it's a fact — that you're treated as a kind of an honorary man or a unique woman who comes from another place outside of the religion, outside of the culture.")
But I'm indulging in etymological guesswork and can only insinuate that writers who use the word "testy" to disparage Hillary imagine — as I did — that there is a connection to the word "testicles." In fact, the word — which the (unlinkable) OED defines as meaning "Prone to be irritated by small checks and annoyances; impatient of being thwarted; resentful of contradiction or opposition; irascible, short-tempered, peevish, tetchy, ‘crusty’" — is derived from the Latin word for head, which relates to being "headstrong" or "obstinate" (which is the older and obsolete meaning of "testy").
It's true that the interview gets more intense at one point, on the subject of same-sex marriage, but that is because Terry Gross (the interviewer) decides to keep following up, probing, in an effort to get Hillary to concede that, years ago, she covered up her support for same-sex marriage because it was politically opportune. Gross was trying to pin something on her, and I liked it that Hillary noticed and, in the midst of eloquently elaborating her thought-out talking points on marriage equality, turned on a dime and put Gross in her place.
We need that kind of sharpness on our side. You can't be sliding along, acting amiable, when you're talking to Vladimir Putin. I want someone with that kind of mental and verbal skill working for us.
[Scott Walker's] battle to bring fairness to the taxpayers through commonsense reform of the public-sector collective-bargaining laws brought him scorn from the special interests and a recall election. Despite these threats, he stood tall. His reforms have brought tax reductions to his citizens and economic growth to his state. They have allowed public workers the freedom to choose whether to belong to a union. They have made Wisconsin a better place to live and work.
Doesn't that read like it was written for a children's newspaper?
ADDED: I don't know if Christie wrote that or just agreed to put his name on it, because from what I've seen so far on this Time list, it's all written in that flat, simple tone that assumes the reader has a mental age of about 10. For example: "Holder uses his power to defend Americans’ freedoms and thus our values of democracy and justice."
AND: "How much suffering can human beings tolerate? Unless he starts taking care of his people, the young generalissimo may be the first Kim to find out." And here's "Madeleine Albright" on Putin: "History is filled with aggressors who triumphed for a moment. Then failed." And: "Gray Davis" on Jerry Brown: "No longer the new kid, he’s now the adult in the room — the wise steward of our state’s resources." And: "If Kirsten Gillibrand wants to be a rock star, she’ll be a rock star. But she’d make a great President."
"McGinn, who is 63, admits to engaging in sexual banter with his assistant. He notes, however, that the subject of his study, the human hand, tempted such banter.... McGinn describes his relationship with the student as an 'intellectual romance.' But the student says she received an email from him saying that the two should have sex in his office during the summer when no one else is around. McGinn denies sending such an email. However, he admits sending an email that said 'had a hand job imagining you giving me a hand job.'"
That's Paul Mirengoff writing about the case of the philosophprof Colin McGinn, whom we were talking about the other day here. Mirengoff links to an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education that says:
While he resigned of his own accord, he says that he “couldn’t win,” because Donna E. Shalala, the university’s president, was determined to drive him out.
The highest profile members of the administration, no doubt, will also be sorting out their feelings. In January [1998], Clinton assured his Cabinet he was innocent, and Madeleine Albright, the secretary of state, stepped out onto the White House driveway to back him up.
"I believe the allegations are completely untrue," she said.
"I'll second that. Definitely," said William Daley, the commerce secretary.
"Third it," said Donna Shalala, the secretary of health and human services.
Third it. Ha. That's a lot to live down.
As for McGinn and "hand job." Should we empathize with a brilliant writer's impulse to riff amusingly with images and puns? The need for the inclusion of women in all of the academic fields trumps male complacency about sexual banter. I can't imagine wanting to use a student as a sounding board for anything that could be misconstrued as a sexual advance (unless one really were moving in on this student). McGinn openly attests to his high opinion of his own intelligence, but how can you not see all that risk? I've got to hypothesize that the risk was titillating and he chose to take it. I suspect the presence of Shalala as the authority figure in his territory only made the risk hotter.
"I'm not sure I'm going to state this exactly right," said the woman we once relied on to speak for America in the most delicate and momentous affairs*:
"But I think there are some who believe they are actually protecting women, you know, and that it is better for women to be taken care of. I think women want to take care of themselves, and I think having a voice in how that is done is very important. And frankly, I don’t understand —I mean, I'm obviously a card-carrying Democrat — but I can't understand why any woman would want to vote for Mitt Romney, except maybe Mrs. Romney."
____________________________________________
* I'm referring to foreign diplomacy, in her role as Secretary of State in the Clinton administration, but having written "most delicate and momentous affairs," I realized you might think I was referring to the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, which was "a most delicate and momentous affair" of a different kind. But there, she didn't speak for us. She spoke to us. She was the most prominent of the Clinton Cabinet members who allowed themselves to be pulled forward to vouch for him, and she famously said, "I believe that the allegations are completely untrue." The powerful man must be right, and the little lady must be lying. This, from a woman who now "frankly" doesn't "understand" how women think.
And by the way, that new quote of hers is damned sexist. She can't visualize how a woman could reason and analyze and come to a conclusion that the more conservative approach is better. She presents women — all women, apparently — as voting based on some kind of fuzzy, feel-y thinking about women, within which the only appeal of Romney is his wife.
ADDED: An emailer prompts me to see an alternative meaning in the phrase "why any woman would want to vote for Mitt Romney, except maybe Mrs. Romney." Obviously, I thought she was saying that some women might find Ann Romney so appealing that they'd want to vote for Romney. But now I see the ambiguity in those words. It can also mean that the only woman who'd want to vote for Mitt Romney is his wife. I think that is probably is what she meant. Actually, the whole quote is a mess (except for her one obviously true statement, which she herself flags as obvious: she's "a card-carrying Democrat").
Speaking for freedom, Bob's got an old song called "I Shall Be Free." It says:
Well, my telephone rang it would not stop
It’s President Kennedy callin’ me up
He said, “My friend, Bob, what do we need to make the country grow?”
I said, “My friend, John, Brigitte Bardot
Anita Ekberg
Sophia Loren”
(Put ’em all in the same room with Ernest Borgnine!)
It's not a slow jam, but like that Obama's slow jam the other day, it got that idea that sexual stimulation is what the country needs. (Speaking of old, there's that old Woody Allen joke: "I ... interestingly had, uh, dated ... a woman in the Eisenhower Administration ... briefly ... and, uh, it was ironic to me 'cause, uh . . . 'cause I was trying to, u-u-uh, do to her what Eisenhower has been doing to the country for the last eight years.)
Bob's most famous reference to the President is in "It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)":
While preachers preach of evil fates
Teachers teach that knowledge waits
Can lead to hundred-dollar plates
Goodness hides behind its gates
But even the president of the United States
Sometimes must have to stand naked
Lest you think that was sexy-naked, the year was 1965, and the President was LBJ.
"Smart and ruthless."/"Diplomats who dealt with him describe Kim as shrewd and calculating."/"In a demented sort of way, brilliant."/"Tactically brilliant."/"A very cunning person and very smart person."/"Was profoundly important around the world. I actually met him when I traveled there with Madeleine Albright."
Bush was the devil. George W. Bush was stupid, and he was the devil. He was the devil incarnate and Kim Jong-il, now Kim Jong-dead, very cunning, very smart person, profoundly important around the world. "I actually met him when I traveled there with Madeleine Albright." Speaking of Madeleine Albright, here she is, a montage of her on Kim Jong-il, now Kim Jong-dead, between 2003-2006.
ALBRIGHT: He said that he would really have loved to have been a movie director. He knew a lot about American movies and had suggestions for Oscar nominations and, you know, he also liked American sports, he liked Michael Jordan. It was possible to talk with him. He's not a nut. I think that's the main kind of point. I think that it's important actually not to make fun. He wanted me to e-mail with him. I think the thing that's interesting, Larry, is I do not believe that he's crazy. I know a lot of people have said that. I don't think so.
RUSH: It's a montage of former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright talking about Kim Jong-il, now Kim Jong-dead. He was a murdering tyrant. His people are among the poorest in the world and he's spoken of here in reverent terms. The best thing he had going for him, as far as these people are concerned, was he's not a Republican, he wasn't a conservative. Hitler and Stalin both loved American movies, too. This guy loved Michael Jordan. Wow, there's really a lot to recommend him. Bachmann and Perry are stupid. Kim Jong-il, not a nut, it would be a mistake to say that he's a nut.
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