Chelsea, on the other hand.
Sunday, April 19, 2015
Monday, April 13, 2015
The “Walking Dead”
When Karl Rove attacked Hillary for being too old, something like that, Bill Clinton went on TV and suggested that if you were to listen to Rove you would think Hillary was a member of the “walking dead.” This was months ago. And his use of that phrase struck me. Because I had used that precise phrase only a few weeks before that. There is this politician Hridayesh Tripathy in Nepal. I have admired him over the years. He wrote me a recommendation letter when I was applying for colleges in America. I was actually one rank below him in a political party with two MPs right before I came to America for college, too young to be running for anything.
Hridayesh had just lost a parliamentary election, actually elections to Nepal’s constituent assembly, its second constituent assembly. (Yes, you read that right. He was a MP back when he wrote the recommendation letter. In the years that followed Nepal ended up with an ultra left group that outshone the Shining Path of Peru. Time warps, political wormholes etc.) He reached out to me on Facebook. He was new to Facebook. Then we got talking on Viber. He was feeling crestfallen. He said he was getting old, and he was thinking of retiring from politics. This was his first electoral defeat.
To console him I said, if he was old, Sushil has to be considered a Walking Dead. Sushil is the current Prime Minister of Nepal, in his 70s, a short, thin Ronald Reagan, if you will, talking strictly of age. Hridayesh is barely past 50.
I preceded Bill Clinton by a few weeks in use of that particular phrase. And it was eery to me because this was probably the fourth or fifth time something like that had happened to me, where I had preceded Bill Clinton. They say serial killers can communicate with each other, even when they are not even aware of each others’ existence. I must be a pretty good student of the US presidency, and my political instincts must be sound.
Hridayesh had just lost a parliamentary election, actually elections to Nepal’s constituent assembly, its second constituent assembly. (Yes, you read that right. He was a MP back when he wrote the recommendation letter. In the years that followed Nepal ended up with an ultra left group that outshone the Shining Path of Peru. Time warps, political wormholes etc.) He reached out to me on Facebook. He was new to Facebook. Then we got talking on Viber. He was feeling crestfallen. He said he was getting old, and he was thinking of retiring from politics. This was his first electoral defeat.
To console him I said, if he was old, Sushil has to be considered a Walking Dead. Sushil is the current Prime Minister of Nepal, in his 70s, a short, thin Ronald Reagan, if you will, talking strictly of age. Hridayesh is barely past 50.
I preceded Bill Clinton by a few weeks in use of that particular phrase. And it was eery to me because this was probably the fourth or fifth time something like that had happened to me, where I had preceded Bill Clinton. They say serial killers can communicate with each other, even when they are not even aware of each others’ existence. I must be a pretty good student of the US presidency, and my political instincts must be sound.
Sunday, April 12, 2015
Hillary Clinton And The Global Gender Basics
When Hillary Clinton's email "scandal" took over the proverbial airwaves, I chuckled. I had to restrain myself from sending out a blog post missive, Saturday Night Live style, making fun of the fact that no, I don't think Hillary Clinton has sent out 30,000 emails in her lifetime ("Deleter In Chief," one tabloid headline screamed), the number of emails she is "accused" of deleting. I truly don't think Hillary Clinton has written and sent out 30,000 emails in her lifetime. But then when did facts get in the way of fiction in the Clinton "scandals!" Why will they start now?
When the dude Clinton launched his foundation, I feared even his disease trips to Africa might be spun into sex scandals. I am glad it did not happen, at least not to my knowledge. Whereas there are still big chunks of the country that think the Clintons murdered Vince Foster, and "Whitewatergate" (a small, failed land deal in a part of Arkansas, the remotest American state, that was remote even by Arkansas standards) was the Clinton Enron. Some black folks called Bill Clinton the first black president because the criminal justice system failed him so monumentally. How can Ken Starr do so much damage and get away with it! He is still walking around free!
Pretty much every detail of Hillary Clinton's life is out there. And I still do not underestimate the vast right wing conspiracy's (yes, such a thing exists) ability to stay fascinated by The Hillary. Her candidacy and presidency for that reason will stay interesting to even those who routinely err on the side of thinking she is better than she is.
It truly is about gender. And gender is all around you. Your mother, your grandmother, and her mother, your sister, cousin, daughter, friends, colleagues. There are a lot of women, look around, to paraphrase Larry Summers. The thing about sex is that is how you were born, Hillary once chided a young something reporter.
For me personally, Hillary 2016 only gets interesting after she puts a second woman on the ticket. A minority woman would be perfect. If you think gender is awkward, try race plus gender. I do not expect any of her policy positions to surprise me. I don't expect to "stay glued to the screen." I don't expect to follow closely. I read tech news mostly.
But you can not be the first woman to occupy the most powerful office on the planet, political and otherwise, and pretend you only owe it to those who voted for you. As soon as an American president is sworn in, she is no longer just president of those who voted for her, but also of those who might have voted against her. In this case, Hillary is going to belong to women across the world in ways the German Chancellor simply can not. Her having been Secretary of State and traveled the world so very extensively helps me relate to her. I am a Third World Guy. That is who I am for this lifetime.
And just like Barack Obama to me was about 500 years of world history, Hillary to me is about three and a half billion women. She needs a woman running mate because a woman running for and being president should no longer be news, not after her. It should feel normal. We should enter an era where half the time the best candidate on merits just so happens to be some woman.
FDR won a fourth time. Hillary doing two terms will be Barack Obama pulling a FDR. They are comrades.
On issues for me Hillary 2016 is all about Third World women. Nixon went to China, Hillary went to Burma. I was so impressed by what she was able to do for Burma. Especially because I was not even following the developments until the Big Splash showed up in the news. And I grew up practically next door to Burma.
The basics are pretty simple. Slavery should long have been extinct. But it still exists. Sex slavery should be so past tense, but it exists in huge numbers. There are more women sex slaves today than there were black slaves in Abraham Lincoln's time. Poverty is hard knocks, and micofinance is known to work, and Hillary bought into it a long time ago. Gender violence is cut and dry. It is no grey zone. Policing globally has to reorganize itself to bring an end to gender violence. Violence is violence, inside the home, outside the home, does not matter. Women face it both inside and outside.
And if a capable woman who by now knows the government machineries like the back of her hand (I think she will prove why she got better grades than Bill Clinton at Yale) can not put a firm stamp on these issues, then the world will be waiting a long, long time. I think that wait unnecessary.
When the dude Clinton launched his foundation, I feared even his disease trips to Africa might be spun into sex scandals. I am glad it did not happen, at least not to my knowledge. Whereas there are still big chunks of the country that think the Clintons murdered Vince Foster, and "Whitewatergate" (a small, failed land deal in a part of Arkansas, the remotest American state, that was remote even by Arkansas standards) was the Clinton Enron. Some black folks called Bill Clinton the first black president because the criminal justice system failed him so monumentally. How can Ken Starr do so much damage and get away with it! He is still walking around free!
Pretty much every detail of Hillary Clinton's life is out there. And I still do not underestimate the vast right wing conspiracy's (yes, such a thing exists) ability to stay fascinated by The Hillary. Her candidacy and presidency for that reason will stay interesting to even those who routinely err on the side of thinking she is better than she is.
It truly is about gender. And gender is all around you. Your mother, your grandmother, and her mother, your sister, cousin, daughter, friends, colleagues. There are a lot of women, look around, to paraphrase Larry Summers. The thing about sex is that is how you were born, Hillary once chided a young something reporter.
For me personally, Hillary 2016 only gets interesting after she puts a second woman on the ticket. A minority woman would be perfect. If you think gender is awkward, try race plus gender. I do not expect any of her policy positions to surprise me. I don't expect to "stay glued to the screen." I don't expect to follow closely. I read tech news mostly.
But you can not be the first woman to occupy the most powerful office on the planet, political and otherwise, and pretend you only owe it to those who voted for you. As soon as an American president is sworn in, she is no longer just president of those who voted for her, but also of those who might have voted against her. In this case, Hillary is going to belong to women across the world in ways the German Chancellor simply can not. Her having been Secretary of State and traveled the world so very extensively helps me relate to her. I am a Third World Guy. That is who I am for this lifetime.
And just like Barack Obama to me was about 500 years of world history, Hillary to me is about three and a half billion women. She needs a woman running mate because a woman running for and being president should no longer be news, not after her. It should feel normal. We should enter an era where half the time the best candidate on merits just so happens to be some woman.
FDR won a fourth time. Hillary doing two terms will be Barack Obama pulling a FDR. They are comrades.
On issues for me Hillary 2016 is all about Third World women. Nixon went to China, Hillary went to Burma. I was so impressed by what she was able to do for Burma. Especially because I was not even following the developments until the Big Splash showed up in the news. And I grew up practically next door to Burma.
The basics are pretty simple. Slavery should long have been extinct. But it still exists. Sex slavery should be so past tense, but it exists in huge numbers. There are more women sex slaves today than there were black slaves in Abraham Lincoln's time. Poverty is hard knocks, and micofinance is known to work, and Hillary bought into it a long time ago. Gender violence is cut and dry. It is no grey zone. Policing globally has to reorganize itself to bring an end to gender violence. Violence is violence, inside the home, outside the home, does not matter. Women face it both inside and outside.
And if a capable woman who by now knows the government machineries like the back of her hand (I think she will prove why she got better grades than Bill Clinton at Yale) can not put a firm stamp on these issues, then the world will be waiting a long, long time. I think that wait unnecessary.
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