Hillary’s bad hair day

Hillary Clinton is traveling in Africa this week, although you wouldn’t know it by reading or watching the news.  Until today that is.  While in the DRC she was meeting with students at a Congolese University in Kinshasa ^[1] and was asked through a translator what her husband Mr. Clinton’s opinion is about Chinese contracts with Congo.  Clearly annoyed by the question, Mrs. Clinton responded harshly advising that if the young man asking the question would like to know her opinion, she would gladly give it but she would not talk about her husband.  “My husband is not Secretary of State, I am.”

The translator actually got the question wrong ^[2] and should have asked what President Obama thought, but by then the harm had been done. The mainstream media couldn’t have wished for a better sound bite than the one she gave them.  The bitch is back…. Let’s get her!  The lashing she has been given has been swift and brutal.

Radio and TV “news” shows ^[3] this morning have been gleefully recounting the episode with comments like “She must be having her period.” “She’s just jealous, as Bill has been getting a lot of attention lately.” And my personal favorite, “she’s having a bad hair day.”

Really? We still haven’t moved past the belief that if a woman gets angry, shows emotion, tells people what she really thinks then she is having a “bad hair day”?

I must have been having a really bad hair day most of my life.

What I would like to know is why this has become news? Yes she was annoyed and if you ask me, she had more than enough reason to be.  She is the Secretary of State, she was Senator of NY, she ran for President and she is being asked what her husband would think?!  I’m impressed she stayed so calm.

What infuriates me even more is that the reason she was in the DRC has been so ignored by the media.  What is going on in that country is a war that has taken the lives of over 5 million people in the last decade.  It’s been named the world’s worst conflict since World War II.  It is also a country described as the most dangerous place to be a woman or a young girl.  It has the highest rate of rape and sexual assault of females in the world — rape is routinely used as a weapon of war.

I previously wrote about the horrors Congolese women endure ^[4] and was heartened to hear Mrs. Clinton speak out about the devastation and express her understanding of the responsibility the US and the western world bears for this nightmare. ^[5]

I guess reporting this is not nearly as much fun as bashing Hillary.

The Congo has been just one stop on Mrs. Clinton’s tour of Africa.  On August 9^th while in South Africa, she attended the National Women’s Day Dinner.  Part of the speech she made that night was the following:

I am often awed by the history of the women’s struggle in my own country.   And of course, now, when I look at South Africa and I see the role that women played in the struggle for freedom and liberation, and the roles that women are playing now in every aspect of South African life, it is gratifying, but it is not satisfying.  Too many women in this country and across Africa and across the world, including in my country, are marginalized, are left behind, are denied the rights that every human being is entitled to …..we must remain committed to the full empowerment of women everywhere.  And when we think about the poverty that grinds the spirit and the life out of so many women, we have to resolve to do our part, to make it easier for women to have the chance to live up to their God-given potential.

Yeah okay, but did you see how fat she looked in that pant suit she was wearing?