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On the campaign trail, Chelsea Clinton compares her mom to Margaret Thatcher. But can you imagine Thatcher whimpering that it seemed like she always had to go first in debates, and that just wasn't fair? One thinks not, and I was surprised when Hillary Clinton did so last night. In so enthusiastically casting herself as the injured party, she undercuts her central argument about what a rock she is and comes across as more a whiner than a fighter.
Barack Obama had just refused his shot at aggrievement; he said he took her at her word that she didn't know anything about how a photo of him in traditional African garb got leaked to Matt Drudge. Then he briskly moved on. So, it seemed extra small when, after repeatedly extending a back-and-forth on health care, she then complained at length about being asked to go first in answering the next question, about NAFTA. Normally, debaters like to go first, but she tried to make this seem like part of the vast media conspiracy against her:
"Can I just point out that in the last several debates I seem to get the first question all the time, and I don't mind, you know, I'll be happy to field them. But I do find it curious, and if anybody saw Saturday Night Live,'' she said, referring to a skit in which the press is seen waiting Obama hand and foot, "you know, maybe we should ask Barack if he's comfortable and needs another pillow. I just find it kind of curious that I keep getting the first question on all these issues,'' she repeated, throwing her arms up in frustration, "but I'm happy to answer it.'' Just like your mom is happy to sit home in the dark alone, insisting Oh, don't worry about me.
Clinton also tried to stop Brian Williams from cutting to a commercial -- a losing proposition if ever there was one. And she suggested that she would have made her tax returns public by now if she weren't already too overburdened to sleep. When asked if she would release the returns before the Texas and Ohio primaries next Tuesday, she answered, "I can't get it together by then, but I will certainly work to get it together. I'm a little busy right now; I barely have time to sleep.''
She did show 12 kinds of chutzpah, though, in calling out Obama for merely denouncing rather than denouncing and rejecting Louis Farrakhan, who recently endorsed him: She noted that she, by contrast, had made clear during her first Senate race that she would not accept the support of an independent party with a history of anti-Semitism. Which was a bold boast, given that this was around the same time she listened as Yasser Arafat's wife, Suha, accused the Israelis of gassing women and children on a daily basis; after the speech, Clinton rose and kissed Mrs. Arafat on both cheeks.
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Emily, I’m so glad you offered Paula Radcliffe as a model by which to understand Hillary Clinton, because after years of struggling to comprehend why such a lot of people seem to dislike Hillary so, I finally get it. (She strikes me as more likable than most politicians, though that’s a bit like saying she smells more like dog poop than elephant feces.)
Why? Because I cannot stand Paula Radcliffe. My anti-Paula animus is completely irrational. We’ve never met, and I’m sure we never will. She’s made no statements that offend me and taken no positions that infuriate me. I admire her talent and her single-mindedness. And as someone who loves athletics and who still has a British passport somewhere at the back of a drawer, I’m extra-appreciative of her success. But there’s something about her that drives me up the wall. It’s probably not even her fault. I was in Britain during the 2004 Olympics, and judging from the media coverage, the entire Olympiad was mere background to the women’s marathon, which "our Paula" was favored to win. In the event, as the BBC put it, she ended up “slumped on an Athens pavement, crying bitter tears of pain and frustration.” If I’d had to look at one more image of her “agony,” I’d be crying bitter tears myself.
By the way, your mention of Radcliffe resuming her training schedule just 12 days after giving birth reminded me of a story about Margaret Thatcher taking the bar exam the afternoon after she had twins. It’s one of those anecdotes that’s too good to fact-check, but I just looked it up. According to an interview she gave in 1985, four months passed between giving birth and taking the final exam to become a barrister, but it was seeing the new babies that left her determined to really pursue the law: “I wrote off to Lincoln's Inn for my Finals papers for my Bar Exam which was to take place in December, and I knew that once I had done that and entered pride would make me work hard for it to get them.” (Incidentally, the interview is fascinating and reminded me what an outsider Thatcher was—she was famously a “shopkeeper’s daughter,” but she also grew up in a home without an indoor toilet and was the first person in her family to go to university.)
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