I invite you to surf over to slate.com to read this wonderful article by Sady Doyle entitled “More than likable enough: I like Hillary Clinton. And I’m convinced that saying so can be a subversive act.” You can sample it here, and click the link below to continue reading it at Slate.
By Sady Doyle, published Dec. 23, 2015 at slate.com
My affection for Hillary Clinton is hard to explain. It wins no fights and earns you no friends to admit feeling actual warmth, even protectiveness, toward this impossible, frustrating, contradictory, polarizing, disappointing woman. My finding Hillary intensely “likable” is weird. It doesn’t signify universal approval of her decisions. I can and do disagree with Hillary Clinton, regularly and strongly. But some part of me also hopes that Hillary Clinton is having a nice day.
I’ve come to believe that saying nice things about Hillary Clinton can be a subversive act. I recently spent some time sorting through Clintoniana dating back to the early 1990s, looking at the nasty things people have said about her and common narratives that have formed about her personality. I got a better sense of the pressures that she has to live with—even on days when Donald Trump isn’t using words such as disgusting and schlonged to describe her—and how those pressures have informed her decisions.
Unless you really take a look at those pressures, the narrative around Hillary Clinton’s “likability” is doomed to be inaccurate. Trying to parse Hillary Clinton without also parsing Hillary hate is like trying to drink water without touching the glass.
Here is one of those pressures: Hillary Clinton absolutely cannot express negative emotion in public. If she speaks loudly or gets angry or cries, she risks being seen as bitchy, crazy, dangerous. (When she raised her voice during the 2013 Benghazi Senate committee hearings, the cover of the New York Post blared “NO WONDER BILL’S AFRAID.”) But if Hillary avoids emotions—if she speaks strictly in calm, logical, detached terms—then she is cold, robotic, calculating.
[Click here to continue reading this article at Slate.]