So she nails the speech. She looks great in that white suit. She turns everyone's anxiety into real hope—we don't have to go down that terrible Trumpian road to a catastrophic future. She's going to win this, and fix the whole planet, and we're going to do it together. She has the whole place chanting her name.
And today I'm told that she wasn't poetic enough.
Okay, women are always held to a higher standard, but really? What about being raised by a mother who was abandoned as a child, who made her go outside and face the bullies? What about seventeen million cracks in that glass ceiling? Women's rights are human rights? It takes a village! America is great because it is good! How much poetry do we need?
BEIJING, 2015. WOMEN'S RIGHTS ARE HUMAN RIGHTS.
I have heard my whole life that women have to be twice as good and work twice as long as a man to be considered as good. My personal experience is, you have to be ten times as good, and then they resent you for it. I'm pretty sure that's in the mix with our Hillary. She has had to be so great for so long, the only way detractors can explain it is to insist that she is really secretly something else altogether.
And so—in one of my favorite moments of this very good convention—Bill Clinton pointed out that there are two versions of Hillary in the public consciousness. One version, we have been told, should be arrested. The other one—the Real One—actually is as great as we know she is.
The commentators tell us there are other Hillarys out there too. She's better than Trump certainly, but she's a wonk, a workhorse, she's not poetic enough. She's not the liar that the Republicans make her out to be but she's told some stretchers.
Bah, humbug. She's fucking incredible.
It is possible, I suppose, that I'm not understanding something because I am so filled with relief and joy to see her lock down that nomination. Like many working women of every generation that has followed her, I completely hyper-identify with Hillary. I am filled with rage and sorrow when they beat her up. I couldn't believe it when they made her apologize for not wanting to bake cookies. I was heartbroken when they told her she couldn't just go by her own name, remember that one? I actually watched those horrible Benghazi hearings. I thought she was brilliant, as the Republicans covered themselves in shame.
That whole thing, watching her get knocked down and then get up again? I've witnessed itall with the knowledge that that is what I have to do. Over and over and over again. What a role model she is for all of us, but yes—women in particular.
There aren't, in fact, multiple Hillarys out there. There is one. One Hillary, lots of opinions about her. Lots of facts, and lots of misinformation. Reality, as Lily Tomlin once told us, may just be a collective hunch. But events, actions, and people are singular. Hillary is singular. And she is, factually, historically awesome.
THE MARATHON 11 HOUR BENGHAZI HEARINGS, 2015.
Don't tell me that speech wasn't poetic. I cried through most of it.
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JULY 29, 2016
