The following is excerpted from my latest collection of essays, Imagine Bernie Sanders as a Woman and other Writings on Politics and the Media 2016–2019. Despite the title, the collection is not primarily about Bernie Sanders. However, the following excerpt, which describes some of my experiences with the media after publishing a book supportive of Hillary Clinton, does contain material that Sanders supporters may find provocative and perhaps offensive.
My editor advised that I relegate only a brief discussion of Hillary’s comments about a “Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy” to a footnote in my last book, The Destruction of Hillary Clinton. I accepted her advice, but I no longer think a footnote is sufficient. What follows contains some material from that footnote, but is greatly expanded and detailed. It appears in Imagine Bernie Sanders as a Woman and Other Writings on Politics and the Media 2016–2019.
Sanders said Sunday that he worked as hard as humanly possible once Clinton was the Democratic nominee. Let’s do a little fact-check on that claim…
When we were kids in the early sixties, they were the last kind of clothes we’d ever be caught dead in. They were for overweight, middle-aged housewives who watched “Days of Our Lives” on television and got together once a week for Mah Jong (if Jewish) or Bingo (if church-going — although I thought it possible only Jewish moms wore them) or just smoking and gossiping. They were loose and made for comfort, often with disturbingly large floral prints. Shmatte.
Lacey Baldwin Smith has written that “Tudor portraits bear about as much resemblance to their subjects as elephants to prunes.” A slight exaggeration, maybe. But it is true that the historical accuracy of the depictions in Tudor portraits, particularly of royalty, was often at war with “symbolic iconizing” — the use of imagery to represent the person’s character, position or role.
I wish Bob Mueller had quoted from this section in his television appearance. In yesterday’s televised announcement, Robert Mueller said he believed that it was “in good faith” that William Barr had declined to present Mueller’s introductory summaries to the public before the entire report was released.
First James Comey blabbed so recklessly about Hillary Clinton’s “careless” treatment of classified emails that he left millions of Americans with the impression that she was guilty of a crime, despite the fact that he had cleared her of all charges. Then he decided not to reveal that Trump was under investigation while reminding voters, eleven days before the election, to be sure and not forget about Clinton’s “email scandal” when they cast their votes. And now you — who we’ve been writing eager, pleading love songs to for two years — have apparently decided that you want to avoid the “political spectacle” of public testimony by refusing to have your appearance before Congress televised. Especially after Comey, that hurts. It really does.
This past Thursday, Ohio became the latest in a growing list of state legislatures proposing and passing “fetal heartbeat” bills that would ban most abortions once a fetal heartbeat is detected — as early as six weeks into a pregnancy.
At the end of a chapter in my book about the 2016 election, I described a student’s reaction to our discussions of the double-binds and double-standards that Hillary Clinton had to face, almost on a daily basis.“It sounds like Hillary was damned no matter what she did,” the student remarked.
It might be the instinct of a bully. It might be a savvy political strategy, imported from the world of advertising. It might be the result of an inadequate vocabulary turned to asset. It might be all of these. Whatever its origins, Donald Trump is a master at branding.