By Tom Ryan, Kansas City Star Reader Advisory Panel
While Sarah enjoys fantastic sales of [Going] Rogue today, Hillary Clinton appears in the December edition of Vogue Magazine. Have a look. Balance your reading if you dare.
These two politicians deserve our attention. Having not read Sarah Palin’s book yet, it’s fair to reserve comment now. The article profiling Hillary Clinton paints a good multi-dimensional picture of the Secretary of State. This cabinet post shows us a new side of the former First Lady and Senator. Some here have called her sophomoric and worse. Her teambuilding acumen and ability to transcend party politics is something I did not expect from this reluctant Obama team member.
This interview at times feels more about the interviewer than the interviewee. Jonathan Van Meter sounds to have really enjoyed his road trip with Clinton aboard our 757 starship. He does provide un-politicized character vignettes and that’s the real value of this article.
Van Meter’s interview reserves his opinion and instead presents Hillary Clinton’s self-assessment. It’s revealing, really:
As Clinton and I sit and talk, she begins to rearrange everything—the cups, the silverware, the napkins, the creamer for her coffee—until it is just so, all the while listening and talking and not missing a beat. Remembering my illness, she asks me how I am feeling and then says, "Let's get some Sprite for Jonathan." Still mothering!
I bring up something I have been thinking about during the whole time we have been in Africa: Why is Hillary such an inspirational figure to so many women? Mary Beth Sheridan, a reporter on the trip from The Washington Post, said to me one day, "Margaret Thatcher ran a whole country. No one would ever describe her as an 'inspiration.' " Clinton seems amused by the comparison and then ponders it for a moment. "Well, I don't really understand it myself," she says, finally. "But it may in part be because people feel like they know me; they have watched me on the world scene for seventeen years now. They've seen my ups and my downs." She lets out a dark little chuckle. "They've seen my best and my worst. They've seen my public and my private—they've seen everything.
"So many women feel like I'm on their side," she says. "I somehow, through my life or their perception of me, give them courage to do things. And I think it's also that, whether I am meant to or not, I challenge assumptions about women. I do make some people uncomfortable, which I'm well aware of, but that's just part of coming to grips with what I believe is still one of the most important pieces of unfinished business in human history—empowering women to be able to stand up for themselves.
"I try to live my life in a way that I think has meaning," she continues. "I was raised to believe that I have to give back, that I was incredibly blessed to be an American, to have a good education, to have an intact family with two parents who encouraged me. I never felt in my family that I couldn't do anything I set my mind to because I was a girl, which was unusual even when I was growing up. I have a great partner who has been enormously supportive to me. I have a wonderful daughter. I have a 90-year-old mother who lives with us. I have so many blessings. And yet I know how hard it is even for people in today's world who have all of the attributes of education and income. Life is challenging for everybody." She takes a deep breath, leans back, and looks at me with those bright-blue eyes. "That's the best I can come up with!"
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Chazzykc
It's not just the far left that deliberately distorts and misquotes people, the far right does it, too.
Nancy Pelosi's exact quote concerning the opponents of health care reform is "Drowning out opposing views is simply un-American". It got twisted into something like "protesting health care reform is unamerican" and was spread over most of the right wing media. This blog even had the temerity to quote her exactly and then twist the meaning of what she said.
mrhistory forgot a bit
of history. hillary married into the dem elite seeing how bill was being groomed. But she definately has a flare for the commodities and losing billing records.
By George they did it.
Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin have a lot in common. Both of them came from humble beginnings but achieved enormous success. Ms Clinton used hard work, intelligence, and grim determination to move ahead. Ms Palin used her beauty, personality, and guile to move ahead. Ms Clinton is wealthy and powerful. Ms Palin soon will be.
"There are more ways than one to skin a cat"
A Kite-flyer in a 747 cockpit............
..is what we have right now in the White House.
Bowing from the waist every time he meets a king or emporer says more about Obama's ignorance of the office he holds and the country he represents than any of the hare-brained, out-of-the-mainstream, big-government-takeover proposals he keeps coming up with.
Palin never said she could see Russia from her front porch but the left-wing moonbats don't seem to care much about accuracy.
And why all the angst about a little woman from Alaska anyway, lefties? What is it about Sarah Palin that has all the leftoids foaming at the mouth? I hear the AP assigned 11 reporters to fact-check Palin's book. How many were assigned to fact-check either of Obama's? Don't tell me, let me guess.
Hillary, Sarah
There may be two more polarizing figures in politics than Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin but one wold be hard pressed to name them.
Hillary has mellowed; she doesn't seem so much like the ball buster she appeared to be. She has always borne herself with a high degree of intelligence and competence and while she is pretty much always well turned out, it is not likely she has attracted many wolf whistles over the years.
Sarah has her own style of ambition. Apparently it first surfaced as a high school basketball player where her style could probably be described as "cutthroat". She has turned a few heads in her time, she has a lot of kids, she likes guy things--hunting, dog sled racing, fishing--but her intellectual grasp is shallow. Her competitive aspect seems to have been honed more on the physical side than the thinking side. Her aspects-- e.g.,"We can see Russia from our front porch"--sometimes sound like graffiti.
Maybe people think she would bring a new perspective to Washington but it would be like taking a person whose contact with aviation consisted of kite flying and putting him in the cockpit of an airborne 747 without a co-pilot or electronic guidance.
Not a Palin fan at all.....but jayhawk 6 is typical of many...
.....but her intellectual grasp is shallow. Her competitive aspect seems to have been honed more on the physical side than the thinking side. Her aspects-- e.g.,"We can see Russia from our front porch"--sometimes sound like graffiti.
Maybe people think she would bring a new perspective to Washington but it would be like taking a person whose contact with aviation consisted of kite flying and putting him in the cockpit of an airborne 747 without a co-pilot or electronic guidance.
of Palin's critics who "imagine" intellectual shortcomings as a result of 2 contrived, controlled interviews. Jayhawk resorts to quoting Tina Fay and attributing the satirical, stereotypical airhead quote to Palin.....a common, deliberately distorting habit of the far left.
A reminder, Jayhawk that the current POTUS is precisely the pilot you describe: someone with absolutely no experience .....even kites.....with flying......how's that working for us??
The "Mainstream" Media: By liberals. For liberals.
Hillary has mellowed?????
Yeah sure, tell that to the African 3rd world students she berated for asking her a question about her husband. "I'm the Secretary of State, not my husband, I'm not channelling him, blah blah blah".
Yeah she's so mellow Obama opted to have her Husband ( who holds no office, position or title in the administration) go to North Korea to work out the journalist release. The only thing she has going for her is, she's not as incompetent as Obama.
Funny.
Why are women characterized as 'polarizing'? I'd be hard pressed to find a male referred to that way.
Have to agree, again, with the notion that its mostly effeminate males and subservient females that seem to be their loudest critics.