Life

What We Talk About When We Talk About Hillary Clinton

Hillary Clinton at Wellesley College commencement Image by Getty Images

By Phoebe Maltz Bovy June 2, 2017

Why, in May 2017, with the 2016 elections ever further behind us, did the National Review publish a story calling out Hillary Clinton for being a “sad, unemployed, 69-year-old lady”?

Put another way: Why is The Hillary Conversation still ongoing? Why is so much energy — from the right, but also from the internally-critical left, focused, anachronistically, on campaigning against Hillary Clinton for president? Why is the background noise on my social-media feeds, between the admittedly frequent outbursts of breaking news, an ongoing discussion of a matter long since resolved?

Where Clinton’s opponents are concerned, maybe it’s fear of a perma-Clinton candidacy. After all, she surprise-lost in 2008, but ran again. Maybe the idea is to preempt a Hillary Clinton (or Chelsea Clinton) 2020. Maybe sexism — the same sexism she’s been contending with since forever — also enters into it.

Here’s my theory, though, where pro-Clinton sorts still talking about her are concerned: It’s not about Hillary.

Consider this passage, from Rebecca Traister’s where-is-she-now profile of the former candidate:

Almost everywhere Clinton goes, it seems, someone starts crying. It’s not just friends and staffers. And though it was more intense in the weeks immediately following the election, it hasn’t entirely let up. At restaurants, in grocery stores, on planes, and in the woods, there are lines of people wanting selfies, hugs, comfort.

“It’s been unlike anything I’ve ever seen,” she says. “I mean, it doesn’t end. Every time I’m in public. I was having lunch with Shonda Rhimes last week and a woman stopped at the table — well-dressed, probably in her 40s or 50s — and she said, ‘I just can’t leave this restaurant without telling you I’m just so devastated,’ and she just started to cry. I was on the other side of the table, or I would have done what I have done countless times since the election, which is just put my arms around her. Because people are so profoundly hurt. And it is, yes, predominantly women.

If I saw Hillary Clinton, I’d probably cry, too. But would these wouldn’t be tears for Hillary Clinton personally. I think she’s doing just fine. Nor, precisely, for the lack of a Hillary Clinton presidency. It’s more some mix of who did win (and what that person’s doing and the fact that there was almost a woman president, but no.

Consider, too, this Amanda Marcotte tweet: “Time for another reminder, ladies: However he talks about Hillary Clinton, he will one day talk that way about you, probably to you.” Out of context, this was a tweet that leant itself to easy retorts. (“He’s going to tell me I’m against universal healthcare?”) But read in context, or just more generously, it’s a reminder of what Hillary Clinton represents: Women in the public eye for reasons other than their physical attributes. Women with the audacity to remain in the public eye over 40. Women whose response to defeat is to keep trying. Women with a sense of entitlement. The sort of feminism dismissed with terms like killjoy.

This list of course isn’t the sum total of what she represents, as the many responses to Marcotte’s tweet, citing specific policy disagreements with Clinton, remind. But it matters.

Phoebe Maltz Bovy edits the Sisterhood, and can be reached at [email protected]. She is the author of “The Perils Of ‘Privilege’”, from St. Martin’s Press. Follow her on Twitter, @tweetertation

Phoebe Maltz Bovy is a former editor of the Sisterhood blog at the Forward. Her writing has appeared in several publications, including The New Republic and The Atlantic. Her book, “The Perils of ‘Privilege,’” was published by St. Martin’s Press in March 2017. She has a PhD in French and French Studies from New York University, and has read a lot of 19th century French Jewish newspapers for a 21st century American.

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