Words Like Locusts Flew From Her Fingers

Don’t Run, Hillary

Loving to Hate Hillary
It’s true, of course, that Hillary is widely considered a presidential candidate and so a certain amount of attention is warranted.

Hillary Clinton would never win a presidential election — not because she’s necessarily a bad person or has bad ideas (though she is a bit too much of a “politician” for my taste), but because she’s a woman and no matter what many of us might like to believe, the United States isn’t ready for a woman as President. As Richard Cohen amply illustrates in this Washington Post article, people in the US still have far to many goofy ideas about sex and gender. In the US people tend to think of women as sex-partners, wives, and mothers first and only later — if at all — as complete human beings. And it’s not just men who see women in this way. It’s other women, too. It’s because of the way our culture defines womanhood — and you only need to watch a little television to see it. More often than not, women are portrayed as helpful assistants or in some other ancillary role. When women are portrayed on television as authority figures, they’re inevitably struggling with defining themsevles as high-powered-professional-who-is-also-a-loving-wife-and-mother-and-is-sexy-too-by-the-way.

You don’t see men portrayed like that.

These kinds of media portrayals feed into our culture’s idea of womanhood as much as they reflect it. People in the United States just aren’t ready yet to see women as completely capable authority figures. It’s dumb, yes. And it’s absolutely counterproductive. But it IS the way it is right now.

Hillary Clinton couldn’t win the Presidency and if she runs, she’ll just split the Democratic vote and weaken the Party.

Don’t run, Hillary. Go for the Vice Presidency instead.