Our Girl Friday: Everyone's a gossip columnist these days ...
Posted at 10:37 AM Aug 14, 2009
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Let's give Hillary Clinton a hand, hmm? This trip to Africa really means something. I can feel it. Fresh of the heels of Obama's visit, Clinton's 11-day trip to Africa will extend a hand to seven different countries, some of them key global players. Will she talk to South Africa's President Zuma about helping turn things around in Zimbabwe? Will she talk oil in Angola? We know in Congo she'll discuss the fractured country's human rights issues, specifically the rape and sexual assault of displaced women. These are serious subjects in need of discussion at the international level ...
Except, what? Did she just say, "My husband is not secretary of state, I am," to a guy during the press conference? Awww, shiiiiiiiiiiit. Time for a thousand media organizations to forget all about the issues and print headlines that read "Oh, SNAP!" before speculating on end about how the incident might indicate marital tension. Even "liberal" MSNBC's coverage includes an entire section devoted to gee whiz, how "complicated" the Clintons are as a couple.
But, really, just one section MSNBC? Why speculate a little when you can speculate a lot? The Daily Beast's Tina Brown offers an entire catty column on the incident that basically likens Hillary to a pouty 16-year-old at a birthday party gone bad.
"Madam Secretary was doing so well at grabbing back the spotlight ... In Congo she was particularly stressed. She had spent a day touring a refugee camp, hearing harrowing stories of rape, persecution, and female subjugation, issues she has long made hers. I suspect she'd just about had it with having to tiptoe around so many big-dog male egos--Obama, Bill, Africa's Messrs. Kibaki, Zuma, and Kabila. And p.s., was it necessary for Bill to be yukking it up on his birthday with the old adoring pals at such a fancy, high-priced restaurant as Craftsteak?Yes, because her hair and her ego and her husband's shenanigans were the reason she gave a curt reply, and not, oh, say, the fact that someone asked her a question that seemed to have nothing to do with the topic at hand.
"And not only that, but (and I say this in solidarity, not belittlement) the African humidity had wreaked havoc on her hair. It had gone all flat and straight, which puts any woman in a bad humor."
And now that topic's lost to the general public, because the media they watch behaves like that one friend who always loves to gossip but who also likes to forget the details.
Here's an article from The New York Times that is painful to read, but it sticks to the issues Hillary Clinton was actually trying to address in Congo. Please read it instead.
