post-mortem
This Week in Reading
What Happened by Hillary Rodham Clinton
I am so tired of feeling like I have to apologize for Hillary Clinton. Throughout the primaries I felt like I had to keep quiet, like my choice to caucus for Hillary Clinton made me too moderate, too much of an institutionalist, not radical enough. Even now, I feel the need to offer up a disclaimer, to say that she is not perfect, say that I love her despite her flaws. An unnecessary impulse. Of course she is imperfect, in the same way that you and I and everyone else is imperfect. That Hillary Clinton is imperfect is such an obvious statement that it is hardly worth mentioning. My urge to explain that she is flawed is just another manifestation of the pressures the entire world has placed on her to be flawless. Hillary Clinton doesn't need me to apologize for her; she is one of the smartest, toughest, most qualified women in the world.
Perhaps no one puts it better than Clinton herself. After she teared up during a speech in New Hampshire, the press praised her for showing humanity. "Dozens if not hundreds of pundits have commented about how that moment “humanized” me. Maybe that’s true. If so, I’m both fine with that and a little beleaguered at the reminder that, yet again, I—a human—required “humanizing” at all.”
After the election, I, like so many Americans, was left shell shocked. I had honestly, truly, never considered the idea that Hillary Clinton would not win. The day after the election I wrote:
If you had asked me in 2013, years before yesterday night, before the primaries, before Hillary Clinton even announced she was running, who our next president would be, I would have told you Hillary Clinton. I have spent the past three years of my life assuming Hillary Clinton would be our next president. As scandals broke and Donald Trump gained momentum, I never imagined that Hillary Clinton would not be sworn into office on a cold morning in early 2017. I’m not someone that talks about faith very much, but I had faith in her.
I was sad and angry for America, but I was also sad for Hilary Clinton. America failed us on November 8th, 2016, and we failed Hillary Clinton. It felt so personal. Here was the smartest, toughest, hardest working woman in the world, and it wasn't enough to get her elected president. I grew up in an era that has taken the victories of feminism for granted. And that day in November, what had seemed so straightforward and right and obvious was taken away. If Hillary Clinton wasn't enough, what did that mean for me?
There was a lot of resentment about the fact that Hillary Clinton dared write this book at all. Haven't we heard enough from Hillary already, seemed to be the common consensus. Why won't Hillary Clinton just shut up? Can you imagine? America already took everything from her, and now we won't even give her this. It shattered her ambitions, smeared her legacy, and bullied her across every platform imaginable. If Hillary Clinton wants to write a book, she should write a book. I hope she goes on book tour for 20 years if that's what she wants. I hope she bakes gingerbread in Chappaqua this Christmas and hikes in the woods and gives commencement speeches and does whatever the hell she wants for the rest of her life. She offered all of herself to this country, and we turned her down. She owes us nothing.
I liked this book because I like Hillary Clinton (the criticism that she is unlikeable has never been true for me) but What Happened is also just an excellent nonfiction book about the election. It is meticulously researched: Clinton pulls statistics from academic papers, cites her sources, and thoroughly addresses basically every aspect of the 2016 election. I learned a lot that I didn't know before (I had no idea how big of a role she played in getting CHIP passed in the 90s, and she goes into a lot of policy details that got overshadowed on the campaign trail.) She is funny and articulate. She likes goldfish, but not the flavor blasted ones, she quotes both Nietzsche and Kelly Clarkson. I will not say that she is her own harshest critic (her harshest critics believe that she is the literal spawn of Satan/CEO of ISIS/a baby murderer), but she is reflective, critical and accountable. It is everything you would expect a book by Hillary Rodham Clinton to be, if you are the sort of person that believes that Hillary Rodham Clinton is intelligent and warm and competent.
[But what about Bernie! Honestly I don't care, but since the press has been obsessed with talking about how she dragged him in her book I will say: all in all, her critique of Bernie was a tiny fraction of her book, and she is just as, if not more, critical of herself as she is of Sanders. I think all of her criticisms she levels against Bernie were very fair. I like a lot of the things he has to say but dragging her reputation during the primary cost her in the general election and he should be held accountable for that. She also praises him repeatedly throughout the book for his ability to connect with the anger and disillusionment of Americans in a way she was never able to. Also, he helped write her campaign platform for the general election! Which was the most progressive platform ever run on by a major presidential candidate! I need Bernie bros to shut the fuck up.]
We are all obsessed with getting the scoop. Who is Hillary Clinton really? What is going on inside her brain? Every journalist and profiler is looking to pull back the curtain, reveal Hillary Clinton for who she actually is, whether that be a nefarious mastermind or a "surprisingly" loving person. There is this impression that Hillary Clinton is a closed book, that she is too reserved, that she doesn't let the public in. Yet in reality, her life has been rigorously documented for more than 30 years. There are few public figures we have gotten such extensive access to. God knows I don't even know how many children Mitt Romney has.
We like to feel like we have some sort of special insight into other people, have a deeper understanding of them than perhaps they even do of themselves. We do this with both public figures, and with people in our own lives. Always so quick to play armchair psychologist, to give unasked for insights into other people's brains and experiences. A bit presumptuous, to assume to that we, a stranger, know someone better than they themselves do. A few weeks ago a friend told me that he was too serious, always overthinking things. And I laughed to myself, because that was so far from how I saw him. He is so worried about being too dour, and he doesn't even know that he is a bro! I thought. But who am I to say that he is a bro, who am I, to claim to have some sort of omniscient, objective perspective when he has been living in his brain for decades. Why can't the way other people have chosen to explain themselves be enough? Why can't we trust them to know their own fullest truth?
So who is Hillary Rodham Clinton, anyway? Well she spent 465 pages telling us; maybe we should listen to her for once.
Studio-ing
Art making had been kind of a slow drip lately, but I have a little announcement that I am too excited to keep under my hat. I am doing a solo show in LA in May of 2018! Opens May 11th and runs for a full month. Come visit me! Come see my show! More details to come.
Further Reading
When What Happened first came out, Hillary Clinton did interviews on seemingly every program in the country. I excitedly downloaded all of the podcast episodes she was on, and then....I didn't listen to them. It was hard to listen to someone so warm and generous and intelligent chat with Terry Gross and then read the incomprehensible tweets from our actual president. Like a peek into an alternative, better universe. I slowly made my way through all her interviews and each one was wonderful. If you can bear it I heartily recommend listening to her interviews on Fresh Air, Call Your Girlfriend, Pod Save America, and Longform.
I read Dark Money by Jane Mayer this spring and am recommending it to everyone I know. I thought I knew about the Koch brothers, but this book really uncovered how deep the money runs in our political system. I actually listened to it as an audiobook and it worked really well.