Dear Hillary Clinton,
So it’s official. You’re making a play for the second not-white-male US president in history.
But if you win, you’ll be the second consecutive half-white-male US president in history.
Don’t look so confused. Barack Obama is a man, and he’s half-white. You’re all white, and not technically a man, but by the time one gets to your level of international politics — and to your age — you’re pretty much a white man anyway.
We don’t mean to be insulting, Hills, don’t go all hyper-lefty trigger-warning on us. We’re just saying it doesn’t matter if it’s you, a black lady or a crippled Taiwanese dwarf with cerebral palsy: You don’t get to where you are by playing nice and being fair. Instead, you must embody the essential aggression, entitlement and selfishness that waspy white men have been shipping around the world for the last 500 years or so. It’s not you, Hillary. It’s them.
Trust us, not comparing you to any of your female peers is a favour. Who do we have? Sarah Palin? That beady-eyed brainless Jesus freak? Michelle Bachmann? That beady-eyed brainless Jesus freak?
Your womanhood isn’t a policy platform, it’s an ornament. Like a nice brooch, or a shiny watch. It’s a comforting note, an appendage of self-definition, and then it’s back to the dynastic dialectics between two families of cranky old soda crackers. (We’re confident world history will keep its sense of humour and have you on a dais talking smack at Jeb Bush any day now).
Looking from across the seas at the state of the union, we like you because you seem to understand life’s basic things, ideas like women’s health over backward superstition. You’re into equal rights for all people, which now includes your updated attitude for the federalization of gay marriage. Take that, Alabama.
As a reputed feminist with your experience and stature, we feel you should be chastising your followers for focusing more on your repeating chromosomes than your foreign policy. We’ve noticed you sinking to their level a bit recently, taking a tone of “yeah, a woman president, wouldn’t that be neat-o?” a bit too often. But you know as well as we do, that kind of tokenism travels widest. Not how close you were to your buddies on Wall Street while you were Secretary of State, or how the same people that probably supply China the software to run the Great Firewall have contributed to your election campaign. Which will need, what, $2 billion to get you swishing those pantsuits through the halls of the West Wing?
But if anyone can handle damage control on this, it’s the woman who stood, straight-faced, by her president-husband during the impeachment that came from his carnal infelicities with Monica Lewinsky. The first disappointment in another Clinton presidency will be the sure lack of any sex scandal.
As sure as we are that you’re the best man for the job, Hillary, if we could actually vote for the first female American president, we’d vote for Selina Meyer from the TV show Veep. She’s just so quick-witted and likeable. She was Elaine from Seinfeld. You’re not Elaine from Seinfeld. And considering you guys both work off a script most of the time, we just think she has better writers.
But you know, in the end, it’s probably the boring factor that’s going to sustain you, once you face off against these mouthbreathing knuckle-draggers who’ve confirmed they’ll be running against you. Their only unified front is denying climate change and rising sea levels, and believing in Noah and the Great Flood.
So just let the lunatics jabber, keep saying logical things and denying your history of crony capitalism — don’t forget to SMILE! — and you’ll probably squeak through. And maybe, someday, you can look back at having been a flagstone along the path to a fully non-white-male American president.
Baby steps,
GQ India
Original Source: http://www.gqindia.com/get-smart/pop-culture/open-letter-hillary-clinton...
