The New York Times thinks Senator Hillary Clinton’s college letters to a friend are FRONT PAGE worthy. That is sooooooooo June 2007.
Way back in June, I was flipping through my old diaries and journals. I voluntarily chose an entry, stood in front of an audience in Los Angeles, and read aloud portions of my youth.
It hurt.
It was cringe inducing.
It was more than embarrassing, and that’s the point.
We laughed until our sides hurt at who we were and the things we wrote with such passion decades ago. It’s called LA Angst, and Senator Clinton, I invite you to join us.
The Sunday Times article quotes Clinton letters to friend John Peavoy and they would be LA Angst GOLD. Exactly the kind of thing we read up on stage while choking back howls of laughter and snorts.
“Can you be a misanthrope and still love or enjoy some individuals?” Ms. Rodham wrote in an April 1967 letter. “How about a compassionate misanthrope?”
If she’s got some forlorn, angst-ridden poetry to go with it, we would put her in the headlining spot. The more Emo, the better.
Why the Times finds this front page material is beyond me. Were they expecting to drop a bombshell by revealing she was a woman who wrote down her *gasp* feelings and *shock* thoughts? Ooooooh, that’s right, this is all part of that mainstream media conspiracy to put Hillary in office, to show her as more down to earth. (sarcasm)
Down to earth would be joining us on stage to read and spending time talking to us. Down to earth would be showing up and laughing with us. Down to earth would be the time and effort I watched Elizabeth Edwards take with a gathering of women in Chicago this past weekend.
After a keynote speech for the BlogHer ’07 conference, Elizabeth Edwards joined us at our cocktail party where she spent HOURS hugging, talking, and just hanging out. She was gracious, she was charming, and she was available. She took the time to talk to every. single. woman. Answer every. single. question, and she did it without a team of advisers looming over her shoulder. She spoke candidly to some and whispered in the ears of others. Elizabeth (as she insisted we call her) then offered to take more questions via the BlogHer site and offered up her personal email address to those of us who needed privacy to get the courage to speak to her.
The Clinton camp wouldn’t even comment on the Peavoy letters.
So we’ve got Barack Obama taking dinners with “Average” supporters and the wife of John Edwards spending hours in an informal atmosphere chatting with others.
The Clinton camp had no comment on the Peavoy letters.
With all due respect Senator Clinton, and with my dream of seeing a woman in the White House *this* close, you need to join us for the next LA Angst. Laugh with us.
Chat with us.
Be one of us.
I’ll even buy the first round.
crossposted at The Huffington Post
If she reads at LA Angst, I am SO voting for her.
Wouldn’t that be a hoot?
I bet you Ms. Clinton was reading Siddhartha at the time she wrote those letters. I think I wrote the same type of letters in college.
This must be killing her opponents in both parties. Was she planning for the Presidency at Wellesley? My family came from Canada. My Dad was part of the brain drain and the race to the moon. They were exciting times yet what happened then was also shocking to us: the assassinations, the race riots, Vietnam et al. The letters will never cause the same uproar as her cleavage but will still prove damning to her opponents inside and outside the party. They will reveal someone who cared and decided to do something about it. Some poor slob in 2005 at The Economist was obliged to read a book, The Truth About Hillary, and he wrote a book review, “O lucky woman!”. He summed it up in the opening of his review, ” THERE is only one thing more useful in politics than having the right friends, and that is having the right enemies. Mrs Clinton has long owed a big debt to her critics on the deranged right, and, with this week’s publication of Edward Klein’s “The Truth About Hillaryâ€Â?, it is clear that her luck still holds.” Indeed it does.
to be uncouth and totally off-topic, i tagged you for a meme. you know, if you ever play along with memes. which i admit i have no idea if you do or not. but i tagged you anyway, just to show i care.
I think it would be very cool if HRC showed up at LA Angst with y’all! What a great concept.
Sorry, HRC can’t make it that night….she’s hanging out with us at the bowling alley, knocking back a few pitchers and greasy food. She said she just wants to keep it real and not use our “bluecollarness” as a campaign tool.
Did you know she can burp the alphabet….backwards?
Good post! Thanks for posting the link to the NY Times article, I had somehow missed it. Her letters sound remarkably unincriminating for a girl growing up in the 60’s. My letters from college would have had the self-involvement and angst, to be sure, but a lot more references to things that I wouldn’t have wanted the public to know if I were trying to run for president 35 years later. Which just proves Hillary probably would have disapproved of me in college and wouldn’t have been fun to hang out with. So where does that leave me for voting purposes? I think we should draft Elizabeth Edwards for president in ’08!