HILLARY’S NIGHTMARE OF LOVE

When Hillary Clinton becomes President, she may not be able to deliver on anything she stands for. The Hillary Haters believe the most heinous things about her; they find her dishonest and not to be trusted.  They are never to be dissuaded (believe me, I've tried).  They may continue to obstruct her efforts, having become well skilled at that during the Obama Administration.

Having said that, I still have hope and believe in her ability to be a fine president, and I believe she will win, despite the “Bill problem” that is and always has been the monkey on her back, that is in my opinion, the source of all her image problems.

I am not naïve.  I’ve known since my first day working to elect Bill Clinton that he had always had a serious woman problem – which later became clear is an addiction.  His supporters did everything possible to keep that from ruining his political path. It was a struggle from the day he entered public life.  Anyone who understands addiction knows that part of the profile is engaging in crazy and dishonest efforts to hide the behavior and keep the secret.  Those who loved and believed in Bill as a leader (first and foremost his wife) took sometimes extreme actions in order to shield him from the consequences of his bad behavior.  It may have been wrong; perhaps his wife and all his accolytes should have refused to help him in his political career because of his private behaviors.  However, in actuality, no one really knows, or knew then, the actual extent of those behaviors.  Hillary, especially, was lied to many times, I am sure. 

She is a smart lady; perhaps theirs has always been an open marriage.  Despite the stories, she stayed, some will say it was because she wanted to ride his coattails to power.  To those who do not know her biography, I would add that her path to political power began long before she met him; she was on a fast track on her own, and she sidelined her career to follow him to Arkansas.  Why?  I can only point to the blindness of love.

How unfair that she is tarred with his transgressions.  The distrust that dogs her always comes back to her tying her wagon to the handsome and charismatic young man from Hope.  Over the course of her life, she has been caught up in scandal after scandal that always goes back to her initial efforts to keep a “zone of privacy” around her relationship.  Does no one believe that love can blind a person to their own personal best interests?  When it all came crashing down in the most public way, perhaps her biggest mistake was keeping her marriage together.  She could have jettisoned him then, and many wanted her to.  But I choose to believe that their marriage works for them in their own way, the details of which are no one’s business. 

If she had divorced him at any point in their almost 50 years together, would that have satisfied the Hillary Haters?  I think there would be no haters at all had she never got mixed up with him to begin with.  Such is the power of love; to change a life for better or worse.  When she is elected President of the United States, will it be because of, or in spite of, her marriage? Does it really matter?

NOT OFFENDED BY OFFENSIVE BEHAVIOR?





When I was a young office worker just out of school, I experienced what I have come to understand in 2016 would not be tolerated or excused.  In fact, it might be litigated.  It was sexual harrassment.  To me, it was just life.

I felt jealous when I learned that the married boss was having an affair with a coworker and then promoted her. I giggled when he passed my desk on the day before my wedding and said, "We should hang banners and balloons around your desk."  Me:  "Why?"  "Tomorrow's the grand opening!"  When I was leaving that job, I was called into the boss's office after my "confidential" exit interview with head of personnel.  He was in possession of all my comments, and he was furious.  He screamed at me:  "I never asked you to sit on that couch and...do things.  I could have, you know!  And you criticize me on your way out????" I burst into tears and apologized profusely.

His behavior was offensive.  I should have been offended.  I should have been outraged.  But.  I was young.

Now the New York Times does a front page story about Donald Trump's treatment of women.  I am not surprised at his crude behavior, but I do find it makes him look further unqualified for office in background and temperment. What I find more interesting is the backpedaling by one of the women quoted in the article.  The story describes her as a young model attending a party in Mar-a-Lago; Trump took her on a tour of the mansion and asked her to put on a bikini, then showed her off to other guests as a "Trump girl."  They began a dating relationship after that.  Today, she is angry that the Times portrayed this event in a negative light, part of a larger impression that Trump objectifies women.  She says, she was not offended by his behavior.

She should have been offended.  What I wish she had said today:  "I was young and impressionable and he paid attention to me.  It didn't occur to me to be offended.  In hindsight, his behavior was inappropriate."

Cancer: Load your Rifle and Charge….?

“Under no circumstances is anyone to say that I lost a battle with cancer,” she told him. “Or that I bore it bravely. I am not fighting, losing, winning or bearing.”

Jenny Diski, author, from her obituary in the NYT

I like to read obituaries.  I don’t think I am alone, nor am I morbid, or obsessed with death.  In fact, if anything I am obsessed with life, and want to peek inside the lives that others have lived.  I had never heard of Jenny Diski until I read her obituary today.  Now that I know what I have just learned about her life, I want to read this writer.  But more, finally I have found someone who says what I have always thought about how to describe a person’s death from cancer.  Too many obits of people who have died from cancer say it was a brave battle that has been lost, as if they were a soldier charging the enemy on the battlefield.  

Cancer is a disease, as difficult as many others, like AIDS, or Parkinsons, or diabetes. For some reason people don’t feel compelled to describe Alzheimer’s as something to courageously fight until the last.  I have never read an obituary that says a person died from heart disease after engaging in a courageous battle to fight it.  Cancer sucks, like all serious illnesses, and the treatments require the sufferer to become sicker than the illness itself.  Surgery, radiation, chemotherapy; too many needle pricks and visits with medical people, all is a nightmare to endure.  But that doesn’t mean other illnesses aren’t just as horrible, that the suffering associated with cancer is somehow more admirable. 

The worst concept is that it is somehow in the power of the patient to heal themselves if they fight hard enough.  See that word “fight”? As I am writing, I have to resist the urge to describe an illness in battle terms.  Part of the treatment of cancer is giving the patient a kind of brainwashing; “if you believe you can get better, and you are willing and tough enough to suffer the treatments, you will be cured.”  Excuse me?  That is a vicious manipulation to lay on a sick person.  So, if you die from cancer it is your own fault for not being brave enough?  Not fighting hard enough?  Not thinking positively enough?

Since I am a cancer survivor, I am qualified to be a bitch about this:  I cringe at every obituary I have ever read that says the person died of cancer after “fighting a courageous battle.”  So, let me be clear:  if I should die from cancer, just see what Jenny Dinski told her husband he should not say, and do not say it.