Give the lady a break.
Everyone is in such high dudgeon over HIllary's remark about the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy in 1968. Hillary is evil! Hillary has a
dark soul!
Yes, it was a stupid thing to say -- and her efforts to explain it as a "historical reference" to justify the length of her challenge to Obama fall apart if you know how to count: as others have pointed out, RFK entered the race for the Democratic nomination only three months before he was killed.
What Hillary voiced is what
six in ten Americans - and eight in ten African-Americans - have worried about: that someone might try to harm Senator Obama. (55% of African-Americans described themselves as "very concerned.")
Is she supposed to say this? No. Does she know she's not supposed to say this? I think she must. It was a slip -- the kind that happens when a terrible anxiety butts up against a social norm. (I don't know the psychological term for this and it's Memorial Day, so you'll forgive me if I'm too lazy to google it.)
Example: When my friend Lisa's mother died from cancer about 10 years ago, it was a big deal for all our friends. She was the first in our group of friends to lose a parent. The first time I saw her after her mom's funeral was at a brunch in LA. The peppiness was a little forced which I'm guessing she sensed. My understanding of what it meant to lose a parent was non-existent since I had not yet lost a parent. All I could think was, "Be cheerful -- but not too too cheerful. And don't mention death or disease. And certainly not cancer!"
Not ten minutes into brunch I made a quip about - you guessed it! - cancer. Yup.
Better example (and
completely unverifiable): My friend Michael told me a story he'd heard about Carly Simon and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. When Oliver Stone's
JFK (a movie I loved) came out, the Kennedys were understandably upset. Carly Simon was a good friend of Mrs. Onassis' and knew not to ask about the wacky movie that posited all sorts of irresistibly loony theories about her husband's murder. The two women got together to see another movie. As they sat in the theater waiting for the lights to dim, Carly casually asked, "So have you seen
JFK?"
Oops. The one thing she probably promised herself not to ask -- and she went ahead and asked it. Totally embarrassing. And totally human.
Clearly what's needed is this age of 24-hour campaigning is a foolproof safeguard for politicians -- so that the slips that the rest of us regularly make don't assassinate a campaign before it dies on its own. I'm imagining a v-chip implanted in the frontal lobe, where speech is controlled, to block seven words that could sink a campaign. Seven words, the utterance of which only spell trouble.
For Hillary, these are the seven words I'd block:
1. "ASSASSINATION" - It's just very very unpleasant.
2. "EJACULATION" - There is just no upside to any use of this word.
3. "WYNETTE" - Hillary's avoidance of this word (which would only remind voters of the shrewish 1992 Hillary) was rewarded with a solid victory over Obama in this year's Tennessee primary.
4. "HEADBAND" - see Wynette
5. "ROGER" - The vilification of the Clintons' Hollywood friends was an obsession of the fringe right. Who else cared how many weekends Markie Post spent in the Lincoln bedroom? Roger Clinton is a different story, though. His very name conjures reckless behavior and shady backwoods wheeling-and-dealing. (If anyone actually knew the names of Hillary's two ne'er-do-well brothers, I'd block their names.)
In fairness to Roger, he seems like a good guy. And I love his album, Nothing Good Comes Easy:
6. "WAL-MART" - A lot of the animus directed at the nation's largest retailer is uninformed. Nevertheless no one's going to vote
for her because she served on the company's board.
7. "BUDDY" - The acquisition of the adorable Chocolate Labrador Retriever during the Lewinsky Scandal in 1997 was a brazen ploy to humanize an embattled President Clinton. (Hadn't the scandal itself humanized him enough?) Socks the cat was swiftly exiled. (Socks was never a good match with the president. Cats are too wary and discriminating to have sex with interns.) But what's really shameful is that Buddy was run down only a few years later in tony Chappaqua. Why? Because the former First Dog wasn't protected with an electronic leash. (Now is that any way to treat Man's Best Friend?) Buddy: a symbol of Clintonian use and abuse.
So what do you think? Do you have different candidates for Hillary's Seven Dirty Words? What should Obama's Seven Dirty Words be? McCain's?