Backstage in Portsmouth, NH. Photo: Barbara Kinney for Hillary for America.
Hey, remember when I posted that piece about the photo of Hillary Clinton sitting on a folding chair?
Well, the response to it has been really fascinating, and I wrote about that over at Shareblue.
It occurred to me that there is not just a dearth of stories about Clinton supporters; there is also a dearth of stories about Clinton herself, the way her supporters see her.
There is a frustrating abundance of stories casting Clinton as any one of the myriad caricatures of her that have been drawn over decades, but precious few that are written with an eye to look at her, the human being behind the exaggerations, mischaracterizations, and outright lies.
It is remarkably rare to find someone writing about Clinton in a way that neither demeans her, nor tasks her with the colossal obligation to be unyieldingly inspiring. Putting someone on a pedestal, after all, can be just as dehumanizing as kicking them into the dirt.
I do not need Clinton to be on a pedestal. I can see her just fine sitting on a folding chair.
And, not for nothing, but Hillary Clinton has of course made "honest dollars" at many other jobs before she was a US Senator and Secretary of State.
But Donald Trump isn't petitioning to be an attorney or work for the Children's Defense Fund: He's petitioning to be President of the United States, where he would draw a salary from the federal government.
If he doesn't consider that honest work, then why the fuck is he running?
[Photo: Barbara Kinney for Hillary for America | Oct 2 Charlotte, NC]
I don't even know where to begin. LOVE. The way Hillary is looking at this little girl to make sure she knows that what she's saying is very important and worthy and welcome to the person who may be the nation's first woman president.
[Content Note: Deadly weather; video may autoplay at link] The latest on Hurricane Matthew: "Dangerous Hurricane Matthew will bring great risk to lives and property from Haiti and Cuba to the Bahamas this week. ...The powerful hurricane will pass close to or directly over the western tip of Haiti and the eastern tip of Cuba. In these areas, life-threatening conditions are likely, since the most powerful part of the hurricane will approach. Impacts will range from flooding rainfall and storm surge flooding to mudslides, high winds and dangerous seas and surf into the middle of the week."
[CN: Police brutality; racism; death] Goddammit: "Officers shot and killed an 18-year-old man in south Los Angeles at the end of a car chase on Saturday, sparking a protest by several dozen people angered by another fatal police shooting of an African American man. The pursuit began around 1pm when officers tried to pull over a car with paper plates, suspecting the vehicle may have been stolen, and the driver refused to stop, Los Angeles police sergeant Barry Montgomery said. The driver and passenger jumped out and police ran after them. The passenger ran into the back of a house, where he was shot. The driver escaped. Early on Sunday, the Los Angeles police department (LAPD) said in a statement that it found a handgun at the scene of the shooting. The department did not provide any more information about the gun. Relatives of the dead man identified him as Carnell Snell Jr and told the Los Angeles Times he was killed on the street where he lived." My condolences to his family, friends, and community.
Neat: "One of the largest ever dinosaur footprints has been found by a joint expedition of Japanese and Mongolian researchers in the Gobi desert. The giant print measures 106cm (42in) long and 77cm (30in) wide, according to AFP. It is thought to have belonged to a titanosaur, a group of giant, long-necked herbivores. Researchers said the creature may have been more than 30 meters (98ft) long and 20 meters (66ft) tall."
"When you talk about the mental health problems, when people come back from war and combat and they see things that maybe a lot of the folks in this room have seen many times over and you're strong and you can handle it, but a lot of people can't handle it."—Donald Trump, speaking to a veterans' group in Virginia today.
We have, culturally, created and maintained stigma against disclosing mental illness and stigma against seeking treatment. Tasking individual people with overcoming social pressures, as well as institutional failures to ensure access to mental healthcare, is unjust. This is not about a failure of personal strength.
Trump, however, with his history of mocking a disabled reporter and mocking Hillary Clinton's stumble when she had pneumonia, seems to regard all illness as a sign of personal weakness.
This is perhaps the most basic form of disablism. We need a president who doesn't engage in this sort of bullshit. And Donald Trump needs to issue an apology immediately.
When I look at this year’s presidential race, it’s clear which candidate believes the same thing. Only one person running truly understands the struggles of an Akron child born into poverty. And when I think about the kinds of policies and ideas the kids in my foundation need from our government, the choice is clear.
That candidate is Hillary Clinton.
...For over 40 years, she's been working to improve public schools, expand access to health care, support children's hospitals, and so much more.
She wants to make sure kids have access to a good education, no matter what zip code they live in. She'll rebuild schools that are falling apart and put more money into computer science. She'll make sure teachers are paid what they deserve so they can give everything to their students.
She also has plans to make college a reality for more people in America, especially for those who can't afford it. My kids in Akron are proof of the hope and motivation that come from knowing college can be in their future, no matter what obstacles they might be facing.
...We need a president who understands our community and will build on the legacy of President Obama. So let's register to vote, show up to the polls, and vote for Hillary Clinton.
I like that guy. I liked him long before he endorsed Hillary Clinton, for all the reasons that his endorsement really means something. That is: He cares. He tries to make a difference. He knows that "stronger together" really isn't just a campaign slogan.
I've got a new piece at Shareblue about the persistent narrative that Hillary Clinton will do or say "anything to win," and how there is indeed a candidate in this race who will do or say "anything to win," but it isn't Clinton:
Ambitious women must inevitably contend with accusations that they are driven by unfettered ego, that they are ruthless in their pursuit of power, that they will stop at nothing to achieve their objectives. They are called entitled, unscrupulous, scheming, dishonest. They are accused of regarding themselves as queens, and they are described in the most unflattering terms.
Hillary Clinton is no exception. Indeed, she is the rule.
One of the most persistent false storylines about her is that she will say or do "anything to win." It has been routinely said about her by her opponents, becoming a favorite narrative of the corporate media.
...If we want to see what doing or saying anything to win actually looks like, we need look no further than her opponent, Donald Trump.
Just over the last week alone, Trump spent the first presidential debate telling an absurd number of easily debunkable lies, declared he was "smart" for not paying taxes, threatened to turn Clinton's marital issues into campaign fodder, peddled a conspiracy theory about his debate microphone, vindictively attacked former Miss Universe Alicia Machado, mocked Clinton for fainting from pneumonia, suggested she was disloyal to her husband, and claimed he is the "only one" who can reform the tax code.
All while continuing to run his bigoted campaign of white nationalism, misogyny, and xenophobia, with almost zero discussion of policy — amounting to what NBC News described as possibly "the worst week in presidential campaign history."
Now THAT is what doing anything to win really looks like.
[Content Note: Class warfare; mocking illness. Video may autoplay at first link.]
As you may have heard, over the weekend, the New York Times dropped a bombshell: After taking a nearly billion-dollar tax loss in 1995, there's a good possibility Donald Trump hasn't paid taxes in nearly two decades.
And the story of how they obtained and verified this information is fascinating, too (emphases mine):
The documents consisted of three pages from what appeared to be Mr. Trump's 1995 tax returns. The pages were mailed last month to Susanne Craig, a reporter at The Times who has written about Mr. Trump's finances. The documents were the first page of a New York State resident income tax return, the first page of a New Jersey nonresident tax return, and the first page of a Connecticut nonresident tax return. Each page bore the names and Social Security numbers of Mr. Trump and Marla Maples, his wife at the time. Only the New Jersey form had what appeared to be their signatures.
The three documents arrived by mail at The Times with a postmark indicating they had been sent from New York City. The return address claimed the envelope had been sent from Trump Tower.
On Wednesday, The Times presented the tax documents to Jack Mitnick, a lawyer and certified public accountant who handled Mr. Trump's tax matters for more than 30 years, until 1996. Mr. Mitnick was listed as the preparer on the New Jersey tax form.
Mr. Mitnick, 80, now semiretired and living in Florida, said that while he no longer had access to Mr. Trump's original returns, the documents appeared to be authentic copies of portions of Mr. Trump's 1995 tax returns. Mr. Mitnick said the signature on the tax preparer line of the New Jersey tax form was his, and he readily explained an obvious anomaly in the way especially large numbers appeared on the New York tax document.
A flaw in the tax software program he used at the time prevented him from being able to print a nine-figure loss on Mr. Trump's New York return, he said. So, for example, the loss of "-915,729,293" on Line 18 of the return printed out as "5,729,293." As a result, Mr. Mitnick recalled, he had to use his typewriter to manually add the "-91," thus explaining why the first two digits appeared to be in a different font and were slightly misaligned from the following seven digits.
"This is legit," he said, stabbing a finger into the document.
To put the Trump tax bombshell into perspective, when he claimed a nearly billion dollar tax loss in '95, I was drinking Zima to Wonderwall.
Naturally, Trump—who, as you may recall, declared "That makes me smart!" at the first presidential debate when Hillary Clinton suggested he may not have paid taxes in some time—sent out his BFF surrogates Rudy Giuliani and Chris Christie to defend him, the former of whom repeatedly called him a "genius" and the latter of whom incredibly contended that this story is "a very, very good story for Donald Trump." Sounds legit!
In other Trump news, he completely spun out of control at a rally, verbally and physically mocking Clinton's stumble from pneumonia—
1: This is a shitty, unjustifiable claim. 2. Trump clearly doesn't think marital fealty is a req for president. Or is that only for men? https://t.co/4l2g5sNXG6
How many different ways are there to say this guy isn't fit to be president? THIS GUY IS NOT FIT TO BE PRESIDENT. He is comprehensively unqualified—lacking the competence, the temperament, anything resembling even the most basic decency we expect of a national leader.
If you did and said during a job interview the things Trump has done and said during this campaign, do you think you'd get the job?
I don't even know how to describe the Very Special Rules we have decided to use to assess Donald Trump. All I know is that they belong in the nearest dumpster, set on fire until they are burned into ash, and then that ash packed into a cannon and fired into the sun, just to be safe.
[Content Note: War on agency] Today is the 40th anniversary of the Hyde Amendment, and Rewire has got you covered from a number of different angles.
Um, okay. "Debate commission: Trump had audio 'issues'." Except, read the not-even-fine print: "'Regarding the first debate, there were issues regarding Donald Trump's audio that affected the sound level in the debate hall,' the commission said in a statement." In the debate hall is an important detail that will almost certainly get immediately lost.
Good grief: "Trump Foundation lacks the certification required for charities that solicit money." Of course it does. Because nothing this guy does is decent or legit.
[CN: Homophobia] "Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore suspended for rest of term." Sounds about right.
[CN: Rape culture; sexual assault; self-harm] "Nate Parker, director of the film The Birth of a Nation, says he does not feel guilty about a rape allegation levied against him in 1999, in a taped interview with 60 Minutes to air on Sunday." By way of reminder: He harassed the woman who accused him of rape and she later took her own life. He seems nice.
This new Hillary Clinton campaign ad, featuring her lifelong friend Betsy Ebeling, is great, and he section of this video where Ebeling talks about people negating Clinton's goodness is so powerful.
Omggggggg Part Two: "103 year-old Ruline just cast her early vote for Hillary: 'I never thought I would vote for a woman.'" Pass the Kleenex please and thank you!
I've got a new essay up at Shareblue about how this election is, at its core, a referendum on how this country values women:
Donald Trump is so explicitly sexist, and Hillary Clinton is so explicitly feminist, that the choice made by the majority of voters will send a very clear message about the value of women in our country.
I suspect that I am not the only woman who is having feelings about that.
To grow up a girl in a world that believes girls to be less-than is to be discouraged, over and over again. It is to live a life of learning that there are people who think you are worth less, people who will try to hold you back, people who will hate you and hurt you because you are a girl.
To greet lesson after lesson exposing the sometimes cavernous divide between what little girls are told their lives should be, and what little girls want their lives to be.
To have to be indomitable in the face of that discouragement; to confront each day the limits of other people’s imaginations about what girls and women can do, can be.
“Strong woman” is a superfluity. There is no choice but strength, in a world that conspires to weaken your resolve, limit your opportunity, and subvert your self-worth.
Millions of women — even many who do not like Clinton, and who may not vote for her — are watching this election and the stark choice that is before us. Cringing at every grossly sexist emanation from Trump and his surrogates. Angry at the evident double standards by which Clinton is judged.
Because of the particular dynamic of this campaign, the Sexist vs. the Trailblazer, many women (and I count myself among them) cannot help but feel as though votes are being cast not just for a candidate, but for affirmation of their position on womanhood. On women.
On our very selves.
There is much, much more at the link.
This is perhaps one of the most important things I've written this cycle. Please, if you enjoy it, share it far and wide.
True Story: While Trump was up in the wee hours tweeting horrendous garbage about Alicia Machado, I was up writing this essay. @Shareblue
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