This is a good example of one of my very least favorite comments around here: "This thing is Too Online, unlike me, who is commenting on a newsletter that primarily concerns online culture!"
The podcast of two of the most powerful women in the country is inherently newsworthy and worth talking about. Strutting around congratulating yourself for not being so online, WHILE FUCKING ONLINE, is going to start catching bans around here. I've had enough of "this isn't worth my time" comments. Then just shut the fuck up!
Powerful? The Clintons are has beens and never was. Janet Yellen or Nancy Pelosi are infinitely more powerful, as are any of the female SCOTUS justices. Despite always sounding like she's giving a report on a book she's never read, even Kamala Harris likely holds more sway. Not to mention numerous unknown female executives. It's time for the Clintons to exit stage left.
It is surprising that you see your newsletter as "primarily concerning online culture". I see it as dealing with education, communism, alternate side of the street parking, mental illness, housing policy -- you know, wide-ranging, following whatever you are interested in writing about at the time. That's why I like it.
It is also surprising that you see Chelsea Clinton as one of "the most powerful women in the country." She'll always be famous, of course, at least to people old enough to remember Bill's presidency. But what makes you say she is exceptionally powerful (i.e. compared to other rich women)?
OK, OK - that sometimes considers online culture. The point is the same: "I don't care about this because I'm not as online as you" is self-flattering, self-defeating, and aggravating. Just move on if that's the case.
All parts of "online" are not equal. Those who use twitter/tiktok/etc are inferior to those who don't, regardless of what other parts of "online" they engage in. It's not a moral inferiority, either - it's just a product of their circumstances. Mentioning it frequently is a good thing in the same way that offering drug addicts help is good.
“Uniting a myriad backlash to late-Obama-early-Trump-era feminism was a shared conviction that the world’s actual worst people, the true oppressors, were liberal white women. The hypocritical Karens, convinced of their own supreme victimhood, all the while benefitting from affirmative action and white supremacy and benevolent sexism and and and.”
Equality is real. Females are as capable of greediness, selfishness, nastiness and meanness as are males. The meanest of females are the feminists. It isn’t just white females. Time to reject the concept of misogyny. Welcome to the real game where everyone gets treated the same… like they deserve.
There is such a thing as misogyny. The concept is valid. The problem, as is so often the case with powerful words, is that anything some woman (or male fellow-traveler) doesn't like can lead to a BS accusation of misogyny. It's the same with other powerful words like "racism", "anti-Semitism", "classism", "ageism", or (in Communist countries) "counter-revolutionary". This problem is not going to be solved as long as humans remain the fundamentally stupid, dishonest, selfish, short-term-thinking creatures that we are, which is to say, it will probably never be solved.
None of those labels are useful. Tribalism is tribalism. Evil is evil. Harm is harm. Nobody should get a virtue signaling victim benefit. There are only two types of people in this world: me, and everyone else.
I was actually curious about the show in exactly the way that has been expressed here, and I absolutely appreciated this article; it was an enjoyable read, it did affirm some of my suspicions but opened up many other channels of inquiry I wouldn’t have devoted the brain power to thinking about, and was a blend of humor and seriousness that landed with me. Wasn’t any one thing, but a rounded approach to something I wanted to know about but would never have taken the time to unearth.
I’d typically ignore this kind of comment like everyone else, but it really rubbed me the wrong way. What could possibly be your problem with this article?
A lot of people (like me) can't stand Hillary Clinton, but I'd rather read - as I did in this article - a considered view of the show, and musings on the contradictions of identity-first feminism, and that in-her-forties Chelsea is still treated as a child (indicative of the American political class in general), than boilerplate on how terrible Hillary is. I know she's terrible already. But she's also a person, a very historically important one, and as such an article that touches on her both as a person and as a personage is interesting to me.
Plus it was well-written and "If I were there I’d have suggested something more like onward and upward which is to say let us please talk about anything else." is a wonderful sentence.
(Finally, it doesn't seem to me that the author was pulling punches. She describes the show as 'excruciating' and 'a high-production-value multipart dive into the navel of bland beneficiaries of nepotism'. This doesn't seem to me even a half-hearted endorsement. Is it not possible to find enjoyment in something despite that? Have we forgotten so-bad-it's-good? Can't you coax from yourself even a hint of a smile if a bird shits on you or if you get drenched by a passing bus on a puddle?)
To remind us that the 2016 election (and 2020 apparently) offered us a Sophie's Choice of candidates. If there is something broken about America, surely it is that out of 330+ million people, Bush/Clinton/Biden/Trump are the best choices we can manage to find for the presidency.
We regrettably do not vote for politicians based on policy, but on the vibes they put out. This is frustrating when you’re stanning a policy platform, but it makes a sort of sense; the whole point to having a representative democracy is to send somebody you trust to play politics in your stead while you are living your normal life. The trust is what matters, that you send somebody who will not neglect or betray you, and developing trust between people really is more than 50% vibes.
She’s in a normal person’s home, with a normal kitchen that’s clearly kept clean and where there’s a bit of clutter that is nonetheless organized, and her reaction is like she’s taking in a refugee camp after a rough year in Bosnia.
How could I ever trust her to play politics in my stead, when she is visibly disgusted by me and my community?
I am intrigued by your notion of trust, but baffled by your interpretation of this picture. Couldn’t 9trillion other things be going on in this picture, none of which have anything to do with disgust over the state of a normal kitchen? I’m not commenting on or defending Hillary (and may be uninformed/ignorant of proven context around it), but this feels like precisely the sort of projection that says so much about the voter and nothing about the candidate.
The context is she was touring low income housing in 2016 during the run up to the election. Nothing crazy or wild about it.
And if I came to the picture of an influential politician being shocked at how the poors live (which was the whole point of the tour, drumming up cred as a reformer before Election Day) when she’s looking at a nice place being taken care of by the inhabitants and not one of the giving-no-fucks rats’ nests that I’ve had the misfortune to clean out, with my own previous beliefs projected onto it, well, those previously held beliefs come from her previous rhetoric and actions too.
If it helps, Trump lost my vote forever in 2015 when I poked through his history and found that he habitually fucks over tenants and refuses workers’ pay, so all politicians are playing by the same rules with me. As another for instance, some local politician was going door to door the other day begging for votes, and I wasn’t gonna bother voting for some dude I’d never heard of til he mentioned the port unions already signed off on him. I live in ILWU’s territory, so the trust transfers.
I remember when HRC and Tipper Gore were spending a night in a refugee camp in Latin America on a "fact-finding mission", as breathlessly reported by the press.
In reality, the Dynamic Duo did a photoshoot with a tent as a prop, then took a helicopter to the Intercontinental to spend the night.
I think this kind of stuff is disgusting and indefensible, and also it’s impossible to escape if you are trying to get the word out--in imagery, which is sadly the only thing the vast majority takes in--about things you care about. It would be so much better if she had slept there and really meant it, but even that would have been read as posturing. In politics, “if there is no photo, it didn’t happen.” It’s the worst and it dictates everything.
The end result is that the term "fact finding mission" is fatally debased. If all that matters is smoke and mirrors why go through the hard work of actually digging in and learning something? Faking it is so much easier.
That’s true. The whole system rewards superficiality. I know from experience. Engaging with individuals: deeply substantive. Broadcasting to a group: riddled with transparent messaging.
The whole thing was fake, calculated and calculating. Everything about HRC comes off as contrived, glib and insincere.
In other words, she is a sociopath who isn't very good at faking it. This is why humans instinctively dislike and distrust her so much. In fact, cats (and also dogs) can literally smell such people's insincerity.
I actually disagree, but everything I would say has been said a million times before. I voted for Bernie and think that much of today’s hellscape can be planted firmly at the feet of Clinton/Wasserman-Schultz, but I have always said: Hillary was viewable as a full human being the moment she was done performing, ie when debates were over. She softened and filled out like an inflatable unicorn. Anyone and anything that is poked and prodded and coached into such an impossible shape is bound to come across as inhuman. She was of an era where no authenticity would have “worked.”
Every indication is that she was as corrupt and self serving as her husband. Firing the employees of the White House travel office during her husband's tenure so that she could replace them with political cronies was her doing, not his.
Nobody who thinks it's okay to fire workers and then press bogus criminal charges against them when they have the temerity to complain is "genuine" in my book.
I tend to agree. I don’t have enough info to make a determination that feels solid, but I do think the machine was very strong. Regardless, I would very much like to see a new future emerge.
If that's your takeaway of that picture, it's readily obvious that you're willingly reading way more into that picture. The look on her face, to me, reads as if she's wondering why someone appears to have stalks of corn growing in their kitchen sink. I mean, when I visit other people's houses and observe something odd, I too have a moment of surprise on my face.
That’s a houseplant. If you water them in place, the water drizzles through the holes in the bottom and gets the floor messy, so you water them in the sink where the excess water that doesn’t soak into the roots or the soil drains into a safe place.
Also, a wonderful example of what I’m talking about.
I was being facetious about the plants being corn to illustrate a point that someone randomly walking into another person's house and not expecting a temporary plant farm in the kitchen sink.
Maybe this is a background thing. I grew up in a house that always had flowers so this wasn't unusual to me. It would certainly be unusual to someone who never saw flowers or plants in their house. However, given that Hillary spent much of her life in luxury, she can hardly be oblivious to the existence of houseplants.
I see it the same way the original poster did: she can't hide her shock and discomfort at being in a place where non-choreographed things are happening, where there's kinda weird stuff like plants in the sink and probably a magnet out of place on the fridge. If the room isn't Hillary-ified, with minders and riders and a phalanx of men with earpieces and sunglasses, then it's hostile territory.
Now, of course, that's with the prior of having watched Hillary galumph her way through public life for feckless decades uncountable. Had I none of this background knowledge, I'd probably think it was a picture of someone with dementia.
It's amazing to see someone try this hard to imply that Hillary's momentary facial expression captured in this photo to be one of distaste and disdain for the mundane. Reading both your comment and the OPs, I'm inclined that the distaste is coming from you both (a distaste for Hillary writ large) and not Hillary's facial expression. Although the facial expression confirms your bias that Hillary has always been an out-of-touch faker.
But imagine you are "used to plants being the kitchen sing at watering time" but you're also just coming into some random person's kitchen and not expecting such a scene and you're momentarily caught by surprise. But that's all it is. A moment of surprise. It's like catching someone in a not-flattering moment taking a bite of a hotdog and attaching earth-shattering importance to it.
You're agreeing with me. I said this is based on my knowledge of Hillary. Without that knowledge I think - but can't say for sure - that it would be more elderly bemusement than anything else.
I think it's certainly atypical when guests are expected. However, if you're trying to clear a plant with some salt build-up, watering in the sink is great because you want to rinse it thoroughly and then let it drain of any excess water for a few minutes before putting it back in its place.
What you're saying really resonates with me (I initially typed "reasonates", which might need to become a term of art in the SSC-adjacent rational-ish community), but I still would hesitate to give that much weight to a single still image of a political candidate. You can capture just about any facial expression you might want of a person if you hang around them long enough and just keep holding the shutter button down on burst mode (or recording a video and pulling out a single still frame).
Also possible: if you (the generic you) take dozens of photographs of someone at one event, one or two of those photographs are going to show that person making some sort of strange and unflattering face.
Insert here standard disclaimer about my not being a Clinton fan and having voted for her only because I didn't like her opponent.
I never fail to be amazed at the amount of navel-gazing that humans exhibit, the performativity, the narcissism.
Even when I am fed and satisfied and content to watch wildlife from a comfy perch, I just watch the wildlife rather than ask myself what does it really mean to be tabby. In fact, I can't even see my navel underneath my belly fur.
When I saw "Gutsy" on my Apple TV, even as someone who voted for Hillary, my gut reaction was "oh fuck" - and this post captures what I imagine my experience to be if I subjected myself to an episode.
Sounds awful. I hadn't heard of this show, and I feel no need to acquaint myself with it further, but it was interesting to read a little about it. It sounds like nothing more than Hillary Clinton marketing herself, which seems to be all she does anymore.
Personally, I suspect Hillary's decision to stay with Bill was basically just careerism in action. But I could be wrong. Maybe, despite everything, she actually loves him. It's been known to happen.
My favorite take on the 2016 election came after the fact from Republican former House Speaker John Boehner. I don't have the exact quote handy, but it was close to this: "Donald Trump was the only Republican Hillary Clinton could possibly have defeated, and she was the only Democrat he could possibly have defeated. 300 million people in this country and somehow we got those two."
From the description of this particular episode, it seems that the purpose of Gutsy is for a middle-aged daughter to give her boomer parent the last grasp attempt at still feeling relevant in the world even as the daughter waits slightly off to the side giving off the 'mom, please get the fuck out of the way' vibe. This is what a lot of Gen-Xers and older Millennials have been feeling for about 20 years now.
If there’s anything we can all agree on, it’s that the Clintons need to Go Away. And be gone for good. This show feels like a rebranding, where they’re desperately trying to show Hilary as life-like and good-humored. Christ, this is dismal.
Hillary Clinton is, to me, the anti-feminist and pretty much the poster child for the Democrat Party at this point. She is every worst stereotype about women: whiny, demanding, self-entitled, and pampered. And she has none of the best stereotypes: nurturing, understanding, and compassionate. When it comes to "policy," she is decidedly "male" in her approach, which is to say calculating and self-serving with no regard as to the consequences for the people who she rules over (and in her mind, she definitely "rules"; she doesn't in any way "serve.").
As for Chelsea, I'd feel sorry for her, but as you say, she's a personality-less lump who rides on her parents' coattails.
And I'm not even going to try "Gutsy." "Gutsy" is a woman who does what she needs to do day in and day out and understands what obstacles she faces, but works her way around or through them. And she doesn't rely on her "woman-ness" to win arguments. None of that describes Hillary, or any of the people it seems she "features."
I watched part of one episode--the one about marriage--because it featured my friend Fraidy and her excellent and important organization, Unchained at Last, which helps women escape forced marriages and is working to make child marriage illegal nationwide.
I was so disappointed in the show, even going in with low expectations. Fraidy barely got to talk at all, and her whole segment was less than five minutes long. Most of the episode was self-congratulatory--Hillary being praised by a Black female preacher for her “courageous” decision to stay married to Bill, and other interviewees praising Chelsea because she and her husband discuss all their issues every night before going to bed. Every night! All their issues! What a drag that would be. Let some things slide, people!
But I digress. My main issue with the show is that there are MANY important topics the Clintons could have focused on, and many voices they could have boosted given their huge audience. But based on the episode I watched, they are using their platform to boost themselves instead.
YES! Fuck em if they can't take a joke...
Your "infinitely complex identity" gets a little bit more basic and a little bit less complex for every day that you use twitter. Keep that in mind.
I had no idea this show existed, so I guess it was a useful post in an informative sense.
I was better off before I knew it existed
This is a good example of one of my very least favorite comments around here: "This thing is Too Online, unlike me, who is commenting on a newsletter that primarily concerns online culture!"
The podcast of two of the most powerful women in the country is inherently newsworthy and worth talking about. Strutting around congratulating yourself for not being so online, WHILE FUCKING ONLINE, is going to start catching bans around here. I've had enough of "this isn't worth my time" comments. Then just shut the fuck up!
Powerful? The Clintons are has beens and never was. Janet Yellen or Nancy Pelosi are infinitely more powerful, as are any of the female SCOTUS justices. Despite always sounding like she's giving a report on a book she's never read, even Kamala Harris likely holds more sway. Not to mention numerous unknown female executives. It's time for the Clintons to exit stage left.
Amusingly relevant Tumblr post, since MarkS demands a description https://preview.redd.it/15n81mhergs01.jpg
Blind link to a pic? No thank you.
Plus, I hope you know that everything after the question mark is just tracking you (the poster of the link).
You need to conquer your fear and be willing to take chances. Happiness won't come for you, you must hunt for it.
It is surprising that you see your newsletter as "primarily concerning online culture". I see it as dealing with education, communism, alternate side of the street parking, mental illness, housing policy -- you know, wide-ranging, following whatever you are interested in writing about at the time. That's why I like it.
It is also surprising that you see Chelsea Clinton as one of "the most powerful women in the country." She'll always be famous, of course, at least to people old enough to remember Bill's presidency. But what makes you say she is exceptionally powerful (i.e. compared to other rich women)?
OK, OK - that sometimes considers online culture. The point is the same: "I don't care about this because I'm not as online as you" is self-flattering, self-defeating, and aggravating. Just move on if that's the case.
Cool strawman there.
All parts of "online" are not equal. Those who use twitter/tiktok/etc are inferior to those who don't, regardless of what other parts of "online" they engage in. It's not a moral inferiority, either - it's just a product of their circumstances. Mentioning it frequently is a good thing in the same way that offering drug addicts help is good.
Love this.
Brilliant and hilarious. Will someone please tell HRC there's this thing called a "sell by" date?
“Uniting a myriad backlash to late-Obama-early-Trump-era feminism was a shared conviction that the world’s actual worst people, the true oppressors, were liberal white women. The hypocritical Karens, convinced of their own supreme victimhood, all the while benefitting from affirmative action and white supremacy and benevolent sexism and and and.”
Equality is real. Females are as capable of greediness, selfishness, nastiness and meanness as are males. The meanest of females are the feminists. It isn’t just white females. Time to reject the concept of misogyny. Welcome to the real game where everyone gets treated the same… like they deserve.
There is such a thing as misogyny. The concept is valid. The problem, as is so often the case with powerful words, is that anything some woman (or male fellow-traveler) doesn't like can lead to a BS accusation of misogyny. It's the same with other powerful words like "racism", "anti-Semitism", "classism", "ageism", or (in Communist countries) "counter-revolutionary". This problem is not going to be solved as long as humans remain the fundamentally stupid, dishonest, selfish, short-term-thinking creatures that we are, which is to say, it will probably never be solved.
None of those labels are useful. Tribalism is tribalism. Evil is evil. Harm is harm. Nobody should get a virtue signaling victim benefit. There are only two types of people in this world: me, and everyone else.
Me disagrees with you on that.
Presumably there was a point to this article, but what?
Beats me.
Also, btw, I like when you swing by FDB’s blog with your articles. It’s like getting a double feature ticket by error after buying a movie ticket.
The purpose of this article was for me to have something to smile about after an extremely tough month.
Mission accomplished.
I was actually curious about the show in exactly the way that has been expressed here, and I absolutely appreciated this article; it was an enjoyable read, it did affirm some of my suspicions but opened up many other channels of inquiry I wouldn’t have devoted the brain power to thinking about, and was a blend of humor and seriousness that landed with me. Wasn’t any one thing, but a rounded approach to something I wanted to know about but would never have taken the time to unearth.
I’d typically ignore this kind of comment like everyone else, but it really rubbed me the wrong way. What could possibly be your problem with this article?
Thank you. The show was terrible. I felt no qualms saying this!
A lot of people (like me) can't stand Hillary Clinton, but I'd rather read - as I did in this article - a considered view of the show, and musings on the contradictions of identity-first feminism, and that in-her-forties Chelsea is still treated as a child (indicative of the American political class in general), than boilerplate on how terrible Hillary is. I know she's terrible already. But she's also a person, a very historically important one, and as such an article that touches on her both as a person and as a personage is interesting to me.
Plus it was well-written and "If I were there I’d have suggested something more like onward and upward which is to say let us please talk about anything else." is a wonderful sentence.
(Finally, it doesn't seem to me that the author was pulling punches. She describes the show as 'excruciating' and 'a high-production-value multipart dive into the navel of bland beneficiaries of nepotism'. This doesn't seem to me even a half-hearted endorsement. Is it not possible to find enjoyment in something despite that? Have we forgotten so-bad-it's-good? Can't you coax from yourself even a hint of a smile if a bird shits on you or if you get drenched by a passing bus on a puddle?)
I'm not familiar with the author so that's not the impression I got, but to each their own.
Maybe you should see if the show was reviewed by The National Review and then go read that article...
'a high-production-value multipart dive into the navel of bland beneficiaries of nepotism' - this is gold and the reason I kept reading :)
What? She clearly hated the show. Where did she pretend to enjoy it for feminist solidarity?
She’s not praising the show when she mentions that pleated pants are back. It sounds like you just don’t like the author.
To remind us that the 2016 election (and 2020 apparently) offered us a Sophie's Choice of candidates. If there is something broken about America, surely it is that out of 330+ million people, Bush/Clinton/Biden/Trump are the best choices we can manage to find for the presidency.
We regrettably do not vote for politicians based on policy, but on the vibes they put out. This is frustrating when you’re stanning a policy platform, but it makes a sort of sense; the whole point to having a representative democracy is to send somebody you trust to play politics in your stead while you are living your normal life. The trust is what matters, that you send somebody who will not neglect or betray you, and developing trust between people really is more than 50% vibes.
The vibe I get from Hillary Clinton, or rather the level of trust she has developed with me, is that picture of her in the kitchen- https://external-preview.redd.it/wi7lA2QplH38kW9srwQJqDIVdPTsOui-W0Rc0bXY30I.jpg?auto=webp&s=d2721fb98930d531ec239cd650be30dda5ce5bab
She’s in a normal person’s home, with a normal kitchen that’s clearly kept clean and where there’s a bit of clutter that is nonetheless organized, and her reaction is like she’s taking in a refugee camp after a rough year in Bosnia.
How could I ever trust her to play politics in my stead, when she is visibly disgusted by me and my community?
I am intrigued by your notion of trust, but baffled by your interpretation of this picture. Couldn’t 9trillion other things be going on in this picture, none of which have anything to do with disgust over the state of a normal kitchen? I’m not commenting on or defending Hillary (and may be uninformed/ignorant of proven context around it), but this feels like precisely the sort of projection that says so much about the voter and nothing about the candidate.
The context is she was touring low income housing in 2016 during the run up to the election. Nothing crazy or wild about it.
And if I came to the picture of an influential politician being shocked at how the poors live (which was the whole point of the tour, drumming up cred as a reformer before Election Day) when she’s looking at a nice place being taken care of by the inhabitants and not one of the giving-no-fucks rats’ nests that I’ve had the misfortune to clean out, with my own previous beliefs projected onto it, well, those previously held beliefs come from her previous rhetoric and actions too.
If it helps, Trump lost my vote forever in 2015 when I poked through his history and found that he habitually fucks over tenants and refuses workers’ pay, so all politicians are playing by the same rules with me. As another for instance, some local politician was going door to door the other day begging for votes, and I wasn’t gonna bother voting for some dude I’d never heard of til he mentioned the port unions already signed off on him. I live in ILWU’s territory, so the trust transfers.
I remember when HRC and Tipper Gore were spending a night in a refugee camp in Latin America on a "fact-finding mission", as breathlessly reported by the press.
In reality, the Dynamic Duo did a photoshoot with a tent as a prop, then took a helicopter to the Intercontinental to spend the night.
omfg
I think this kind of stuff is disgusting and indefensible, and also it’s impossible to escape if you are trying to get the word out--in imagery, which is sadly the only thing the vast majority takes in--about things you care about. It would be so much better if she had slept there and really meant it, but even that would have been read as posturing. In politics, “if there is no photo, it didn’t happen.” It’s the worst and it dictates everything.
The end result is that the term "fact finding mission" is fatally debased. If all that matters is smoke and mirrors why go through the hard work of actually digging in and learning something? Faking it is so much easier.
That’s true. The whole system rewards superficiality. I know from experience. Engaging with individuals: deeply substantive. Broadcasting to a group: riddled with transparent messaging.
The whole thing was fake, calculated and calculating. Everything about HRC comes off as contrived, glib and insincere.
In other words, she is a sociopath who isn't very good at faking it. This is why humans instinctively dislike and distrust her so much. In fact, cats (and also dogs) can literally smell such people's insincerity.
It doesn't smell nice, by the way.
I actually disagree, but everything I would say has been said a million times before. I voted for Bernie and think that much of today’s hellscape can be planted firmly at the feet of Clinton/Wasserman-Schultz, but I have always said: Hillary was viewable as a full human being the moment she was done performing, ie when debates were over. She softened and filled out like an inflatable unicorn. Anyone and anything that is poked and prodded and coached into such an impossible shape is bound to come across as inhuman. She was of an era where no authenticity would have “worked.”
Every indication is that she was as corrupt and self serving as her husband. Firing the employees of the White House travel office during her husband's tenure so that she could replace them with political cronies was her doing, not his.
Nobody who thinks it's okay to fire workers and then press bogus criminal charges against them when they have the temerity to complain is "genuine" in my book.
I tend to agree. I don’t have enough info to make a determination that feels solid, but I do think the machine was very strong. Regardless, I would very much like to see a new future emerge.
If that's your takeaway of that picture, it's readily obvious that you're willingly reading way more into that picture. The look on her face, to me, reads as if she's wondering why someone appears to have stalks of corn growing in their kitchen sink. I mean, when I visit other people's houses and observe something odd, I too have a moment of surprise on my face.
Stalks of corn?
That’s a houseplant. If you water them in place, the water drizzles through the holes in the bottom and gets the floor messy, so you water them in the sink where the excess water that doesn’t soak into the roots or the soil drains into a safe place.
Also, a wonderful example of what I’m talking about.
I was being facetious about the plants being corn to illustrate a point that someone randomly walking into another person's house and not expecting a temporary plant farm in the kitchen sink.
Maybe this is a background thing. I grew up in a house that always had flowers so this wasn't unusual to me. It would certainly be unusual to someone who never saw flowers or plants in their house. However, given that Hillary spent much of her life in luxury, she can hardly be oblivious to the existence of houseplants.
I see it the same way the original poster did: she can't hide her shock and discomfort at being in a place where non-choreographed things are happening, where there's kinda weird stuff like plants in the sink and probably a magnet out of place on the fridge. If the room isn't Hillary-ified, with minders and riders and a phalanx of men with earpieces and sunglasses, then it's hostile territory.
Now, of course, that's with the prior of having watched Hillary galumph her way through public life for feckless decades uncountable. Had I none of this background knowledge, I'd probably think it was a picture of someone with dementia.
It's amazing to see someone try this hard to imply that Hillary's momentary facial expression captured in this photo to be one of distaste and disdain for the mundane. Reading both your comment and the OPs, I'm inclined that the distaste is coming from you both (a distaste for Hillary writ large) and not Hillary's facial expression. Although the facial expression confirms your bias that Hillary has always been an out-of-touch faker.
But imagine you are "used to plants being the kitchen sing at watering time" but you're also just coming into some random person's kitchen and not expecting such a scene and you're momentarily caught by surprise. But that's all it is. A moment of surprise. It's like catching someone in a not-flattering moment taking a bite of a hotdog and attaching earth-shattering importance to it.
You're agreeing with me. I said this is based on my knowledge of Hillary. Without that knowledge I think - but can't say for sure - that it would be more elderly bemusement than anything else.
I am pretty sure that is just pots being watered.
Might I suggest investing in plant trays/saucers to save some time and effort? A plant in the sink is atypical, especially when guests are expected.
I think it's certainly atypical when guests are expected. However, if you're trying to clear a plant with some salt build-up, watering in the sink is great because you want to rinse it thoroughly and then let it drain of any excess water for a few minutes before putting it back in its place.
What you're saying really resonates with me (I initially typed "reasonates", which might need to become a term of art in the SSC-adjacent rational-ish community), but I still would hesitate to give that much weight to a single still image of a political candidate. You can capture just about any facial expression you might want of a person if you hang around them long enough and just keep holding the shutter button down on burst mode (or recording a video and pulling out a single still frame).
I’m no Clinton fan but she could be just trying to get her bearings
That's pretty much my take.
Also possible: if you (the generic you) take dozens of photographs of someone at one event, one or two of those photographs are going to show that person making some sort of strange and unflattering face.
Insert here standard disclaimer about my not being a Clinton fan and having voted for her only because I didn't like her opponent.
It's clearly an apartment you peasant. How did you expect her to react???
"Watching 'Gutsy' so you don't have to!" Ms Bovy, for this we will be forever grateful.
Indeed. Thank you for your service.
I never fail to be amazed at the amount of navel-gazing that humans exhibit, the performativity, the narcissism.
Even when I am fed and satisfied and content to watch wildlife from a comfy perch, I just watch the wildlife rather than ask myself what does it really mean to be tabby. In fact, I can't even see my navel underneath my belly fur.
When I saw "Gutsy" on my Apple TV, even as someone who voted for Hillary, my gut reaction was "oh fuck" - and this post captures what I imagine my experience to be if I subjected myself to an episode.
Thanks for the summary. Sounds beyond tedious. Hillary will remain awful. Chelsea may grow up by the time she hits 60. I doubt it.
Sounds awful. I hadn't heard of this show, and I feel no need to acquaint myself with it further, but it was interesting to read a little about it. It sounds like nothing more than Hillary Clinton marketing herself, which seems to be all she does anymore.
Personally, I suspect Hillary's decision to stay with Bill was basically just careerism in action. But I could be wrong. Maybe, despite everything, she actually loves him. It's been known to happen.
My favorite take on the 2016 election came after the fact from Republican former House Speaker John Boehner. I don't have the exact quote handy, but it was close to this: "Donald Trump was the only Republican Hillary Clinton could possibly have defeated, and she was the only Democrat he could possibly have defeated. 300 million people in this country and somehow we got those two."
From the description of this particular episode, it seems that the purpose of Gutsy is for a middle-aged daughter to give her boomer parent the last grasp attempt at still feeling relevant in the world even as the daughter waits slightly off to the side giving off the 'mom, please get the fuck out of the way' vibe. This is what a lot of Gen-Xers and older Millennials have been feeling for about 20 years now.
If there’s anything we can all agree on, it’s that the Clintons need to Go Away. And be gone for good. This show feels like a rebranding, where they’re desperately trying to show Hilary as life-like and good-humored. Christ, this is dismal.
Interesting piece.
Hillary Clinton is, to me, the anti-feminist and pretty much the poster child for the Democrat Party at this point. She is every worst stereotype about women: whiny, demanding, self-entitled, and pampered. And she has none of the best stereotypes: nurturing, understanding, and compassionate. When it comes to "policy," she is decidedly "male" in her approach, which is to say calculating and self-serving with no regard as to the consequences for the people who she rules over (and in her mind, she definitely "rules"; she doesn't in any way "serve.").
As for Chelsea, I'd feel sorry for her, but as you say, she's a personality-less lump who rides on her parents' coattails.
And I'm not even going to try "Gutsy." "Gutsy" is a woman who does what she needs to do day in and day out and understands what obstacles she faces, but works her way around or through them. And she doesn't rely on her "woman-ness" to win arguments. None of that describes Hillary, or any of the people it seems she "features."
I watched part of one episode--the one about marriage--because it featured my friend Fraidy and her excellent and important organization, Unchained at Last, which helps women escape forced marriages and is working to make child marriage illegal nationwide.
I was so disappointed in the show, even going in with low expectations. Fraidy barely got to talk at all, and her whole segment was less than five minutes long. Most of the episode was self-congratulatory--Hillary being praised by a Black female preacher for her “courageous” decision to stay married to Bill, and other interviewees praising Chelsea because she and her husband discuss all their issues every night before going to bed. Every night! All their issues! What a drag that would be. Let some things slide, people!
But I digress. My main issue with the show is that there are MANY important topics the Clintons could have focused on, and many voices they could have boosted given their huge audience. But based on the episode I watched, they are using their platform to boost themselves instead.