Being Hillary Rodham Clinton III

How cool is this? The Secretary of State getting down with the locals! Do you see how low this 60 year-old gets?

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Waaay cool, eh? But do you remember this? I couldn't help but to include it. It's a favorite.



Get down, Mr. President!

Being Hillary Rodham Clinton II

I have been impressed with the intelligence and intensity of Hillary Clinton since her early days with Marian Wright Edelman in support of children's issues.

In spite of a hard fought campaign, Secretary Clinton is proving a great ally and supporter of the President as seen in her great responses in both her confirmation hearing and before Congress last week on the President's anti-terrorism strategy.



Our Madame Secretary is quite the brilliant woman, not to mention that she is most certainly an able politician.

Being Dick Cheney III

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was before the House of Representative Foreign Affairs Committee today. When asked if President Obama would declassify other documents that would prove Dick Cheney's assessment of the administration's interrogation program as being a "success," she replied, "It won't surprise you that I don't consider him (Cheney) a particularly reliable source."

Secretary Clinton also added that she supports a "nonpolitical," "nonpartisan" review of the Bush administration's interrogation program. "I believe we ought to get to the bottom of this entire matter," she said. "I think it is in the best interest of our country and that is what the President believes."

Does Dick Cheney not care about how history will view him?

Being Hillary Rodham Clinton

Watching Madame Secretary on her first day of work, I was incredibly pleased. Anyone needed to have only watched her Senate hearing to realize that this Secretary is brilliant and hardworking. Her performance before the Confirmation Committee was simply stellar.

Being on the National Security Team

President-elect Obama has nominated quite a National Security Team. I am so proud that the United States produces such ability, strength, and diversity.

Secretary of Defense: Robert Gates
National Security Adviser: General James Jones
Secretary of State: Hillary Clinton
Ambassador to the United Nations: Dr. Susan Rice
Attorney General: Eric Holder
Secretary of Homeland Security: Janet Napolitano

The selection of these very strong and capable leaders says a lot about the leadership ability of President-elect Obama. He is not seeking yes men and women but strong leaders in their own right to move our country forward.

What a leader! What a country!

Being Self-Confident

The decision that President-elect Obama has presumably chosen his former rival, Hillary Clinton to serve as Secretary of State shows an incredible amount of self-confidence and leadership, not to mention wisdom. Senator Clinton is most qualified for the job. Through his decisions President-elect Obama is proving to be a person of immense self-confidence, a quality needed for any great transformational leader.

Being a Feminist

The words of Lou Dobbs on CNN last Friday evening have haunted me the whole weekend. "Palin," he said, "has turned feminism on its head." As I listened to those words and thought about them I became increasingly more incensed. In one sense Dobbs made a good point in that the VP selection seems to have tied women's tongues in that no words can be spoken in the affirmative or the negative. But the reality is that this ploy perpetrated by men is very much like the old game of misogyny, one that negates the female voice by silencing it. The turning of feminism on its head seems very much like a continuation of the same argument of women and competence, but only this time it's true and we feel like we can't say it's so. It's so! Women who have decried unfair treatment for years have become as sterile sameness in fearful alignment, not knowing how to speak about Palin's presidential incompetence without negating her gender.

Even Camille Paglia, the feminist and cultural critic of Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson, seems to have lost her voice. "We may be seeing the first woman president. As a Democrat, I am reeling,” said Paglia. “That was the best political speech I have ever seen delivered by an American woman politician. Palin is as tough as nails.” C'mon Camille, say it ain't so! Do you think Palin can stare down Putin? (Being able to see Russia from Alaska will not cut it.) Did you say "the best political speech ever delivered by an American woman politician?" Can you say Hillary Clinton? Barbara Jordon? These glowing words about such a snide tepid speech from the once radical lesbian feminst, who wrote arguably one of the most read books on feminism and culture is just way absurd! I remember reading Sexual Personae in college and thinking...Wow! It was radical stuff! The theatrical is very much apart of the book and the exhaustive scholarship is inviable. It's her magnum opus of some 600 pages.

Now, this powerful thinker, feminist, and cultural critic says that Palin's speech was the "best political speech I have ever seen delivered by an American woman politician." C'mon, Camille, come clean and say it ain't so for the sake of posterity if nothing else. By your oeuvre a reader can assume that you understand theatrics and performance. Surely this was not a great performance, not to mention it was not a great speech either. We respected your scholarship whether we agreed with everything written or not. Your once rich and complex voice has become thin and simplistic. It's beginning to feel like a great voice of the past, that had resisted misogyny on all levels, has been bamboozled by male politicians parading a female vice-presidential candidate around. Lou Dobbs was right on. But it is not feminists who have turned feminism on its head, but the same machine that has sought to silence its voice with a single selection of an ill-suited politician who could be a heartbeat away from the presidency.