Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2016/07/29/why-hillary-clintons-dnc-spe.html
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Regardless of what you think of Clinton as a politician, this absolutely, positively is a big win for all people in the US.
I’m really hoping for four years of disappointment more than I had expected. Though the alternative of four years of working on emigration is quite the motivator.
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Like the Moon Landing for American women, perhaps. A woman has been elected Head of State in easily two dozen countries. Likely more. In, fact, currently, the Head of State and the Head of Government in the United Kingdom are both women, though the former wasn’t elected, granted.
And of course if you ignore democracy, powerful women have been a historical constant. Elizabeth I comes swiftly to mind, as does Huangdi/“Empress” Wu.
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The UK had female heads of state well before it was a popular thing to do elsewhere in the world.
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Honestly, I think this is crazy, but maybe that’s because I’m a manz. Would the buzz be the same if it was someone like Michele Bachmann? And if not, why not?
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And many other countries had non-white heads of state before Obama was elected. Hooray for them. That doesn’t mean this isn’t a Really Big Deal in the history of gender equality.
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Was her speech also faked on a Hollywood sound stage?
(the shadows are a dead giveaway)
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I just sincerely hope the US will have more women in the oval office, and for much longer than we’ve had men on the moon. After all, the last manned moon landing ended less than 4 years after the first (20 july 1969 - 14 december 1972)…
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Ha, no, that’s patently a misunderstanding of what I’m saying! I’m puzzled by the reaction here on Boing Boing because I think it’s odd to regard having a female presidential nominee as an intrinsic good, regardless of the actual qualities of the nominee in question, hence the hypothetical question (which nobody is prepared to answer).
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The answer is no. Clinton is qualified to be President, and no mere token. Bachmann is not.
EDIT: It’s a harder question if you compare Clinton to Rice.
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That’s probably because you’re inherently a person of privilege who has not been systemically devalued and marginalized based solely upon your lack of Y chromosomes.
(Unless I’m wrong in my presumption that you are male.)
It’s easy not to “get” what the ‘big deal’ is when someone else finally gets some of the advantages that you’ve always taken for granted.
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Why? The more times the glass ceiling gets broken, the better we all are for it. Shatter that sucker and get it gone for good. Whether the candidate is the right one for the office is a separate and unrelated question.
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I’d actually be pretty impressed with the GOP if they nominated Rice. Not only would that be a sign that their party had made real progress on sexism and racism, but Rice and Cheney apparently hated each other and that brings her up a notch in my book.
I probably still wouldn’t vote for her, but I’d recognize the significance of her nomination.
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I will be somewhat chagrined if the USA manages to elect a female head of government before Canada does (we’ve had one, but she wasn’t elected; she got the job because the sitting Prime Minister knew his party was doomed to lose the election and stepped down beforehand).
With the current Liberal Cabinet being 50% women, though, there’s a good chance that our future first elected female PM is currently gaining the experience she’ll need to get elected.
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What was it someone said about Obama quite a while back?
That while he’s the ‘Jackie Robinson’ of US politics (as in the first Black president) he’s not necessarily a Willie Mays ( the undeniably more talented player.)
It’s not everything, and it’s not nearly perfect, but IT’S A START.
ETA:
It was Michael Eric Dyson, with whom I disagree on many things; but, IMO, he still had a very succinct point, which is applicable here.
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I disagree completely. Race aside, he’s the most qualified, talented President we’ve had in a very long time. And he gets to keep the title until January.
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*lolz!
Same here.
I think they might have if they could, but C. Rice has made it clear repeatedly that she’s not interested in running.
ETA, again:
Okay that’s fine, but I think you rather missed the actual point;, which I even put in bold text:
#It’s a start.
I’m not knocking Prez Obama, I’m saying he’s just the first.
I concur.
While that may be the source of a lot of disappointment for many people, they need to realize that he was carrying the burden of representing ALL people of African descent in this country in a decent light.
We don’t generally get the privilege of ‘agency’ and being automatically assessed as an individual; if one of us fucks it up, we all are judged and penalized for it.
Seriously though; fuck that noise.
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IMHO Obama has played it safe so as to not poison the waters for subsequent black candidates.
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