Hillary Clinton in 1995 versus Hillary Clinton now
I was just looking ahead at some of the quotes on my page a day calendar (it was given to me by a friend for Christmas and the calendar theme is “Believing in Ourselves” and has quotes in it from famous women) for the next few days and the Sunday quote was one from Hillary Clinton, which I’ll repost here:
“You can decide to be someone who brings people together, or you can fall prey to those who wish to divide us. You can be someone who educates yourself, or you can belief that being negative is clever and beind cynical is fashionable. You have a choice.”
I looked up the source of that quote and found that it was part of a speech the Senator gave back on January 26, 1995 at the dedication of Eleanor Roosevelt College in San Diego, CA. Here is the full quote:
“For many of you who are students here, you may not believe now that you will ever face any issues that pose moral questions. That you will never have the opportunity to exhibit courage in the face of dilemmas such as Mrs. Roosevelt. I would say that everyday you have the opportunity to demonstrate courage. You have a choice. You can decide to be someone who tries to bring people together or you can fall prey to those who wish to divide us. You can be someone who stands against prejudice and bigotry or you can go along with the crowd and tell the jokes and point the fingers. You can be someone who believes your obligation as a citizen is to educate yourself and learn what is going on so you can make an informed decision. Or you can be among those who believe that being negative is clever, being cynical is fashionable, and there really is nothing you can do anyway.”
Well, that was then. This is now:
“First family that comes and says ‘I want to send my daughter to St. Peter’s Roman Catholic School’ and you say ‘Great, wonderful school, here’s your voucher,'” Clinton said. “Next parent that comes and says, ‘I want to send my child to the school of the Church of the White Supremacist …’ The parent says, ‘The way that I read Genesis, Cain was marked, therefore I believe in white supremacy. … You gave it to a Catholic parent, you gave it to a Jewish parent, under the Constitution, you can’t discriminate against me.'”
As an adoring, if somewhat puzzled, audience of Bronx activists looked on, Clinton added, “So what if the next parent comes and says, ‘I want to send my child to the School of the Jihad? … I won’t stand for it.”
Hillary’s history of racial ‘gaffes’:
When U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton said at a St. Louis fund raiser last weekend that civil rights legend Mahatma Gandhi reminded her of a gas station attendant, it wasn’t the first time the former first lady had made a racist-sounding slip of the tongue.
Less than five months ago, for instance, Mrs. Clinton was addressing the American Constitution Society when she found herself singing the praises of the “white suburbs” of her youth.
Contending that Republicans wanted to roll back the clock on five decades of social progress in America, Mrs. Clinton mused:
“What was that golden age that they want to go back to? You know, is it back to the 1950s white suburbs for family life, which I grew up in and write about in my book – and am very grateful for, but didn’t exactly describe the universal experience in America?”
[…]
Mrs. Clinton’s ethnic slurs were sometimes harder to paint as accidental, such as the time she invoked Sen. Alfonse D’Amato’s Italian heritage to help derail his 1998 re-election bid.
In her landmark book “Hell to Pay,” Hillary’s late biographer Barbara Olson recalled:
“Alfonse D’Amato who, after a bruising year investigating the Clintons, was on the comeback trail in New York until he ran smack into Hillary. She raised more than a million dollars for his victorious opponent and publicly ridiculed him as ‘Senator Tomato.'”
In 1996 San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown became the target of Mrs. Clinton’s unique sense of humor. Here’s how the Los Angeles Times covered Hillary’s performance:
“Speaking in a mock African American accent, Mrs. Clinton said that Brown asked two years ago to be introduced to ‘this Emily List’ whom he supposed to be a wealthy Democratic donor.”
Imitating Brown, Clinton huffed, “She’s supportin’ all these people. She’s supportin’ Sen. Dianne Feinstein. She’s supported Sen. Barbara Boxer. … She supported everybody. Why won’t she support me?”
The Senator playing racial politics:
In her speech Monday, Clinton, who has never served in the House, told the audience that “when you look at the way the House of Representatives has been run, it has been run like a plantation, and you know what I’m talking about.”
My my, how times change …
Related: Richard Johnson at the NY Post writes about how Bubba has been complaining recently that the NYTimes hasn’t been giving his wife a ‘fair shake’ … the NYTimes? What did they do, print one negative story out of how many glowing profiles?