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It's Time to Start Taking Hillary Seriously

She's still trivialized as she fights to empower women

By Matt Cantor, Newser Staff

Posted Aug 13, 2009 8:55 AM CDT

(Newser) – Hillary Clinton’s trip to Congo was meant to help fulfill a promise to focus on women’s issues, but it seems to have turned on one woman's issues. Though “there could have been no more dramatic setting,” writes Judith Warner in the New York Times, “back home, all anyone could talk about was Bill.” The secretary of State faces a “tide of trivialization” as she fights for women and we chatter about her “marriage, her temperament, even her hair.”

Work in Congress may soon begin to improve women’s standing, but Warner thinks “a peculiarly gendered form of trivializing scorn still tags our secretary of State." Recently, the Washington Post had to dump a video combining “Clinton’s face with a bottle of derogatorily named beer.” Empowering women will be a slow process, but maybe people will pay attention—“if we stop viewing everything Clinton does as entertainment.”

[Images (2)]

[Quotes (1)]

US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, center, gestures as she is greeted by patients and staff of the Heal Africa clinic in Goma, Congo Tuesday, Aug. 11, 2009. (AP Photo/Roberto Schmidt, Pool)

US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, center, addresses a panel discussion with several NGO organizations in Congo, Tuesday, Aug. 11, 2009. (AP Photo/Roberto Schmidt)

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As she circles the globe in coming years, making the case for women’s empowerment, starting with their basic right to be taken seriously, Clinton really has her work cut out for her. - Judith Warner

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COMMENTS

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Showing 3 of 23 comments

cognitivefilter

Aug 14, 2009 3:42 AM CDT

it wasn't time to take her seriously when she ran for president? what about after she became secretary of defense? this seems a little late...

JonmarkP

Aug 13, 2009 8:14 AM CDT

Don't you folks ever read anything? Clue: Google "Clinton Embargo Iraqi Children Albright." Do that for me, ok?

JonmarkP

Aug 13, 2009 8:13 AM CDT

The Clinton-initiated, Madeline Albright executed embargo of Iraq denied them food, medicine and clothing-resulting in the deaths of what has been estimated by the WHO as over half a million Iraqi children. Mrs. Clinton has said on numerous occasions that the embargo was "necessary."Don't you folks ever read anything? Clue: Google "Clinton Embargo Iraqi Children Albright." Do that for me, ok?

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Politics • Health

Hillary Clinton • women • women's rights • State Department • secretary of State • Bill Clinton • beer • Democratic Republic of Congo • Dana Milbank • women's issues

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It's Time to Start Taking Hillary Seriously