“The Clintons are pissed off that Weiner’s campaign is saying that Huma is just like Hillary,’’ said the source. “How dare they compare Huma with Hillary? Hillary was the first lady. Hillary was a senator. She was secretary of state.”She wasn't any of those things in 1992 when she sat by her man on "60 Minutes" and claimed to be doing something more than whatever it was Tammy Wynette was singing about in "Stand By Your Man." And what Bill had done was worse than what Weiner seems to have done. Bill had sex with other women. Weiner merely sexted. And Bill was sitting there lying about it and Hillary backed him up big time, whereas in the recent Huma-and-Anthony TV stunt, the misdeeds are admitted.
If Hillary is pissed off, I would think it's because she doesn't want people reminded of her old stand-by-your-man routine:
“Hillary didn’t know Huma would do this whole stand-by-your-man routine, and that’s one of the reasons the Clintons are distancing themselves from all this nonsense,’’ the source said.I put up the old 1992 interview in my post about Weiner yesterday, and we watched the whole 10 minutes and laughed a lot. I scoffed: "This is the first female President of the United States?!"
I encourage you to watch the whole thing. Watch Bill bullshit to avoid telling an outright lie, and watch Hillary nod as her man wriggles through — lip bite at 6:15 — and marvel at her delight in his equivocations — her smug smile at 6:38! At 7:02, Hillary does a little "zone of privacy" riff that should feel irksome to women's rights advocates, since it's the key phrase in the law relating to women's bodily autonomy and Hillary is using it to say don't look at the selfish, women-exploiting things my husband has done.
After that, Bill is very animated and smiley, waving his hands about, theorizing about privacy, and at some point we see his big hand resting on and weighing down Hillary's demurely clasped hands. When did his hand get there? I ask out loud and scroll back to see how he managed to plunk it there. It's just suddenly there at 8:01 after a cut to Steve Kroft's face. CBS made that cut! We weren't allowed to see him segue from expansive explaining gesture to holding the woman down. At 9:03, after another cut, Hillary says they will not say anything more, no matter how much they are pushed.
And Kroft pushes, suggesting that they have reached — to use the classic adultery-tolerating buzzwords — "an understanding" and "an arrangement." Bill's all "Wait a minute, wait a minute" — and his big mitt is back on top of Hillary's hands — "You're looking at 2 people who love each other. This is not 'an arrangement' or 'an understanding.'" And then, in a very sincere, whispery tone: "This is a marriage. That's a very different thing."
Here's where Hillary jumps in (9:38) — with a harsh, Southern-accented twang and waggling her head around — "You know, I'm not sittin' here like some little woman standin' by her man like Tammy Wynette. I'm sittin' here because I love him and I respect him... and if that's not enough for people then, heck, don't vote for him."
The soft gentle man, and the sharp modern-but-not-modern woman. That moment was the triumph of a lifetime for Hillary. It made everything happen. It got her man elected President. That's so much more than anything Huma accomplished in her balky wan press conference with Weiner. Hillary is rightly pissed.
ADDED: Meade — who's sittin' by me right now — reads the post out loud and says "Bring in the comments... I think it will be great." So go ahead. Do comments. I have to moderate them, so there may be a delay and comments must relate to the text of the post to be approved.
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