The Lady to the left here is the Honorable Hillary Rodham Clinton, Secretary of State, past Presidential candidate, former U.S. Senator, and former First Lady of the United States and of the State of Arkansas. In all of those roles she has consistently spoken out against human rights violations and worked hard in the battle to eliminate them. Every one of her loyal admirers knows of the litany of efforts she has mounted over the years. Last year, her first as Secretary of State, she spoke up frequently on this issue as she has every year since she has been in the public eye and public service. She is a tireless public servant. She never hesitates to go the extra mile (actually, this past year, she has gone thousands of extra miles). So it befuddles me when I see a header like this by Nile Gardiner in the UK Telegraph: Where is the Secretary of State? Hillary Clinton has gone AWOL on the Iranian front.
Reminder: Hillary Clinton spoke out early, sternly, and often, right from the outset, about the disputed Iran election and about the treatment of the opposition demonstrators. She also put her power where her mouth was when she learned that Twitter, a primary outlet of news from the streets of Iran, was about to be taken down for maintenance and had her staff request that the maintenance be postponed, which it was. (I need to insert here that the subsequent “upgrades” of Twitter would have made the kind of information dispersion we saw in June impossible since you can no longer tweet the same message twice. You must reword, a task that requires precious time that demonstrators in life-threatening circumstances cannot afford. This is off-topic, but important.) Since June, Secretary Clinton has continued to bring up the issue of human rights abuses regularly and consistently. In her seminal address at Georgetown University on December 14, The Human Rights Agenda for the 21st Century, she spoke specifically about human rights in Iran several times, and brought it up another time in response to a question that was not specifically about Iran. This was a mere two weeks ago.
In mid-October she was on a two-week trip to Switzerland, England, Ireland, and Russia, she returned for all of two days, one of which was a Saturday and she worked that day speaking at the commissioning of the USS New York. She then left on another two-week trip to Berlin, Singapore, Manila, Singapore again, Shanghai, Beijing, and finally Afghanistan. On these trips, she lives on her plane and in hotel rooms. She actually, while in Zurich, helped salvage the Turkey-Armenia accord while working for at least an hour out of her CAR! When she is traveling, she does not get weekends off. Hillary Clinton soldiers on through all of this for us, her people, and for the people of the world. In all of this pressure and hard work, she never complains and always wears a beautiful and sincere smile.
I would like to know why Mr. Gardiner thinks that someone who has been working this hard for a solid year (because, yes, she did return to the Senate last January and worked hard there before resigning and moving to State) does not deserve a vacation. Why, even when she is on vacation, must she re-address an issue she spoke about formally only two weeks ago? Literally, Mr. Gardiner, give her a break! She is flesh and blood and heart. She is not a machine. She mentions her heart often, and Americans know that she has a lot of soft spots in that sweet heart of hers. Human rights in Iran is very much an issue close to her heart. She has no need to interrupt a very well-deserved rest to remind us of that. That gesture, in the picture above, is a familiar one to those of us who have been watching her for years. Perhaps, Mr. Gardiner, you have not been observing as closely as we. Hillary and her heart are not missing-in-action, and America knows it. I really do not even need to put a link to a story right here (but, shucks, I will anyway because I am proud of her), since , by now, everyone knows about it. Hillary Rodham Clinton is the Most Admired Woman of 2009. Among the reasons are those cited above.
So, Mr. Gardiner, do not dig up this old Vampire Tale of “Where’s Hillary?” Do not let that Vampire out of its coffin again. Along with 2009, it needs to be put to rest.
Just as 2009 was ending, another UK source, The Guardian, printed this prevarication I’ve changed my mind about the Clintons by one Niall Stanage. I really was not originally going to comment on this since he is digging up material that dates back to 2008, and everyone really ought to know by now that none of what he is talking about is true and never was. I decided to address it anyway when I saw this story popping up on so many feeds.
The Clintons are not and never were racists. If they were, we would not see Hillary working so hard on the Haiti Donors Conference , or Bill ( a Special U.N. Envoy to Haiti), via his Clinton Foundation, working hard to aid many of Haiti’s ills from healthcare, to agriculture, to education and beyond. Not to mention their long-standing and continued similar involvement across the continent of Africa.
Neither are they monolithic and it rankles me when they are referred to as if they were. Many remember in the primary debates the incident when moderator Tim Russert tried to trick Hillary by reading a quote of Bill’s without attributing it until after she provided her perspective on the issue. Her view differed from his, and she retorted, “Well he’s not standing here right now!”
Finally, the biggest whopper of them all: Niall Stranage never was a Clinton supporter or admirer. A quick scan of his archives tell that story.
This article is very hard to swallow given that today is Haitian Independence Day. Here is a link to Hillary’s statement. No Hillary is not a racist, never was. Here’s another reason why this is hard to swallow: This Vampire Tale and this recurrence of Clinton Derangement Syndrome emanate from the U.K.! Messrs. Gardiner and Stanage may arguably have some familiarity with our country. Gardiner purportedly lives here, but neither seems to be up to date on the Clintons. In fact, they seem to have missed out on another important and relevant fact: Um…guys? Pssssst! We have been independent from you for 233½ years. You seem to have missed this little document!
So lay off the Clintons. They are ours, and we love them!
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In case you have not visited my other blogs, I want to put a quick update here. Hillary, Homegirl and Prioritress Extraordinaire, announced earlier today that she was curtailing her travel to the South Pacific and heading back to D.C. in order to orchestrate State Department response to the catastrophe in Haiti.
