Dear Hillary, You're Not My Girlfriend, By Which I Mean No Disrespect

(Photo from momlogic.com Town Hall Getty Image series.) It was an overcast autumn day and I had just called in two big favors---one with a friend of a friend and one with the Secret Service---in order to get to see Hillary Clinton in a women's shelter in Nashua, New Hampshire.

She, Jean Shaheen, the director of the program, and some other powerful advocates for women spoke briefly yet movingly about the challenging issue of how to assist abused women. Then she quit talking and opened to floor to discussion. She was honest, honest enough to say, "I don't know, that's something we need to work on," when a few issues were raised. Otherwise she had excellent ideas and exuded charisma.

I remember thinking, this is a woman of substance...this is a woman to watch and listen to for her own merit, this is a woman who is going to go further.

It's a decade later and she has. She is currently running for the Democratic nomination of President of the United States.

Except...wait...what happened to that woman of substance? Where did she go?

I started the primary season feeling certain Hillary would be the candidate for me, even though there's been a lot of water under the bridge since I saw her in Nashua about 11 years ago. However, I kept an open mind and paid attention to the other candidates---I focused on the direction they pledged to lead us, how they planned to lead, and their stance on the issues, especially the ones near and dear to my heart.

Those issues, for the record do not include the following:

• wardrobe challenges
• how to juggle a busy professional life and family demands
• pizza
• how to parent a teen
• dealing with mom guilt
• party planning disasters (or near disasters)

I may, on different days in my life, worry about these things, but I assure you that Hillary Clinton, as wise and wonderful as I am sure she is, is not the person---especially not now---that I would turn to for advice or insight into how to manage my mom struggles.

In fact, as a thinking woman who is educated and informed and who also is a mom, I am pretty well offended that a Town Hall meeting assumes that these are the things that moms want to hear about, and worse, that these are the types of things to discuss with the potential future leader of the free world.

Perhaps those are the topics that this site offers advice on to their readers, who on a daily basis, probably like most of us, ponder how to manage these things.

But this isn't an interview with Adele Faber or Elaine Mazlish; it's an interview with someone who hopes to be in charge of our country.

Believe it or not, I can hang up my day-to-day mom concerns and focus on larger, more general and national level issues.

Momlogic.com---tool of Warner Brothers and AOL, sponsored by Unilever and Lifetime Televison (among others)---blew it worse than ABC and Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos in their recent Town Hall interview with Hillary Clinton.

Let me share a few national issues that do---and should---concern moms: rising grocery prices, rising gas prices, depressed economy and fears of layoffs (especially in single income families), health care and insurance, the state of education in this nation, and so forth.

Frankly, in addition to that, I hope to learn more about why she thinks building a fence along the Texas-Mexico border is a good idea, how she would solve the problem there that Bush created when he sliced off the southernmost portion of the state with the fence, breaking up part of a university and seizing land from ranchers. What is she going to do for my southern neighbors?

And when it comes to my near and dear neighbors, what about all the children who remain uninsured?

Can we please please please talk about these things?

With hope that Senator Clinton reads this article, I want to address the rest directly to her:

Dear Hillary---can I call you Hillary? Since we're all cas and all?

It frustrates and distances me, Hillary, when you continually go for big media and stereotyped and packaged images of women and what they want to know. It doesn't make me your girlfriend, okay? It makes me wonder if you care about the substantive issues, or if you get that I do. I already know that traditional media doesn't get that I care. They've utterly alienated me.

So why---when you have so many chances to reach the regular person through open, entrepreneurial channels---do you opt for big media, which has so failed you as it dissects your voice, your clothes and trivializes you (and thus women)? Why---when you hammer on Obama about being out of touch and elitist (unfairly and out of line in my opinion)---do you opt to go for a packaged marketing forum that keeps to the trivial issues?

Are you trying to be regular?

Forget it. I don't want regular as a President.

I want extraordinary.

It seems a lot to ask, perhaps. But it's an extraordinary job, and I don't mind admitting it is well beyond my capabilities. I don't need you to try to make me think you're just like me and could be my girlfriend. I do like to know that you're in touch with me and my issues, but that doesn't include, "Oh my stars, Hillary, we totally use the same laundry detergent!" Unless, of course, it's a launching point to talk about toxins and pollutants.

The problem is that the Town Hall, like the debate and like too many other news stories, didn't go there, to the substantive point.

In short, Senator Clinton, here's the bottom line:

What I Do Not Need To Know About You: that we could be BFFs and sit over coffee and dish about kids

What I Do Need To Know About You: that you know what major issues are on my priority list and have plans to address them if you're elected President

What I Do Not Need To Know About You: how you deal with family problems

What I Do Need To Know About You: how you deal with national issues

momlogic.com let down viewers, in my opinion, by not trusting them to be educated and aware of substantive issues, or by not realizing that voters need more information about particular issues. It's a common big media ball drop right now, as I've hammered on about time and again.

We need educated and informed voters or else elections do devolve into popularity "do I like this person" contests. I see how well that's worked out for us the last eight years. /sarcasm This is why it's so important to me to keep hammering at both the media and candidates to get on board with discussing substantive issues facing the nation today.

So while momlogic let us down with their fluffy, feel good, Oprah-like, let's all relate questions---which have their time and place and have had plenty of time and place---you chose the venue and let us down, too.

You sounded good, really you did. I'd love to grab a coffee. I'm utterly convinced now as I was a decade ago in Nashua that you'd be a very cool person to sit down and talk with.

However, I can promise you that over that coffee we'd be talking about Hutto Prison and what you plan to do with it and the others like it (not to mention how quickly you will get the children out of jail!), the immigration and labor issues, uninsured children, how I feel the standardized tests have killed true education,  rising costs, and more.

These are the things that keep me up at night.

These are the things that require an extraordinary leader to address.

You take care of that, and I'll manage just fine on juggling a busy work and family day with ordering pizza.

Deal?

Sincerely, Julie Pippert, also using my words here and here, with other moms, who think way outside the diaper pail.

 

Comments

[PunditMom]

Julie, I agree with you completely! (I bet you didn't think I'd say that!)

While I understand HRC's need to have the big media exposure, she could have used this as a true opportunity. OK, give momlogic what it wants for 30 seconds, and then spend the rest of time talk substance. You and I have many issues we feel similarly about -- poverty, rising grocery prices, that ridiculous fence in Texas.

I don't want the next prez to be my friend either -- I want a real leader. We haven't had one for 7 1/2 years.

[Lawyer Mama]

Julie, this is a WONDERFUL post! You and those MOMocrats should be interviewing HRC. Oh...wait... right, we're trying. Forgot for a second. It must have been all those thoughts about my laundry detergent that distracted me.

You hit the nail on the head here. The momlogic interview was trying to make Hillary more REAL. But, like you & Joanne, I don't want ordinary as my president. I want extraordinary as well.

[Lisse]

You've touched upon something that's been bugging me since the "baking cookies" remark she was so punished for.

Hillary walks a fine line between having to be the tough candidate who won't roll over for trrorists, and having to be humanized as a candidate because she has been so attacked on a personal level for being cold and mean.

Remember in the 2000 election when George Bush was the candidate most people would sit around and have a beer with? Now there's a qualification. You, and most women who write about politics know that "the Oprah approach," as I like to call it, isn't going to unearth much in the way of serious issue debate, but we are really not the average voter.

I'm a big fan of elevating the debate as well, but the sad fact is that the debates and discussion I see on sites like this one have been largely absent from my IRL experince with other moms.

So the question is, did momlogic underestimate their larger audience, really?

[Whymommy]

Amen. I vote for extraordinary too.

[cynematic]

Well holy geez, I never thought I'd use a variation on a neocon phrase, but I *hate* when women audiences are treated with the "soft sexism of lowered expectations."

And I think that kind of underestimation and condescension is threefold in origin: 1) from corporate media outlets, where the point is to sand all the edges off anything remotely spiky/quirky/unpredictable/idiosyncratic.

2) From ourselves, when we accept foolishness like "oh politics is for boys" or "I care about politics but foreign policy is like math--just too hard" and define ourselves or accept limited definitions of ourselves in this way. And

3) from the Clinton campaign, which, as far as I can tell, is "humanizing" their candidate far too late in the game, *and* has a disturbing and schizophrenic way of presenting warm & fuzzy Hillary for the domestic agenda, and then putting ultra-hawkish Joe Lieberman-esque Hillary out there for the foreign agenda. (Um, the head of Iran called the U.N. And boy are you in trouble for that "obliterate" remark.)

Hello-ooo! Clinton campaign? I can see you, and what's more, I know how to Google and look up every last thing you've ever said in 35 years of public life to assess whether or not you're a worthy candidate. And some of what I'm finding is not meshing very well.

So fie on Momlogic for thinking otherwise. Julie, thanks for calling out this foolishness and sticking up for moms who, while we may be distracted, busy, and yes concerned about how to remove stains--do not want our time wasted or Clinton's time wasted discussing Chelsea's miniskirts.

Because the result of all those lowered expectations and the condescension? It brings us all down and insults our intelligence, including Senator Clinton's.

[Julie Pippert]

Cyn, I am verklempt by the magnificence of your comment. Your three points are exactly what I had in mind when I read Lisse's excellent point.

Lisse, it was a good point and is one I considered as I wrote this: but maybe they think this is all women want to hear and women need to find her a girlfriend to vote for her.

As Cyn said, fie on that!

As I said, "We need educated and informed voters or else elections do devolve into popularity "do I like this person" contests. I see how well that's worked out for us the last eight years. /sarcasm This is why it's so important to me to keep hammering at both the media and candidates to get on board with discussing substantive issues facing the nation today."

If we raise the level of conversation and quit telling people through ridiculous media stunts like this that the candidate has to be their beer drinking buddy (as you said, and AMEN to the point that that is really not a qualification LOL) but that the chief thing here is who can do the best job, I think everyone will rise to that---well, not everyone. There will always be the apathetic and the insecure.

I guarantee you that the vast majority of moms may not be that concerned about every issue---I realize I'm a little beyond the norm in my interest---but I've yet to meet a mom who didn't feel passionately about some issue, for personal reasons. We all live here.

So let's raise the conversation.

I am sure people can and will follow.

[Julie Pippert]

Okay you know what? Part of it is all this jargon. If politicians want to relate to voters TALK LIKE WE TALK.

And not in a condescending or patronizing way.

In my article I didn't say I'm worried about the economy, I said I'm worried about rising grocery prices, rising gas prices, and layoffs.

No dumbing down needed, just specific, real-world concerns.

My main issue is that the answer to this question: what are moms interested in?

Was: Kids, balance, guilt.

The question should have been: what issues concern and engage moms the most, and that they'd like to hear the candidate discuss?

And the answer should have been: national issues that affect families (such as the ones I mentioned)

[Glennia]

I think that the point Lisse raises about not hearing these issues discussed with moms IRL is a good one. What I find, though, is that many moms are interested, but feel very under-informed on issues, or overwhelmed by the scope of what they think they SHOULD know.

I think that Momlogic had a great opportunity not to dumb it down, but to raise women up. That's what I hope we're doing here at MOMocrats--giving women (moms especially) a place to dip their toes into the water and relate to the political as personal, and the personal as political. It looks like somebody's got to do it.

During the last debate, some of us watched the streaming video from the Philadelphia station. Next to the viewing screen was a graph that recorded a group of people in the studios watching the debate and their approval/disapproval ratings as the candidates spoke. When Hillary talked non-issues (elitism, bittergate) she flatlined. When she talked specifics about education policy changes, she went through the roof.

Hillary, we like you best when you go all wonky and deep in the weeds on the issues. We'd be happy to serve margaritas or Crown Royal or lattes or whatever you're drinking these days if you want to have a conversation with us. Seriously. Call us.