Remember when an enthusiastic scream ended a presidential campaign? Remember when “binders full of women” was a huge gaffe? Remember when misspelling a common word was indicative of idiocy not fit for the Oval Offive?
As someone 10 years older than you, let me tell you: the Bill Clinton campaign was amazing. Like, completely forget whatever you think you know about him being a womanizer for a moment...
Clinton went onto a late night talk show geared to black audiences (The Arsenio Hall Show) and played jazz saxophone live like Duke Silver. Clinton, in the typical politician suit, would get on stage and rip a blue streak of reedy sex in front of the house band. In the '90s, everyone jokingly called him the first black president.
At a town hall against George Bush Sr., a black woman asked a question how national debt impacted each of them individually. GB fumbled in his response, but Clinton deftly jumped into show he wasn't out of touch. Collective memory repaints this moment as Clinton with his steely blue eyes stepping forward and saying, "I feel your pain," in a lilting cadence and bit his lip empathizingly. It was noteworthy that a politician was saying "I see you, I hear you" at this kind of event.
And myself being a child in the '90s, Clinton talked to young people about the role they play in democracy and the future of America in a way that had me believing that I could vote for him at the age of 10. Every other politician up to then had talked about children like they weren't in the same room watching the same news as their parents. After becoming president, Clinton went onto Nickelodeon and did a town hall with preteens and teens about smoking that walked that line between getting lectured at and being invested in. It was hosted by a Nickelodeon journalist named Linda Ellerbee who had a show that presented the news to kids for 25 years. Clinton's directed messaging to children probably came from his own experience of having met JFK when he was in his teens as part of a leadership program he was selected for. Shaking JFK's hand and getting to talk with him has been described as the moment young William Jefferson Clinton knew he would one day run for president.
I'm sad we haven't had a politician like this in a terribly long time. I will say though that from a couple of videos I've seen, Obama has been great with children and Biden really talks to kids in ways that show that they will one day be adults. I've never seen them just use kids as political props in a kiss the baby and smile for the photo, then hand over the kid back to the parent like the kid is plutonium.
I will add here that when I first wrote this up and then went to go find source links, it stood out to me how much of my memories were inaccurate compared to the videos I found. I am going to chalk part of this up to the Mandela Effect, but also part of it to remembering the impact these moments had on me and the way these moments were played up in the immediate retelling in conversations at the dining table and from the media (such as SNL who parodied Clinton for well over 10 years). It's weird to think that my memories are wrong, but I think it speaks more to the legendary status of Clinton before his scandals broke out and he was impeached.
Remember when puking in a foreign delegates lap was a huge gaffe and seriously hurt a presidential reelection campaign? Now people are seriously considering testing the theory that someone can be president while in federal prison.
there's also nothing saying that a (state) prison has to let their inmate go. or have internet access. or be allowed to, you know, run a government from their cell. There are some things saying that if the president is incapable, the vice president steps up.
it's a big unknown grayzone, but the party of State's Rights will be in a very amusing position if this should become a thing. (I doubt it will. he lost in 2020, and his support has only diminished.)
Always relevant whenever this monster is mentioned:
"Once you’ve been to Cambodia, you’ll never stop wanting to beat Henry Kissinger to death with your bare hands. You will never again be able to open a newspaper and read about that treacherous, prevaricating, murderous scumbag sitting down for a nice chat with Charlie Rose or attending some black-tie affair for a new glossy magazine without choking. Witness what Henry did in Cambodia – the fruits of his genius for statesmanship – and you will never understand why he’s not sitting in the dock at The Hague next to Milošević."
It’s easy to cast Kissinger as a master geostrategist, an expert player in the game of nations. But do the math. Hundreds of thousands of dead in Bangladesh, Cambodia, and East Timor, perhaps a million in total. Tens of thousands dead in Argentina’s Dirty War. Thousands killed and tens of thousands tortured by the Chilean military dictatorship, and a democracy destroyed. His hands are drenched in blood.
Kissinger is routinely lambasted by his critics as a “war criminal,” though has never been held accountable for his misdeeds. He has made millions as a consultant, author, and commentator in the decades since he left government. I once heard of a Manhattan cocktail reception where he scoffed at the “war criminal” label and referred to it almost as a badge of honor. (“Bill Clinton does not have the spine to be a war criminal,” he joshed.) Kissinger has expressed few, if any, regrets about the cruel and deadly results of his moves on the global chessboard. When Koppel gently nudged him about the secret bombing in Cambodia, Kissinger took enormous umbrage and shot back: “This program you’re doing because I’m going to be 100 years old. And you are picking a topic of something that happened 60 years ago? You have to know it was a necessary step.” As for those who still protest him for that and other acts, he huffed, “Now the younger generation feels if they can raise their emotions, they don’t have to think.”
That and citizen tests give them an easy way to “other” anyone they want. Just like the old poll tests that they used to do that were ambiguously written so that they could selectively pass or fail anyone they wanted
What could be a more fundamental part of the American Dream than the "tired, poor, huddled masses" trying to give their children a better future through naturalization.
This is just another Republican nail in the coffin of that dream, killing everything that made others envious of America while they shout more and more shrilly that America is still the best country on the planet.
I disagree I think the Republicans are the modern embodiment of the real American Spirit.
Founded on genocide and chattel slavery, grown with more genocide and wars of expansion. White hegemony enforced through laws and lynchings. Redlining, supreme Court approved internment camps, so many wars on poor countries filled with brown people that have done literally nothing to us.
Any progress you feel is a modern affect and not actually reaching the core of who we are as a people…
Well, yes. Naturalization has been there from the beginning and "Birthright Citizenship" as we currently know it was solidified during reconstruction. So yeah, it's pretty fundamental to who we are as a nation. It's responsible for who we are as a nation. Quite literally, in fact.
After the Civil War, Congress overrode the veto of then-President Andrew Johnson to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which declared people “of every race and color, without regard to any previous condition of slavery or involuntary servitude” who are born in the United States to be citizens.
The principle, enshrined into law in 1866, has granted citizenship to countless people for over two hundred years. How do you get “irrelevant” from that?
It can’t possibly have had more than one purpose? Especially given the broad language used that explicitly covered all people born here?
This is a truly extraordinary insight. Who knows how many judges have been ruling incorrectly, and here you come clarifying it for us all! Truly, you are a gift to us all.
Yeah that broad language didn’t cover native Americans…
I’m not saying it’s irrelevant like they’re arguing but it’s not as fundamental as your arguing either…
America has broadly worded laws like this not because we’re progressive but because our founders were so fundamentally racist that they literally didn’t think about brown people or women as people and so these laws would never apply to them…
Freedom of speech is also a fundamental principle of our nation, but it’s also selectively enforced. I don’t think your argument refutes mine as well as you think.
many of my conservative coworkers and family members genuinely believe there is some conspiracy led by George Soros et. al. to bring tons of brown people across our border to have “anchor babies” and further liberalize our country.
if that is what you believe, of course ending birthright citizenship sounds like a great solution
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