Hillary Clinton meets Mary Beard: I would love to have told Trump: Back off, you creep
Nice, enjoyable interview.
Let's talk: a conversation special
Hillary Clinton meets Mary Beard: ‘I would love to have told Trump: “Back off, you creep”’
The presidential candidate and the classicist discuss winners and losers
by Decca Aitkenhead
Last modified on Saturday 2 December 2017 05.09 EST
Hillary Clinton is sequestered in a hotel room, giving a big television interview, when Mary Beard arrives at Claridge’s. While she waits outside on the sofa, though, it quickly becomes clear that the star of this conversation is the classicist. One by one, members of Clinton’s staff approach in reverent tones to declare her their heroine. Even a passing cameraman stops to pay court and say: “I love you!” Does this happen to Beard all the time? “Yes,” she laughs, “funnily enough, it does.”
Since the Cambridge professor began presenting TV programmes on the Romans nearly a decade ago, she has become world famous, as well as wildly popular for her robust refusal to stand for misogynistic online abuse. Trolls are publicly challenged; one was memorably shamed into taking Beard to lunch to apologise for calling her “a filthy old slut”. Her latest book, Women & Power: A Manifesto, brings an illuminating historical perspective to the contemporary abuse of powerful women. (Our meeting takes place in mid-October, before the #metoo revelations had begun to gather pace.)
Sign up for the Bookmarks email
Read more
Clinton is in London to talk about What Happened, her rivetingly candid if shell-shocked account of her defeat to Donald Trump in last year’s US presidential election. As soon as she appears, it becomes very hard to believe she lost because voters found her cold. She greets Beard with a whoop of delight, exclaims, “This is fun!” does a very, very funny impersonation of Trump’s voice and, over the course of an hour, laughs a lot.
Once seated, the physical contrast between the two women is arresting. Clinton folds her hands carefully before her and confines her movements to slow nods of the head, while Beard gesticulates energetically as she talks, her whole upper body pitching and swaying. But the chemistry between them crackles, and Clinton conveys the impression of someone keen to see what she can learn from the academic.
Learning about the grief you took over standing up for women’s rights was enlightening to me
The pair met briefly four years ago when both received honorary degrees at the University of St Andrews University in Scotland. Beard had been advocating a more combative strategy towards trolls than Michelle Obama’s famous injunction to “go high... when they go low”. The latter having failed to work for Clinton, she and Beard fall at once to discussing how women in public life can deal with misogyny…
Mary Beard What I remember us talking about when we met was the sense that it was extremely important to say: “Hang on a minute, mate, you are not right.” Or: “Please take this tweet down.”
Hillary Clinton Learning about the ongoing grief you took over standing up for women’s rights and accurate history was quite enlightening to me.
MB It’s gone on, too, actually................................
HC I think you touched a chord when you said: “OK, this is what a woman looks like.” When you run for office, however, what a president looks like is not any kind of woman. So therefore how you feel about this particular woman is influenced by how you feel about women in really powerful positions. It’s that tightrope, that balance that we keep trying to figure out how to strike.
If I started to wear makeup now, I would get so abused. I’m as trapped as you are, Hillary!
MB When I looked back to the ancient world about this, Romans in particular were always saying that women, in some way, are fake. The problem about a woman is that she’s always made up, she’s never what she seems. Reading your book, what was so interesting was that women in public life – and I’m happily removed from that – you’ve got to look the part and you’ve got to be authentic. And that’s impossible.
HC Well, that is the core dilemma. Like, today, I have makeup on. You don’t. But that is just part of the uniform that one wears in public life and politics, at least in my experience.
..........................
?w=800&q=55&auto=format&usm=12&fit=max&s=bcc70b9a7647ea75b8ebbfb66a580d91
