NYT/Charles Blow: Activists Confront Hillary Clinton

[markpkessinger]

[font size=5]Activists Confront Hillary Clinton[/font]
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The activists called on Clinton to answer for her and her husband’s part in the rise of mass incarceration in this country, a phenomenon that disproportionately affects black and brown people.

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Clinton pointed to her record on civil rights work, but she never apologized for, or even acknowledged, her and her husband’s role in giving America the dubious distinction of having the world’s highest incarceration rate.

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Maggie Haberman noted in The New York Times that the exchange “showed Mrs. Clinton as even her admirers lament that she is seldom seen: spontaneous, impassioned and seemingly unconcerned about potential repercussions.”

Politically, that may be true. She was agile and evasive, for sure. She bobbed and weaved like Floyd Mayweather. But there was a moral issue, an accountability issue, that still hung rotting in the ring: What in her has changed, now that she has seen the devastation a policy she advocated has wrought?

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[Vattel]

1. Maybe she was trying so hard to look like she was listening

that she couldn't really listen. Or maybe she just decided that she didn't want to answer the rather pointed question that she was asked. I don't know. She certainly didn't address what the BLM guy was saying. She also seemed really tense, thrusting her hands at the BLM peeps at close range like she was in some kind of fencing match. Weird scene.

[840high]

2. That up and down head bobbing - ugh

[RufusTFirefly]

3. The nodding seemed as though it had come straight out of an instruction manual

It reminded me of the time that airhead anchorman Ted Baxter accidentally read his stage directions aloud:

"Take off glasses and look concerned."

Just to be clear: I don't think Hillary Clinton is an airhead. Far from it. I think she's very smart. But unlike her perhaps not-quite-as-smart husband, she seems to lack the ability to seem as though she cares.

[delrem]

4. When she bobs her head incessantly like that she isn't listening.

She's preparing her monologue. Recalling her monologue, her "points". Going over her lines, excluding distractions, getting her lines right so they come out smooth, authoritative.
Her next words have little to do with what was just said - a few similar words maybe.

The head bobbing does get annoying to watch. But it's also a give-away that what's coming will be rote.

[enough]

5. Given that she knew in advance that the encounter would happen, and that the campaign

controlled the situation, I was surprised she was so tense and testy. It made her seem genuinely anxious.

Either that, or she was consciously using it as a Sister Souljah moment, which seems as plausible an explanation as any.