Hillary Rodham Clinton Is My Mom

I'm not opposed to Hillary. In fact, if certain other candidates didn't exist, I certainly would vote for her. But something always bugged me out about her and I really felt like a liberal traitor for my secret insurgent feelings in me. I would argue with my boyfriend, trying to explain why she didn't needed to be likable, she just needed to be effective.

Tonight while watching the Daily Show make fun of Ebony and Ivory for their faked southern accents during speeches in Selma, I realized where my deep, almost repressed anger at Hillary was coming from. Hillary reminds me of my mom.

I really love my mom. But like any intelligent perennially pudgy 27 year old girl can tell you, there are issues with Mom. She's a very smart, charming woman, who makes unfortunate comments every time she meets my friends. She doesn't do it maliciously, she wants them to like her. Every time. Wrong Thing.

For instance, one time I brought my friend Buddy and his boyfriend over the house. For background, my mother works with AIDS patients for the county hospital. So she's shaking hands with Sonny the boyfriend, and being nice, and everything is nice, and then? "Sonny, I think I know you. I think we've met at work." And Sonny is all, like, "Oh yeah, I used to deliver pizza to that department from down the street." Then Mom says, "No, no I don't think so..."

It's hard to defend that.

Watching Hillary speak to a crowd, you realize that what she is doing is trying to convince the people she's talking to that she is in fact one of them. That's offensive when your young mom was trying to do it in high school. It is totally unacceptable when your old grandma mom is trying it. She's talking to blacks in Selma? She's a gospel singer. She's talking to white women in Minnesota? You can almost believe that at some point she has used a jello pudding box for Bill's dessert once. And I'll tell you what, I've been completely dead certain for the past 8 years that she at one point lived a whole year on oriental flavored ramen.

All of these things might in fact have been true. At one point. But she is no longer that person. She's old. She's the kind of old that takes you out for sushi, lures you into an adult sense of self-worth, and then politely tells you how your hair needs to be cut, boys don't like you cause you dress that way, and you don't love your grandmother enough. She means well, she loves you, but she wonders how you can live like this. And believes that if she tells you firmly enough, you'll know she's serious, wake-up, and see that Hillary was right all along and you were a sweet but naive fool to ever think differently. Its okay Sweety, that's just part of growing up.

Maybe America needs to accept that Mom is almost a senior, and this too is part of growing up. But I finally managed to move out the house last year, and my instincts are too ingrained in me. Me and the millions of white girls 19-33 in this country.

No really, I'd still vote for her. I really like Bill Clinton. It's so funny, my boyfriend is just like him.









"You should not kill Captain America while we're at war"