I just finished watching the NBC Nightly News, which of course was covering the King events in Memphis, and also interviewing all three presidential candidates. I was also flipping back and forth between their coverage and CNN's coverage, so I am not positive which show this clip ran on, but at one point there was a video clip of Senator Clinton describing how she heard about MLK's death while she was a student at Wellsley.
As she described it, she heard the news, and was so distraught that she "hurled her bookbag across the room" and just felt (and here is where she seemed to be choking up) "such despair, just despair."
I don't mean to be uncharitable, and perhaps indeed the young Ms. Clinton "hurled her bookbag across the room" and felt deep "despair," but there was something about the way she described this, the studied pause for a moment of choked voice and perhaps teariness that just didn't ring true at all to me.
Follow me below the jump and then jump in if you saw the video clip. (Updated with link, below)
I don't question that the Clintons have a long history of support for civil rights. I don't question that Hillary was at the March on Washington (I almost went myself), or even that she met MLK when she was 14. I also don't question that -- like many of us who came through the 60s and the Civil Rights Movement, she was influenced by Dr. King, and affected by his death.
But the delivery of the description just rang so false to me. As she described flinging her bookbag, she used a hand gesture (as if flinging) and it just reminded me so much of the hand gesture used to describe the ducking from sniper fire in Bosnia. And the halting emotional moment of her "such despair", as if it was still so raw in her, this deep despair.
Honestly, before the Bosnia incident I would never have questioned this, but to me Hillary has become like my pool contractor. In the middle of January we had storm damage to our swimming pool. I hired a pool contractor, who is undoubtedly competent, knowledgeable, and expert. Unfortunately, he bald-face lied to me about two weeks into the job, when he took a payment from me promising to have my equipment "in your barn by this afternoon" and then used the money I gave him to pay off other bills, leaving me hanging and waiting for my pool equipment for two and a half months. Every time I asked him where my equipment was, he told me he was "too busy" to bring it over, that it was "in his garage" or that he didn't have "anyone to install right now." As if that weren't bad enough, when I paid for the concrete as called for in the contract, he didn't use the money to pay the concrete bill, and I had to straighten things out with an angry subcontractor who hadn't been paid.
So now, no matter what my pool contractor tells me (and the actual work, when he does it, is good quality) -- I just don't know whether he is lying or not. He could be telling me the truth -- just like Hillary may well have "flung her bookbag across the room" -- but the way she said it sounds so practiced, her timing as she pauses for effect and to choke up a little just didn't feel authentic to me. And after the Bosnia tale I just don't know whether she is telling the truth about these character-revealing moments or not.
I have tried hard not to engage in Hillary-bashing diaries, and it pains me to see a woman that I admired and respected prior to this campaign stoop to unnecessary lies about sniper fire etc. If this episode of book flinging and despair really happened, Clinton has my sincerest apologies for doubting her. But that's what happens when you lie once, or more than once (NAFTA, Irish peace process, etc.) -- the next time a memory seems to paint you as a heroine in one of your own stories, it just raises all sorts of alarm bells.
Later, when Clinton was interviewed by Brian Williams, she spoke quite believably about Dr. King, his legacy, his influence, etc. Her "affect" was appropriate, there were no choked up moments, no tears, and no hand gestures indicating anything. But the video clip of her hearing the news while a student at Wellsley was just too pat. I wish I had the video clip and knew how to embed things etc. so that I could do that in the diary.
If anyone else saw this and has the video, please either post it or tell me how to do it and I will update the diary.
My apologies to those who feel we have more important things to focus on -- and again my apologies to Clinton if indeed I have misjudged her. But then yesterday, when my pool contractor came over and insisted I give him more money, he promised my "pool water would be circulating" by tomorrow evening. And tonight, I am struggling to not give in to "despair, such despair" but rather to hope that he'll be here to finish the job, tomorrow.
UPDATE: Thanks to valadon for this link: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/...
just under the MLK slideshow on right "hillary remembers"