By the late 70's and early 80's, the concept of Italian food began to enter the awareness of my little corner of the Ozarks. My Mom, perhaps made aware of the pasta-based possibilities from a magazine at the checkout line in our town's single grocery store or (more likely) from the back of a package of cheese-food product, decided to get with the culinary times. She decided to make spaghetti.
Mom has her virtues and faults, just like anyone. Lord knows, raising me wasn't easy, what with my penchant for practical jokes and a sad lack of targets outside of my immediate family. I put Mom under a lot of stress with rubber snakes and fake monsters. That one joke where I faked my own fratricide more convincingly than I intended nearly killed her. Because of all I put her through, I try to only speak well of my Mom, even when I know she has legitimate flaws. I'm quick to defend her if there's even the slightest chance Mom is in the right.
I still can't defend her spaghetti.
Mom's spaghetti started, as most of her meals did back then, with ground beef. Browned ground beef got added to a jar of sickeningly sweet sauce from the store and simmered on the stove. Meanwhile, she would boil some spaghetti noodles after breaking them a few times first to make the result easier to eat. When she added the cooked noodles to the simmering sauce and beef, she also tossed in her not-so-secret ingredient: several large chunks of Velveeta.
As an adult looking back on my Mom's spaghetti several decades later, there's not much to redeem it other than the fact that it was as an efficient way of feeding hungry boys after a day of farm work. The dish lacked any other positive attributes.
If you want to criticize my Mom's spaghetti as inauthentic, I won't argue with you.
If you declare my Mom's spaghetti more a chemistry experiment gone wrong than food, I will sadly agree.
If you critique my Mom's concoction as the unfortunate result of a lack of fresh ingredients and a dearth of culinary knowledge in that particular time and place, I will agree and discuss the issue of contemporary food deserts with you.
If you tell me that Mom's spaghetti was made from the flesh of unsuspecting townsfolk, I'll punch you in the mouth.
Even if I think you're a jerk, you're free to criticize my Mom's spaghetti all you want, so long as you criticize the dish halfway fairly. Even though it was a disaster as a meal, you don't get to lie about Mom's spaghetti, and you most certainly don't get to impugn my Mother's character in the process.
This brings me around to Hillary Clinton. Hillary is about the same age as my Mom. Like my Mom and her spaghetti, Hillary has made her mistakes in life. There are some things I just can't defend Hillary on, so long as you criticize her halfway fairly. Hell, I was a big Obama supporter eight years ago. I raised money for him and caucused for him, so it's not like I think Hillary hung the moon or something.
You want to complain that Hillary has been too cozy with Wall Street? Fair enough.
Do you think she screwed up when she ran her own email server while she was at the State Department? Okay.
Are you still sore over how she managed Bill's health care proposals back in the 90's? Sounds like your stuck in the past, but have at it.
If you want to claim that she sold out Americans in Benghazi, I'll punch you in the mouth--metaphorically, at least. The same applies if you want to tell me she murdered Vince Foster or that she's some kind of communist plant or if you spout off any of about 8,000 other Right Wing fantasies.
I give my Mom the benefit of most doubts after all the crap I put her through while she was raising me, and I give Hillary Clinton the benefit of the doubt after all the crap we as a nation put her through for while she was First Lady. Just like me terrorizing my own Mother with practical jokes doesn't give Mom carte blanche to serve me processed cheese food product in faux-Italian dishes, Hillary's past tribulations don't entitle her to be President--but they sure do entitle her to a little bit of respect. You certainly don't get to lie about her without being called out for it. The more Clinton Derangement Syndrome returns to the Right Wing-o-Sphere, the more I (and a lot of the rest of my generation) have her back.
There's a happy epilogue to the story of my Mom's spaghetti: she doesn't make it anymore. Mom's never exactly going to win a cooking contest, but without hungry boys in the house now, she's free to experiment a little bit. She can go for quality over quantity. She's taken to at least trying to follow some legitimate recipes. The one grocery store in town doesn't carry a ton of variety, but it's no longer just aisle after aisle of packaged shelf-stable food products and a meat counter, so Mom even can get some halfway decent ingredients. Mom's cooking may not be gourmet, but it's more than good enough for her and Dad. They're doing okay, and I think Mom's even learned a thing or two over the years.
I think Hillary's learned a thing or two as well.