“My husband is not the Secretary of State. I am. You ask my opinion, I will tell you my opinion. I am not going to be channeling my husband.”
So said Hillary Clinton at a town hall meeting in Africa Monday when a college student through an interpreter asked her what former President Clinton thought about the economy (video embedded right).
According to The Daily Beast editor Tina Brown, Mrs. Clinton was just having a bad hair day:
Contrary to received opinion, I am told Bill's wife was not a bit miffed at her husband's bounding back into the limelight with that glamorous Team America rescue of damsels in distress from evil North Korea. On top of Hillary's own punishing State Department schedule and painful broken elbow, she has to cope-like any wife of a dethroned big- deal spouse-with a moody, irritable alpha male at home who chafes about being sidelined (and, in this case, smarts from the campaign's wounds more than by now she does herself). Because she loves her man, she wants to see him appreciated. She was thrilled when he got the call that put him back in the game and grateful that Obama, for once, let him do something.
She loves her man and wants to see him appreciated? Isn't this piling it on a little thick, Tina?
Apparently not:
News cycles of this sort are supposed to last at most one week, not two-and this one, this latest Bill comeback narrative, was now bumping into hers. She didn't mind in Kenya, South Africa, Angola, or even Congo that Bill's Korea trip was grabbing the news. But when it looked as if his limelight might pursue her all the way to Nigeria-well, that was a country too far.
Madam Secretary was doing so well at grabbing back the spotlight, delivering hard messages to devious, corrupt African strongmen, issuing warnings to Somali militants, busting a move on the dance floor at a gala dinner in Nairobi. In Congo she was particularly stressed. She had spent a day touring a refugee camp, hearing harrowing stories of rape, persecution, and female subjugation, issues she has long made hers. I suspect she'd just about had it with having to tiptoe around so many big-dog male egos-Obama, Bill, Africa's Messrs. Kibaki, Zuma, and Kabila. And p.s., was it necessary for Bill to be yukking it up on his birthday with the old adoring pals at such a fancy, high-priced restaurant as Craftsteak?
And here's the delicious punch line:
And not only that, but (and I say this in solidarity, not belittlement) the African humidity had wreaked havoc on her hair. It had gone all flat and straight, which puts any woman in a bad humor. (Let's not forget: It was a sympathetic reference to the female-specific chore of keeping perfectly coiffed that made Hillary's eyes fill with tears back in New Hampshire.) Plus, the grueling State Department schedule means these days she can never get to the gym.
Wow!
So should America expect more petulant and erratic behavior from its new Secretary of State whenever her hair doesn't curl properly or she misses a workout or two?
If that's the case, we should be thankful it ISN'T her receiving that call at 3 in the morning.
On the other, what if she's the one making the call, and she's having problems with her coiffure?
Heaven forbid.
