ONE MEMBER OF MEDIA APOLOGIZES TO HILLARY
IN HIS NPR BLOG “POLITICAL JUNKIE”, Ken Rudin says he wishes he hadn’t compared Hillary Clinton to Glenn Close’s character, the villainous stalker who wouldn’t die in Fatal Attraction. You have to scroll down to nearly the bottom of his column “The Democrats’ Fight to the Finish” to find it, but it’s there, claiming of course that he was misunderstood and by the way, was sooo distressed about the tone of some of the responses he received. Poor baby.
Nevertheless, it’s a start at righting a serious wrong. Here’s what Rudin said:
Finally, did I really say on CNN that Hillary Clinton reminded me of Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction? I did. I wish I hadn’t. It was a facile and dumb comparison. And for all the people who took their marching orders from the Clinton campaign’s e-mail blast instructing them to express their displeasure to me, rest assured, I have read every note. Some have been quite thoughtful, enough to establish some sort of dialogue. Others, regrettably, have contained an astonishing amount of vitriol and hate. It’s distressing that many of those who complain the most about bigotry and ignorance exhibit it themselves.
The point that I was inartfully trying to make, as I wrote in one e-mail, is that I was mocking the “when-will-Hillary-drop-out?” conversations that have been going on since New Hampshire — as in, well, if she loses N.H., she’s finished. If she loses Ohio or Texas, she’s gone. I wanted to make the point that she’s not leaving the race any time soon, nor should she. She wins in Pennsylvania by nearly 10 points and people still want to know when she’s getting out? Nonsense. I concede that I damaged my case by making the Glenn Close comparison, but I was trying to say sorry, you’re not going to get rid of her. This is only the seventh inning. The race hasn’t been going on “too long.” In fact, these states — Indiana, North Carolina, Oregon, etc. — haven’t been part of the conversation for decades. Let the people have their say and then we’ll see who should drop out.
The “so-what do we do about it”? To write and applaud his apology, you can e-mail Ken at politicaljunkie@npr.org. Activism, even small things like a quick e-mail, does make change.
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Sex, Power, Pandemics, and How Women
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And thanks to Media Matters, again, for pointing it out.
GLORIA FELDT is the New York Times bestselling author of several books including No Excuses: 9 Ways Women Can Change How We Think About Power, a sought-after speaker and frequent contributor to major news outlets, and the Co-Founder and President of Take The Lead. People has called her “the voice of experience,” and among the many honors she has been given, Vanity Fair called her one of America’s “Top 200 Women Legends, Leaders, and Trailblazers,” and Glamour chose her as a “Woman of the Year.”
As co-founder and president of Take The Lead, a leading women’s leadership nonprofit, her mission is to achieve gender parity by 2025 through innovative training programs, workshops, a groundbreaking 50 Women Can Change The World immersive, online courses, a free weekly newsletter, and events including a monthly Virtual Happy Hour program and a Take The Lead Day symposium that reached over 400,000 women globally in 2017.