Tina Brown’s bizarre defense of Hillary Clinton
My fellow FP blogger David Rothkopf already noted the weirdly sexist overtones in Tina Brown’s Daily Beast piece referring to Hillary Clinton as Barack Obama’s "foreign policy wife." But there are some other bizarre aspects of her argument. First, Brown opens by urging Obama to "let Hillary Clinton take off her burqa" and ends by ...
My fellow FP blogger David Rothkopf already noted the weirdly sexist overtones in Tina Brown's Daily Beast piece referring to Hillary Clinton as Barack Obama's "foreign policy wife." But there are some other bizarre aspects of her argument.
My fellow FP blogger David Rothkopf already noted the weirdly sexist overtones in Tina Brown’s Daily Beast piece referring to Hillary Clinton as Barack Obama’s "foreign policy wife." But there are some other bizarre aspects of her argument.
First, Brown opens by urging Obama to "let Hillary Clinton take off her burqa" and ends by wondering how long how long Clinton will "be content with an office wifehood of the Saudi variety." I understand the metaphor but it still makes me queasy. I have a hard time believing a media observer as shrewd as Brown is jokingly portraying Obama as a polygamous Muslim without any awareness of the overtones that might have.
Second, this contrast struck me as odd:
Consider the president’s Moscow trip a week ago. In a cozy scene at Vladimir Putin’s dacha, the boys enjoyed traditional Russian tea and breakfast on a terrace. Sitting on Putin’s right was the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov. Where was Lavrov’s counterpart? She was back home, left there with a broken elbow to receive a visit from the ousted Honduran president, José Manuel Zelaya.
Are Central American coups just too déclassé for Hillary Clinton? If Clinton is really the publicity-shy policy wonk portrayed in Brown’s article, I would think she would relish the chance to dive into a regional crisis where U.S. intervention could make a significant difference. Though, I guess it’s not real diplomacy unless you get to have tea and scones at Putin’s dacha.
(Brown seems to generally hold the Western Hemisphere in contempt, quipping that Bill Clinton has been made into "Port-au-Prince Philip" in his new role as UN envoy to Haiti.)
I’m clearly not as well connected as Brown and don’t really feel qualified to comment on the Clinton-Obama psychodrama, but I’m fairly confident that pieces like this don’t do much to advance her cause. The secretary seems to be handling that just fine on her own.
Joshua Keating was an associate editor at Foreign Policy. Twitter: @joshuakeating
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