I almost threw up.
Last night, Hillary Clinton was interviewed on a Lifetime show called “The Conversation” by host Amanda de Cadenent and a bunch of “YouTube stars,” and I must admit that it wasn’t as bad as I expected it to be.
It was much, much worse.
Earlier this week, Politico touted the interview as something that would be “showing off a softer side” of Mrs. Clinton. In other words: It would be her campaign’s 9 billionth attempt at humanizing her, an attempt to get voters excited about Hillary the Gal and not just Hillary the Candidate.
There’s just one problem: Hillary is not an exciting person. I’m a young and energetic insomniac, but this “interview” had me wanting to pass out before 11 p.m., and had I not been repeatedly jarred awake by the urge to vomit in disgust, I’m sure that I would have done just that.
There’s just one problem: Hillary is not an exciting person.
It opened with Hillary (her chyron: “presidential candidate and grandma”) and de Cadenet sitting on a couch, gazing into each other’s eyes and smiling sheepishly like two high-school kids who had been left alone in one of their parents’ basements.
And it only got worse from there.
Given that tales of adversity are “in” now, de Cadenet wasted no time in trying to make Mrs. Clinton appear to be a sympathetic figure. Within the first minute, she was prodding Hillary to talk about her “mom’s traumatic childhood.”
In fact, “mom’s-traumatic-childhood” talk made up an absurdly large portion of the interview, and Hillary loved talking about it just as much as de Cadenet loved asking.
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At one point, Hillary told de Cadenet that the best advice she ever had gotten from her mother was to be “the lead in [her] own life” — which caused de Cadenet to completely lose it and exclaim. “Oh My God, I Wish I’d Met Your Mom Now!”
(Important note: “You can be the lead in your own life” is actually advice that Scandal actress Kerry Washington offered during her interview with Glamour in 2013. It has also been featured on approximately 9 billion top-inspirational-quotes-from-females lists since then. Perhaps Washington stole it from Hillary’s mom, or perhaps Hillary just gets her mom and the stars of ABC dramas confused sometimes. Who knows.)
In any case, the quote was far from the only thing that had de Cadenet freaking out as if she had just had her first kiss with the most popular guy in school. At one point, she was so unable to contain her excitement that she suddenly burst out “I could sit and talk to you for so long!” to which Hillary replied “This Is So Much Fun!”
Barf.
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Speaking of barf, other topics of discussion included what it’s like to be a grandma (weird, Hillary never talks about how she’s a grandma!) what her childhood was like (her dad was a small-business owner and her mom was a homemaker, wow!) and what date nights are like with Bill (they go to dinner and a movie, how exciting! Definitely interesting enough of a story to share on national TV!).
Oh, and of course, seeing as women-basher Hillary has somehow managed to brand herself as a “feminist,” de Cadenet also asked her about the “defining moment” that made her decide to be an “advocate” for women.
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Hillary answered that when she was a “girl growing up” she was “told by boys in the neighborhood that [she] couldn’t play with them because [she] was a girl.”
“I had the experience early on that there were attitudes that people had that really separated boys from girls and in effect discriminated against girls,” she said.
Whoa! The little boys she grew up with wanted to play with other little boys instead of girls when they were children? How traumatic – and to think that she probably grew up believing that this devastating experience was a normal one!
Oh wait. It is. Everyone thinks the opposite sex has cooties when they’re younger. The “boys rule and girls drool” slash “girls rule and boys drool” phase is not discrimination, but rather a normal stage of human development that Hillary should probably chill out about.
#share#After the one-on-one portion of the interview was over, de Cadenet brought in a panel of “YouTube stars” to join in on the party: Chriselle Lim (some lady who talks about fashion,) Maya Washington (who also goes by the nickname “Shameless Maya,”) and GloZell Green (yes, as in the lady who swam in a bathtub full of Froot Loops and interviewed President Obama — because swimming in a bathtub full of Froot Loops is now a credential that makes you worthy of being considered a trusted political figure because we are doomed.)
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At one point, Hillary told Shameless Maya — who, if you can’t tell by her name, fancies herself some sort of crusader against people shaming other people — that she believes “shame and fear are crippling conditions.”
Oh, Hillary. I guess no one would know that better than you, right? After all, shame and fear are exactly how you crippled the women who dared to accuse your husband of sexual assault!
Her anti-shaming comment to Shameless Maya was just one of the countless laughable attempts that Hillary made to portray herself as the Nicest Lady In the World.
Her anti-shaming comment to Shameless Maya was just one of the countless laughable attempts that Hillary made to portray herself as the Nicest Lady In the World. At one point, she even said she worries that people might think she’s “silly” for how often she says “we need more love and kindness,” and that when people mess up the attitude should be, “You made a bad choice, hey, come on, that’s happened throughout history.” For the record: When 22-year-old Monica Lewinsky made a mistake in the ’90s, Hillary’s own attitude was apparently that her entire life should be ruined over it.
Other topics during this portion included Fruit Loop Lady’s fertility issues and what it’s like when Hillary goes out with her female friends. “Literally just going out, usually to somebody’s house, so we’re not in the public eye and just having a great time telling stories making fun of each other,” she said.
As if you weren’t already impressed with how hip it was that she used the word “literally” in the way a Millennial would, her answer gets even cooler. Just the “other night,” she said, she and her friends were at a big event and “dancing like crazy” and “oh my god, it was so much fun.”
“I forgot I had high heels on and we’re jumping,” she gushed.
(Whoa. Cool Grandma alert!)
#related#Then — after a hard-hitting segment in which the whole group laughed wildly about how much Hillary loves hot peppers — the interview/fiasco/nightmare finally ended with video of each panelist getting a selfie with the candidate.
When one of the interviewers was snapping hers, she asked Hillary, “Does everyone take a selfie with you?” to which Hillary replied “Yeah, it’s okay, I like it.”
Weird, right? After all, Hillary just complained about how much she hates having to take so many selfies in her interview for the most recent issue of Esquire. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say it almost seems like Hillary just decides what to say based on what she thinks people want to hear.