Somebody asked why we don't discuss Hillary Clinton more on this board. I really don't know why. So, I will go first. Before she married William Clinton, before she became First Lady, US Senator, Secretary of State, losing presidential candidate, and most likely (by hook or crook) the 45th POTUS, Hillary Rodham was valedictorian of Wellesley College's graduating class of 1969.
To many in the older generations, it seemed as if the world was coming unglued in 1969. Universities, colleges, even high schools were rocked by constant protests, the young wearing peace signs and buttons saying "Don't trust anyone over 30", their fists raised against war, oppression, capitalism. Youth were climbing out their windows in the dead of night to become nomadic wanderers, rejecting civilization to live as beggars. Cities burned as "Negroes" rioted against the brutality of all-white police forces that were more occupying armies than peacekeepers.
The issue of Life magazine carrying the date June 20, 1969, had as its cover story a weak attempt to tie Joe Namath, then at the peak of his career as a (American style) football player, to the Mob, using as evidence the "fact" that mobsters sometimes ate at the NYC restaurant Namath owned. You had to look past that article to find the coverage of Commencement 1969.
The story was simply excerpts from various commencement speeches. One young woman announced that she would not have children, since within a few years humanity would outgrow its resources, leading to massive death from famine and plague. Others insisted that "a sense of frustration and despair overwhelms us", or that reality was not real. And that was just the first page!
Also on that page was the words of one Hillary Rodham, valedictorian of Wellesley College. A photo shows Miss Rodham with combed-back brown hair parted in the back so it flows in two unkempt columns past her collar. She wears what would eventually come to be known as "Coke Bottle glasses", round lenses with minimal frames. Her fingernails are trimmed and unpainted; she wears a single ring on the third finger of her left hand. And this is what she had to say.
'Protest is an attempt to forge an identity'
The issues of sharing power and responsibility, and of assuming power and responsibility, have been general concerns on campuses throughout the world. But underlying those concerns there is a theme, a theme which is so trite and so old because the words are so familiar. It talks about integrity and trust and respect. Words have a funny way of trapping our minds on the way to our tongues, but there are necessary means even in this multimedia age for attempting to come to grips with some of the inarticulate, maybe even inarticulable, things that we're feeling. We are, all of us, exploring a world that none of us understands and attempting to create within that uncertainty. But there are some things we feel-we feel that our prevailing, acquisitive and competitive corporate life, including, tragically, the universities, is not the way of life for us. We're searching for more immediate, ecstatic and penetrating modes of living. And so our questions, our questions about our institutions, about our colleges, about our churches, about our government, continue.
Every protest, every dissent, is unabashedly an attempt to forge an identity in this particular age. That attempt at forging, for many of us over the past four years, has meant coming to terms with our humanness. Within the context of a society that we percieve-now we can talk about reality, and I would like to talk about reality sometime, authentic reality, inauthentic reality, and what we have to accept of what we see-but your perception of it is that it hovers often between the possibility of disaster and the potentiality for imaginatively responding to men's needs. There's a very strange conservative strain that goes through a lot of the New Left, collegiate protests that I find very intriguing because it harks back to a lot of the old virtues, to the fulfillment of original ideas. And it's also a very unique American experience. It's such a great adventure. If the experiment in human living doesn't work in this country, in this age, it's not going to work anywhere.
HILLARY RODHAM
Wellesley College
Pezar again: I first heard of the existence of this article on the internet grapevine during Hillary's 2008 presidential bid. I then hit ebay to try and get a copy. I quickly found the publication and date, then bought a copy from a (different) paper memorabilia seller who apparently didn't know what she had. I posted it on a couple forums (that haven't existed for ages) back then. After Hillary lost, I put the magazine in a box. When a WP user noted that he hadn't seen much talk about Hillary on PPR, I dug out the magazine.
One thing one notices, is that the companion speeches in 1969 angrily denounced war, civil unrest, the government, the military, capitalism, civilization. Hillary was far more philosophical. Instead of screeching about the unfairness of life, she looked at the youth movement far more critically.
I wonder what Hillary Rodham of 1969 would think about Hillary Clinton of 2016, the latter a woman who amassed a fortune of $200 million by milking her contacts with the elite of the elite, the bankers, the billionaires, the type of people so hated by Hillary Rodham. Hillary Clinton is rich and powerful, but she has no soul, she wants power for power's sake, she is a war hawk who wants to "stand up to Russia" but can't give a coherent argument as to why.
Not only that, Hillary Clinton is hated by most of the American public too, but her opponent is far more hated. The stinking rot of corruption surrounds Hillary Clinton, but her opponent stinks worse. I wonder if Hillary Rodham would think that the journey was in vain, it produced a black president largely viewed as a weak usurper, and now two candidates for POTUS who are the most intensely disliked major ticket candidates in modern American history.
24 Oct 2016, 9:44 pm
