Reconstructing Hillary: Ireland, Experience, Bosnia and Nice People

McCamy Taylor

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Mon Mar-31-08 12:38 AM
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Reconstructing Hillary: Ireland, Experience, Bosnia and Nice People

Today I found this site called Herstory Deconstructed a female bashing site that seeks to undo 40 years of feminist historical investigation.

http://www.users.bigpond.com/sarcasmo/sexpolitics/hystery.html

Later, I read the journal Handy Guide to Why The Clintons Are The Last Thing The Democratic Party Needs Now at

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/zulchzulu/176

and I decided that deconstructing women is so old school. So post-modernist meets misogynist. Maybe I would try my hand at Reconstructing Hillary .

I am not a Hillary supporter. This is an artistic endeavor, the same way that the men and women who are hired to do public relations work for Obama and McCain and the corporate media types who shill for the health care industry think of their Hillary bashing as pure art, no hard feelings intended. I am not being paid or anything. I just like a challenge. I decided to see if I could find evidence on the internet to support an alternative history---just to show that the history that Zulchzulu was presenting was as biased as crushed velvet upholstery.

I.What the NYT Said About Hillary's White House Role THEN: “There are no facts as such”

The second part of the title is from a quote from Nietzche from an essay by Roland Barthes called The Discourse of History from the book The Rustle of Language The whole quote goes.

http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/pcraddoc/barthes.htm

“There are no facts as such. We must always begin by introducing a meaning for there to be a fact, as such. “ Nietzche

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/zulchzulu/176

Zulchzulu quotes the NYT, the “newspaper of record” to show that Hillary was just a White House Wife.

The problem is that the NYT said something different---on numerous occasions---when Hillary was actually in the White House. Sucking up? Maybe. But which story is the suck up and which is the truth?

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F0CE6DD1031F931A15752C0A965958260&scp=18&sq=Hillary+Clinton+adviser+president+first+lady&st=nyt

Breaking decades of tradition, Hillary Rodham Clinton will set up shop in the West Wing of the White House, alongside the President's senior staff members, where she will help formulate policy on health care and other domestic issues, White House officials said today.
First Ladies have customarily operated from the East Wing of the White House, with their official contributions limited to social duties or charitable causes.

Presidents' wives have always exercised influence and power, but they have often been reluctant, in their public comments, to acknowledge their full scope, for fear of offending voters. A Social Advocate
snip
Dee Dee Myers, Mr. Clinton's press secretary, said the First Lady would have an office in the West Wing. Asked why, Ms. Myers said: "Because the President wanted her to be there to work. She'll be working on a variety of domestic policy issues. She'll be there with other domestic policy advisers."

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=980CE0DC153BF936A35751C0A965958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=2

One of them, Howard M. Metzenbaum of Ohio, pronounced himself delighted with Mrs. Clinton after a telephone conversation on Tuesday and the meeting today. "She's sharp, she's on the ball and I can't tell you what a real pleasure it is to be able to sit there with the wife of the President and have an open, warm conversation -- to be able to sit there and talk about your concerns with her, and call her Hillary."

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=990CE0D91338F933A15751C0A962958260&scp=7&sq=Hillary+Clinton+Bosnia+Chelsea&st=nyt

Gore's voice is often there at the right moment. In what has long been largely an ornamental office, he has become the President's most influential adviser, excepting, of course, Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Snip

He can't outshine his boss -- or his boss's wife. Gore may be the highest-profile Vice President ever, but Hillary Rodham Clinton is the highest-profile First Lady. Clinton acknowledges that his wife's shadow can hide his Vice President.
Snip
Gore praises her (Hillary) with many of the same words that people use to praise him. "She is an extremely intelligent, capable, warm person who gives the President excellent advice on a wide range of matters," he says.

Would Hillary Clinton make a good President? Gore sputters out a polite but hardly encouraging response: "I think she's capable of doing an effective job at anything she undertakes."

Two different times, two different corporate medias (though each called/calls itself The New York Times) with two different economic imperatives telling the same history in two very different ways. Which is the “real” story and which is the lie? A Marxist would tell you that each New York Times was selling a commodity that would produce the maximum benefit for its parent company. Once the health insurance industry declared its vendetta on the Clintons, it has never been safe to side with them again.

Here is Barthes from the link above:

As we can see, simply from looking at its structure and without having to invoke the substance of its content, historical discourse is in its essence a form of ideological elaboration, or to put it more precisely, an imaginary elaboration, if we can take the imaginary to be the language through which the utterer of a discourse (a purely linguistic entity) 'fills out' the place of subject of the utterance (a psychological or ideological entity). We can appreciate as a result why it is that the notion of a historical ' fact' has often aroused a certain degree of suspicion in various quarters. Nietzsche said in his time: 'There are no facts in themselves. It is always necessary to begin by introducing a meaning in order that there can be a fact.' From the moment that language is involved (and when is it not involved?), the fact can only be defined in a tautological fashion: what is noted derives from the notable, but the notable is only - from Herodotus onwards, when the word lost its accepted mythic meaning what is worthy of recollection, that is to say, worthy of being noted. thus arrive at the paradox which governs the entire question of the distinctiveness of historical discourse (in relation to other types discourse). The fact can only have a linguistic existence, as a term in a discourse, and yet it is exactly as if this existence were merely the 'copy', purely and simply, of another existence situated in the extra structural domain of the 'real'. This type of discourse is doubtless the only type in which the referent is aimed for as something external the discourse, without it ever being possible to attain it outside the discourse. We should therefore ask ourselves in a more searching way what place the 'real' plays in the structure of the discourse.
Snip
We could say that historical discourse is a fudged up performative, which what appears as statement (and description) is in fact no more than the signifier of the speech act as an act of authority.(12)
In other words, in 'objective' history, the 'real' is never more than an unformulated signified, sheltering behind the apparently all-powerful referent. This situation characterizes what we might call the realistic effect. The signified is eliminated from the 'objective' discourse, and ostensibly allows the 'real' and its expression to come together, and this succeeds in establishing a new meaning, on the infallible principle already stated that any deficiency of elements in a system is in its' significant. This new meaning - which extends to the whole of historical discourse and is its ultimately distinctive property - is the real in itself surreptitiously transformed into a sheepish signified. Historical discourse does not follow the real, it can do no more than signify the real, constantly repeating that it happened, without this assertion amounting to anything but the signified 'other side' of the whole process of historical narration.

Or, to summarize, history does not give you the real scoop. It gives you a “reality effect.”

II. CBS and the Reality Effect

Photo and documentary journalism are so real . So vivid. The camera and the microphone never lie.

Warning. Blood and screams. From The Conversation

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRB4PuY31Bs&feature=related

If you have seen the film, you know where I am heading with this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOsGo_HWP-c
Yep. That looks like a cakewalk.

But wait. How many seconds of footage is that? Two. Three. Was Hillary really on the ground outside her plane in Bosnia for only three seconds? That must have been edited. Can we find some longer footage?

http://video.aol.com/video-detail/bbc-reports-on-hillary-clintons-bosnia-claims/1234772335
That’s better. It’s longer. But where is the sound? Why it is muffled? Are they trying to filter out background noise that prevented the mikes from picking up voices? What kind of background noises might have been present that day? She says they were instructed to sit on their bulletproof vests. Gunfire in the distance? Mortar fire? And why didn’t we get to see the First Lady exiting her plane? Did she duck or cringe? This one is pretty short, too and pretty choppy. Maybe someone has edited this footage a lot, in order to create an impression that the U.S. is winning the war in Bosnia. Why?
So the administration could give good news to the people back home? So Bill Clinton could tell cheering crowds of Democrats at his inauguration address in the late summer that the U.S was winning the war in Bosnia? Was that the reason Hillary and Chelsea got sent into Bosnia, even though a couple of days later Ron Brown and a whole plane load of VIPs would go down after taking off from that same airfield and flying to Croatia? And almost immediately rumors would start flying that the plane was shot down or lured into the mountain by a phony beacon. That must have been really scary for Hillary and Chelsea. My! That doesn’t sound like a cakewalk to me. That sounds like Hillary went into the line of fire to help Bill sell an important U.N. peacekeeping mission to the American people. The Bosnian’s were begging us to stay. Republicans were demanding that we leave. An election was coming. They had to make the place look safe. CBS made the place look safe. Hillary says she was scared.

I do not consider a few seconds of highly edited footage to be proof that something did not happen. It proves that something did not happen during those few seconds in the few feet upon which the camera was focused. Nor does Sinbad saying that he was not frightened, prove that Hillary was not frightened. They are two different people. Frightened people remember the things they are afraid of, not necessarily the things that happened.

What does she have to do to prove that she was scared? Go back in time and step into Ron Brown’s plane and end up on the side of a mountain? This would satisfy the health insurance lobby, but for the wrong reasons.

On a related note, DU has had several posts about Bosnian vets who have said that they were not happy to see Hillary visit in 1996. Their historical comments are important. So is this historical document from the NYT in 1996.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0DE3D61139F935A15750C0A960958260&scp=3&sq=Hillary+Clinton+Bosnia+Chelsea&st=nyt

At another camp, named Alicia, from where 600 soldiers in the First Squadron, Fourth Cavalry patrol the zone of separation between the Bosnian Government and Bosnian Serb armies, many soldiers crowded in to see Mrs. Clinton and her daughter, Chelsea.
When they walked through the camp, there was an almost constant clicking and whirring as soldiers took photographs.
As soldiers nudged past each other for a chance to have their picture taken with Mrs. Clinton, Maj. Gen. William L. Nash, the commander of American forces in Bosnia, said: "Look at that. Look at those smiles. It really makes them happy to have her here."
Sgt. Errol Kennedy, from New York City, whooped to his friends: "She's the greatest First Lady we've ever had! I'm ready to spend another year here now."

III. You Are Whom You Are Photographed With

IV. Tempest in a Teapot: Hillary in Ireland

Sometimes I am amazed at the company that some people around here keep. Lord Trimble of Lisnagarvey (whose name is always attached to ‘Nobel Prize”) is an “Orange”---a North Irish Protestant—a former member of the Ulster Unionist Party, though he recently switched his political affiliation to Conservative. That makes him a Republican. No matter. If he wants to say disparaging things about Hillary, a whole lot of people in the U.S will salivate on cue.

Being of Irish-American extract myself, I do not pay any attention to what someone like Trimble says. Particularly when he is being condescending towards women and their importance in the politics of Ireland.

Back to the newspaper of record. Here is what it said in some of its previous incarnations.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D06E7DF1730F932A35752C1A961958260&scp=7&sq=Hillary+Clinton+Northern+Ireland+peace&st=nyt

November 1, 1997
In a moving address, Mrs. Clinton spoke of the important role that women like Mrs. McCartan can play in helping to solve the world's most intractable problems.
''An extraordinary power is unleashed when women reach out to their neighbors and find common ground,'' Mrs. Clinton said. ''When women are empowered to make the most of their own potential, then their families will thrive. And when families thrive, communities and nations thrive as well.''

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=950CE7D8103FF930A3575AC0A96E958260&scp=10&sq=Hillary+Clinton+Northern+Ireland+peace&st=nyt

September 3, 1998
Introduced by a 16-year-old student as ''a role model for young women around the world,'' Hillary Rodham Clinton told a cheering gathering of women in Belfast tonight that it was their ''courage and strength'' that had secured the new Northern Ireland peace settlement.
''Wives. Mothers. Sisters. Daughters,'' she told the 450 delegates to the ''Vital Voices: Women in Democracy'' conference. ''Few were household names. But having seen their lives and communities torn apart by violence, women came together as women have always done -- around kitchen tables, at the market, in gatherings like this. It was women whose whispers of 'Enough' became a torrent of voices that could no longer be ignored.''
Snip
It was Mrs. Clinton's third trip to Northern Ireland in four years, and she is a known and appreciated figure here, particularly among women. Her defense of her husband, which has raised some questions among women elsewhere, has not diminished enthusiasm for her here.
''My God, where have those women in America been?'' said Monica McWilliams, 44, a professor at the University of Ulster who is a founder of the Women's Coalition political party and a member of the new Northern Ireland Assembly.
''Women have to have survival skills, and people have to put things back in place when mistakes get made, and we know about that only too well in Northern Ireland,'' Ms. McWilliams said in an interview.
Ms. McWilliams and her fellow negotiators in the 26-month-long peace talks were called ''silly women,'' ''dogs'' and ''scum'' by their male counterparts from other parties. Some mooed like cows when the women took their seats.

Maybe that last paragraph explains where Lord Trimble Nobel Prize recipient is coming from.

More history from the New York Times

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B02E7D91E3FF937A25751C1A9669C8B63&scp=3&sq=Hillary+Clinton+Northern+Ireland+peace&st=nyt

December 14, 2000
But Hillary Rodham Clinton does not have to bring up her new job and how it might play to the advantage of the Irish; her presenters do it for her. ''Hillary Clinton is a friend we know we will have in the U.S. Senate,'' said Prime Minister Bertie Ahern in his public greeting to the Clintons in Dublin on Tuesday. He added, ''Give 'em hell.''
In Belfast today, Mary Black, the head of the Northern Ireland Voluntary Trust, told the women who crowded the Grand Opera House to hear Mrs. Clinton that women in Ulster were ''overjoyed'' at her election. The hundreds of community activists and politicians thronging the orchestra and balconies demonstrated her point with cheers, shouts and prolonged applause.
Snip
Mrs. Clinton recalled that period solemnly and said that having been ''a small part in such a great historic change'' was a high point of the White House years for her. This was her fifth visit to the province, and she implied it would not be her last. ''I will always be there as a friend and an advocate and a partner as you continue the hard, hard work of peace and reconciliation,'' she promised.

And from Ireland, Trimble’s Irish Catholic counterpart has publicly disagreed with him, saying that Hillary Clinton was very important to the peace process. John Hume, Nobel Prize recipient.

http://www.independent.ie/national-news/hume-and-trimble-clash-over-clintons-peace-role-1311181.html

In a statement -- unusually issued by Mrs Clinton's headquarters -- former SDLP leader John Hume insisted Mrs Clinton had played an important role.
Surprised
"I am quite surprised that anyone would suggest that Hillary Clinton did not perform important foreign policy work as first lady," Mr Hume said.
"I can state from first-hand experience that she played a positive role for over a decade in helping to bring peace to Northern Ireland. She visited Northern Ireland, met with very many people and gave very decisive support to the peace process.
"In private she made countless calls and contacts, speaking to leaders and opinion makers on all sides, urging them to keep moving forward."
Snip
Mary Fox, the wife of a former IRA prisoner and one of the seven women at the meeting, said she had been there on behalf of the Footprints community centre.
"It was quite a political change for the women's sector after the visit of Hillary Clinton," she said. "We would love to see her as president. She spoke to each of us and was very interested in our work. She was lovely."

More on John Humes endorsement of Hillary here:

http://www.primenewswire.com/newsroom/news.html?d=138711

Who are you going to trust? A representative of four hundred years of British protestant oppression of Ireland or John Hume? See his wiki entry here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Hume

John Hume (born 18 January 1937) is a former Northern Irish politician, founding member of the Social Democratic and Labour Party and co-recipient of the 1998 Nobel Peace Prize, with David Trimble.
He was the second leader of the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP), a position he held from 1979 until 2001. He has served as a Member of the European Parliament and a Member of Parliament for Foyle, as well as a member of the Northern Ireland Assembly.
He is regarded as one of the most important figures in the modern political history of Northern Ireland and one of the architects of the Northern Ireland peace process there. He is also a recipient of the Gandhi Peace Prize and the Martin Luther King Award, the only recipient of the three major peace awards.

Conclusion If we follow Barthes advice, we should not attempt to draw any---from Zulchzulu's Journal or from mine. At least not about the nature of the fiction called reality. However, I hope I have created a reality effect that has convinced you that Hillary had a lot more to do with the Northern Irish peace process than a certain member of the Conservative Party would like to suggest and that a few seconds of edited CBS footage done at a time when the US was trying to portray the War in Bosnia as under control does not constitute proof of anything and that whom the Clinton’s are photographed with is not an indicator of the state of their souls and that Hillary really was an important policy maker in the Clinton White House starting from day one.

And one more thing. People who claim to be telling you the whole story about Hillary aren't, because I found all of this on the Internet this afternoon using Google. History is as much about what you decide to leave out as what you leave in. For instance, in Ireland for several hundred years, only the men and the Trimbles were allowed to contribute to history. What a shame that DU is continuing that awful old tradition.