And then there are the premises that, once advanced, illustrate only ugliness on the part of those who present them.
I am talking about recent punditry attacking Chelsea Clinton.
Some of this is being promoted by Republicans and others by supporters of Bernie Sanders to whom Hillary is such an evil prospect that they seek to hurt the brand by any means possible, including by assaults on her daughter.
The specific premise advanced by these politically-opposed but allied groups is that Chelsea Clinton is a young woman of no particular qualifications or past accomplishment, who nevertheless got hired at a ridiculously high salary for a job that pretty much requires her to do nothing, on the basis of her name.
My response is that until you made an issue of it I honestly haven’t bothered myself to find out how well Chelsea Clinton did in school or what her job entails and whether she gives it much more than the power of her familial celebrity.
It could be that she’s a savant. (For the record: an undergraduate degree from Stanford University, master’s degrees from the University of Oxford and Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, and a Ph.D. in international relations from Oxford.) It also could be that she’s just phenomenally lucky at having her last name and her mother’s face.
Not knowing where on the spectrum she sits lends me a kind of clarity, in that it sweeps aside all factors that are none of my business.
And what I’m left with is: what bloody business is yours?
Even if the worst of what you’re saying is true, and she is being carried around like an office ornament, how does that affect the price of gas, the construction of highways, and this nation’s position in the world?
What else would you have expected?
Can you honestly believe any state of affairs where even a dullard Chelsea, daughter of an embattled but still phenomenally popular President, a girl the nation watched as she grew up, would have ended up doing no better than herself than becoming a counter girl at Macy’s? Can you honestly believe in any future where Sasha and Malia Obama, even dullard Sasha and Malia Obamas, would have to share a cheap motel room and commiserate about how they can’t find even a low-end, minimum-wage job? Don’t you think it’s kind of inevitable that, just because of who they are, they will have companies competing for the privilege of giving them their first jobs out of college, at the most professionally advantageous terms that can possibly be offered? Can’t you acknowledge that this will only be enhanced by whatever gifts they do have? Must you think this is a manifestation of corruption or will you acknowledge that this is inevitable, because the race of man just happens to have a soft spot for the children of lords?
Hell, Texas millionaires once fell all over themselves to enter business deals with George W. Bush, a C student with a substance abuse problem and no particular record of success at anything, to the point where he just kept stumbling sideways until someone thought of running him for governor. Was that because he was radiantly charismatic? Or was that because the race of man just happens to have a soft spot for the children of lords?
Somebody brought up Bristol Palin, who gets more than her share of abuse; more by far than Chelsea Clinton has had. But when she got all the opportunities she was handed because her mother was flavor of the moment, was she qualified for any of it? Why would anybody hire her to be the national spokesman in favor of conduct that she hadn’t – and still hasn’t – demonstrated herself? Why would anybody think she deserved a reality TV show, as a not especially interesting person? Because she had the mother she had, she had the last name she had. Her status as punchline was something she earned herself, afterward, with her antics. But now that she’s famous because of her family connections, will that ever go away until her mother’s fame goes away? If she had just gotten a nice job at some indulgent company and never spoken to a camera, would she have gotten the mockery she’s had since? I don’t think so.
Which brings us back to these attacks on Chelsea Clinton, a young woman with, it’s claimed, “no particular qualifications,” being paid for “doing nothing” but inhabiting her skin.
I suspect that the value judgments are full of shit.
Love them or hate them, the Clintons are accomplished, intelligent people, who would just naturally demand an equal level of drive from their only daughter. I suspect that she wasn’t the girl who skipped classes to get high and bought term papers from an internet service, to qualify for Cs. I’m confident in assuming that she has something from her mother other than her mother’s face.
But even if she is being vastly overpaid and being given positions she’s underqualified for, for being the office ornament, like a Rembrandt over the receptionist’s desk, even if you take those assumptions to the extreme….
…even IF this is that awful thing, “privilege”…
…just what do you accomplish, ideologically, by showering abuse on this PARTICULAR young woman, living a life she never personally asked for? How do you advance anything but your own status as total dick?
Is it NEWS TO YOU that the daughter of a President of The United States can get a good job?
Is it OCCASION FOR OUTRAGE?
Seriously, what’s wrong with you?
Leave a Reply