Tag: foxnews
The Hillary Circus Is Coming To A Town Near You

The Hillary Circus Is Coming To A Town Near You

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton launched a book tour on Tuesday to promote the release of her new memoir, Hard Choices, beginning at a Barnes & Noble in New York City. Hundreds of supporters flocked to the first stop in downtown Manhattan, bearing their “Hillary” t-shirts, hats, and stickers — and making the event an all-out spectacle.

The crowd began queuing up on Monday evening, and by 10am on Tuesday the line for admission stretched around the block. A Barnes & Noble employee told The National Memo that security began clearing people to enter at 8am, and within two hours nearly 200 were already inside awaiting Clinton’s arrival. Over 100 more supporters waited outside for their chance to meet the potential presidential candidate.

Several organizations that support a potential Clinton candidacy were also in attendance. The most notable was Ready For Hillary, a SuperPAC that bills itself as a “nationwide grassroots movement encouraging the former Secretary of State to run for president in 2016.”

The group arrived with over 30 volunteers on hand to collect signatures and hand out Ready For Hillary stickers, pins, signs, and bumperstickers.

Last week, the PAC unveiled the Hillary Bus. The tour bus, which was built in Iowa by union workers, made its debut at Tuesday’s event.

“In addition to generating excitement among millions of individuals who are already signed up with Ready for Hillary, the Bus is a mobile advertisement allowing our organization to reach new supporters in every corner of America as Hillary backers who see the Bus are prompted to sign up at readyforhillary.com,” the PAC’s website explains.

The Hillary Bus will follow Clinton’s book tour  on a cross-country trip through Chicago, Washington D.C., Austin, and San Francisco. Once the book tour concludes, the bus will continue traveling to “Democratic events, state fairs and community festivals, followed by college campuses and key midterm states in the fall.”

Smaller groups also turned out on Tuesday to voice their support for Clinton.

2016 Elect Hillary, a group that operates separately from RFH but donates some of its proceeds to the PAC, set up shop on the sidewalk selling its own independently designed t-shirts and tote bags. One t-shirt caricature depicts President Obama and former president Bill Clinton standing behind Hillary, giving her the thumbs-up on a presidential run.

The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pantsuit began as a joke in 2008 when Hillary Clinton told late-night host Conan O’Brien to stop making jokes about her wardrobe. A group of women in New York was listening, and formed the organization bearing that name, which remains dedicated to encouraging Mrs. Clinton to run for office. Women affiliated with the group passed out various pins on Tuesday, one of which read: “Clinton. Again.

Of course, not all in attendance were there to voice support. Fox News sent Jesse Watters — host of Watters World, a by-product of Bill O’Reilly’s O’Reilly Factor — to ask New Yorkers about Benghazi (of course). As The Wire reported, this wasn’t well received by many in attendance; volunteers deemed Watters “an idiot,” and called O’Reilly “a farce.”

The hype surrounding the mere chance that Hillary Clinton will run for president in 2016 is palpable — and a big business. Seventeen months before the 2016 general election, and before Clinton has announced her plans, the circus-like publicity surrounding Hard Choices provides a preview of the inevitable media circus to come.

Photo: @TheHillaryBus via Twitter

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In Hyperpartisan America, There’s No Room For Compassion

In Hyperpartisan America, There’s No Room For Compassion

A hypothetical scenario:

Your little boy lies in a hospital bed, stricken by a mysterious, potentially fatal disease. You are frightened and in despair.

But your community rallies around you. Soon, the whole town is talking about your ordeal. Neighbors you’ve never spoken to send cards. Co-workers you’ve never socialized with send encouraging text messages.

None of it changes the objective fact of your son’s condition, doesn’t kill a virus, lessen a fever or ease his pain. All it does is tell you that you and your child are being thought of, that you are not alone.

So: Is that “pathetic”?

Rush Limbaugh would say it was. The National Review would find it “simple-minded.” George F. Will would regard it as “an exercise in self-esteem.”

Or at least, that is what they have said about a roughly analogous situation.

You probably know the story. A terrorist group in Nigeria kidnaps nearly 300 schoolgirls. The reason is found in the abhorrent ideology from which it derives its name: Boko Haram — Western Education Is Forbidden. The families of the girls turn to their government for help and it shrugs. The story is likewise ignored in America by “news” media too busy handicapping the chances of Hillary Clinton’s grandchild in the 2054 midterms to bother with anything so picayune as a mass kidnapping.

So supporters take to Twitter with a hashtag: #BringBackOurGirls. It spreads like fire. Michelle Obama, Ellen DeGeneres, Malala Yousafzai, Jesse Jackson, Amy Poehler and millions of lesser-known names all join the campaign.

Does it “solve” the problem? Of course not. Who would be so naive as to think it would? Is it the only thing we should be doing in response? Again, no.

But does the international attention spur Nigeria’s lackadaisical government to take the abduction more seriously and to accept international help — including from the United States — it has previously spurned? Yes. Does the hashtag campaign force media to pay attention to a tragedy that was being ignored? Again, yes. Moreover, it delivers to the parents of these girls the same simple, sustaining message as the cards and texts in the hypothetical above: We are with you.

It’s hard to see how anyone — anyone — could regard that as a bad thing. But at least some political conservatives do. As noted, Limbaugh, Will and the National Review have all pronounced themselves unimpressed. Donald Trump, Ann Coulter and Fox’s Steve Doocy have also made attempts at ridicule.

There is something more than usually saddening about that.

It is a truth curdling into cliché that American politics is riven by a partisan gap, left wing and right wing estranged from each other like the husband and wife in some long, bad marriage. But in its behavior here, the right does not so much seem estranged from a competing ideology as from its own humanity.

How is this a thing? How is an expression of caring, concern and outrage deemed worthy of mockery and condemnation? Are these people truly that corroded with cynicism and bile? Is their criticism now just a tic, a reflex bypassing thought? Is every damn thing to be reduced to politics?

Apparently, yes.

Once upon a time, we put politics to the side when tragedy came. Nowadays, that’s something we seem less and less able — or willing — to do. That’s a tragedy in itself.

Nearly 300 innocent girls were taken by madmen. Celebrities, political figures and everyday people wrote the social media equivalent of a petition to express their concern. That simple gesture begat a controversy — and gave us a sobering new measurement of that partisan gap.

Apparently, it’s so wide even compassion cannot get across.

(Leonard Pitts is a columnist for The Miami Herald, 1 Herald Plaza, Miami, Fla., 33132. Readers may contact him via email at lpitts@miamiherald.com.)

Photo: Twitter/@FLOTUS