Hillary Clinton makes news by tearing up. A little.

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Jeff and I for the first time are truly following a presidential campaign. We think part of the reason this is the first we’ve followed is simply that we were too young/in college the last time this happened. By “this” I mean simultaneous Republican and Democratic races for the party nomination. I think this year is terribly fun, too, because both parties have genuine competitions going on. There are no front-runners. Sweet. And, really, the Democrats are looking so much better than the Republicans.

So, Hillary teared up a little. I find this inexplicably weird and hardly related at all to her ability to lead the country. But it’s generated quite a bit of stir. Gloria Steinem herself weighed in on Hillary’s crying and her victory in New Hampshire in an op-ed in The New York Times. She says, among other things that should be obvious to everyone but sadly are not:

The caste systems of sex and race are interdependent and can only be uprooted together. That’s why Senators Clinton and Obama have to be careful not to let a healthy debate turn into the kind of hostility that the news media love. Both will need a coalition of outsiders to win a general election. The abolition and suffrage movements progressed when united and were damaged by division; we should remember that.

On an almost entirely different media front, The Young Turks– “the first nationwide liberal talk show and first live, daily internet TV show”–dissected the media reaction to Mrs. Clinton’s tears quite charismatically and thoroughly. Cenk Uygur, a host of the show, delivered a list of politicians’ moments of tears and the media responses those politicians incurred for their brief moments of heart. It’s worth watching all the way through as he shows that, by and large, when Republican male politicians cry it’s genuine and moving and sentimental. But, you know, if Hillary cries, she’s a manipulative bitch who has no heart.

I also like the argument, referenced by Emily Bazelon on Slate, that Hillary ended up winning New Hampshire not because she cried and showed emotion, but because:

[T]here’s the particular Hillary and there’s Hillary the First Democratic Woman Waging A Serious Run for President. We can have our doubts about the first one and still root, on some level, for the second. And even if we’re not certain we ultimately want her to win, we sure don’t want her embarrassed by a run of heavy early losses.

OK, that’s all the punditry I’ve got in me for an evening. It’s twenty to eight, and that means it’s bedtime for Sarah.

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