*Facepalm*

The above perfectly captions everything that’s embarassing and cringeworthy about (American) politics. Not so much Hillary Clinton’s emotional moment, however much I suspect it was totally scripted, but the response to it. One example:

How voters interpret Sen. Hillary Clinton’s composure — emotional, cold or just plain tough — could be a deciding factor in her campaign for the presidency, political analysts told ABCNEWS.com.

[…]

But there is a line for a female candidate when it comes to speaking forcefully and appearing too “shrill,” said Diana Owen, an associate professor of political science and the chair of American studies at Georgetown University in Washington.

“It’s very hard to find the balance between appearing strong and tough and caring and engaged and then crossing your line to where you’ll be labeled shrill and bitchy,” said Owen. “As far as being a female candidate, she’s open to different descriptive adjectives — things like melting down or being too emotional — that you would not hear as much in terms of male candidates.”

“I’m sure the calculation said you’ve got to go hard and attack and appear as thought you’re really taking this seriously,” said Owen. “But she lost her cool.”

And as to Clinton’s latest emotional episode, Owen is more confident that her composure — or lack thereof — is a sign of her campaign’s unraveling.

“Crying in a campaign at this stage is something you can’t do — male or female — and history has shown that,” said Owen. “It shows people weakness — crying goes against both male and female stereotypes, neither can do it.”

*Facepalm*

As if it matters in the least whether or not Hillary Clinton becomes slightly emotional about how hard the election campaign has been. For fuck’s sake, this is a woman who has had to suffer nasty, downright evil rightwing attacks for decades, first because she was Bill Clinton’s wife, now because she’s a leading Democrat in her own right. She has been accused from everything from arraigning Vice Foster’s suicide to having a lesbian relationship with Janet Reno, attacked as a whore, a shrew, a bitch, a castrator, in fact every hurtful sexist cliche has been hurled at her and for the most part she has been able to ignore them and not let them get to her.

But is it so surprising that in what’s perhaps the most important thing she has ever done in her life, when she’s again being attacked in this way, not just by wingnuts but also by some of her fellow Democrats, at a time when it seems that perhaps her dream of becoming president might end in New Hampshire, she gets a bit choked up?

As if that’s something to be ashamed of!