If there was still any lingering doubt about whether Hillary Rodham Clinton is her own (extremely awesome) woman–and not just The Wife Of–it was put to rest in Kinshasa, Congo this week.
At a town-hall style meeting, a Congolese man asked the Secretary of State a question about foreign affairs. He apparently meant to ask what the president’s opinion was–i.e. President Obama–but the translator mistakenly asked Hillary what her husband–the former president–thought about the issue.
My lovah-boy Brian Williams describes how that hapless mistranslated dude Got Told by Madam Secretary:
All together now: OH SNAP!
Oh dear. Diplomacy fail all around.
I’m really glad she is spending time in the Eastern DRC, where sexual violence has become a weapon of war and the situation has devolved into something truly horrifying. This needs more attention, so right on, Madam Secretary: “And sexual and gender-based violence must be condemned. It must be condemned by everyone in every part of society. People need to be not only ashamed if they commit rape and other sexual violence, but they need to be arrested and prosecuted and punished so that it serves as a strong message that this will not be tolerated.”
Also, fear of making a screw-up like that is why I could never be an interpreter!
@ShinyObjects: If I had spent a week there, listening to womens’ stories, I’d be pretty fucking testy and raw-nerved, too. I can totally understand why when she thinks someone’s asking her about her husband’s opinion she just gets all “AW HELL NO!”
@BeckySharper: Yeah, the context is powerful. I feel bad for the questioner. I enjoy HRC’s righteous anger from a distance–would NOT want to be the object of it.
Did you see the video of HRC bursting into laughter upon hearing John Bolton’s name? Awesome!
@Spark – This sort of thing is actually one of my favorite parts of HRC being secretary instead of president — she can be as snarky as she wants without the GOP jumping down her throat about it. Glorious to see!
I love Hillary.
Yeah, she’s awesome. The fact that she’s unapologetically claiming authority for herself as SoS is totally connected to her concerns for the rights of the women of Congo. Women are their own people and deserve equal treatment and respect at some basic level, whether they’re government officials or prisoners of war.
She seems at her wits end. That is an admirable job to have but I don’t think I could do it. So physically and emotionally exhausting.
@bluebears/PhDork: No kidding, I can’t even imagine. I really admire her.
I am totally disappointed. I totally agree with the diplomacy fail!
My father is returning from the DRC 2morrow, I am waiting to hear his thoughts and reactions and what the Congolese population has to say about Mdme Secretary’s outburst.
I cannot consider this a diplomacy fail… Granted the translator made the error, but HRC even asked, “You want to know what my husband thinks?” She didn’t simply explode immediately, she acted sort of from surprise that the question was being asked seriously! She verified that they were really asking that, and her response was short and curt, but I can’t imagine how else it could be handled.
She shouldn’t have, as she said, “channeled” her husband to make up a response. It would be inappropriate to laugh it off. She was, in a way, defending women as independants which is something that needs reinforcing in a country with rampant rape problems, among other human rights abuses.
I am with bluebears and PhDork, thinking that she was literally exhausted and drained after hearing the horrible stories all week during her travels. She is only human and her emotions will inevitably show!
I don’t think it was a diplomacy fail at all. The question–as she understood it–was totally inappropriate. She was taken aback and then she said–forcefully–that the question was sexist and offensive. That’s what people in authority do, diplomats or not.
There’s something about her whole attitude and expression in this that I loved. You know she’s been exposed to pretty much the absolute WORST evils of the Patriarchy for the past week, and when she thought someone hit her up with some Patriarchial bullshit, she was just not having it.
It’s diplomacy win for a woman to publicly reject sexism. What should she have done instead–giggle, blush, accept a sexist premise? It’s too bad about the translation confusion, but she acted appropriately for the situation as she understood it.
I don’t think its a “diplomacy fail” to be assertive. However @Becky: I do think she sort of looked…at her wits end like I commented earlier, because she just sort of flailed a bit and puffed out her cheeks and looked PISSED. Which I don’t think is wrong or bad diplomacy but I have seen Hilary be cooler under pressure in a variety of offensive situations and totally make her point. Honestly I totally agree that after listening to god knows how many stories of rape and other human rights abuses she had HAD ENOUGH. I would be the same way, I think anyone would, man or woman.
Look at it from a foreign perspective. I talked this with 2 of my friends. 1 from Saudi Arabia and 1 from Pakistan. They both remarked that as a diplomat, she should have handled the situation better. Do you honestly think that the Congolese population interpreted that reaction as a strong feminist moment?
To them, she came off as being pretty uncouth and appeared to be talking down to the student.
You can choose to interpret this as the public rejection of sexism, but through their eyes, Mrs. Clinton was rude and disresepectful. That outburst took away from the message that she was conveying ans diminished the impact and power that she could have wielded.
My sister is also pissed and wants to comment:
She wants to know if Hillary was posed the same question in Europe would she have reacted in the same manner? She would have probably kept her composure in Europe because she figured that she was on the world stage.
Even if there was a mistranslation, the student did not deserve to be ridiculed.
The DRC is not a land filld with sexist, raping Neanderthals, a good chunk of the rebells and rapists are coming from Rwanda. The regular Congolese are people who are struggling day to day to survive and thrive under a corrupt regime. Congolese women attend school and have never been denied the opportunity. They are also equally represented in the workforce. There is more to the DRC than what you see on CNN and National Geographic.
I want my primary vote back.
@Amoureuse – Okay, but, and this might sound silly: they’re wrong. She came off as being uncouth because she was reacting angrily to something that they all consider to be innocuous. But that’s exactly the problem: they consider the oppression of women to be innocuous and reacting to it with anger to be rude. Cultural relativism is all well and good for some things, but we have to be able to say that certain things are right and wrong, full stop. The oppression of women is wrong, in all places, at all times. If they consider her message to be diminished because she was upset at being asked to be a mouthpiece for a man, then they weren’t going to listen to her message in the first place if it involved not abusing, raping, and oppressing women.
Moreover, with regards to this being a simple case of misunderstanding: watch the video and listen to the question closely. Asking the Secretary of State what her immediate superior thinks is legitimate. But asking her what Dikembe Mutombo thinks is not, and that was part of the question as well. Regardless of whether or not the questioner wanted to ask about Pres. Obama or Pres. Clinton, HRC was also asked for the views of an NBA player/activist that she almost certainly does not know well and who can speak for himself — without an interpreter!
It would have been equally disrespectful had Obama or heck, Jesus, responded in that manner. The word here is “diplomacy”. She is a diplomat, that was very unprofessional.
@Amoureuse – Yes, it’s clear that you think that. What it seems many of us are disagreeing with you on is that her statement was lacking in diplomacy or was unprofessional. It behooves a diplomat to stay calm in negotiations between parties of equal power. But this is obviously not a situation where HRC was negotiating, nor was she speaking to someone of equal status (while that sounds elitist, I don’t think it should be controversial to say that in general, a powerful member of government is of higher status than a student, regardless of nationality). The student said something that was out of line, and that has to be absolutely shut down. HRC had no ability to know whether or not the questions were being translated correctly, so I don’t think we can fault her on that. The question as translated was insulting and the correct response to an insult is a curt and precise dismissal, which is exactly what she responded with. It’s not her job to be gentle with everyone (no, that is not what being a diplomat means). It’s her job to represent the Unites States abroad, and personally I’m proud that our representative refuses to tolerate gender-based insults.
@Amoreuse: “She wants to know if Hillary was posed the same question in Europe would she have reacted in the same manner? She would have probably kept her composure in Europe because she figured that she was on the world stage.”
Yes, I think she absolutely would have. And do you really think HRC believes that Congo not “the world stage” but Europe is? That’s a really offensive assumption that she does not deserve, IMO.
I really don’t know what to think of this.
Amoureuse has raised some good points. I absolutely think the question was sexist, but it was not “oppression” and I can’t decide whether the question was really a misinterpretation or not.
Amoreuse, I love having your knowledge and opinions on this. Although I can’t know, I do think HRC would have responded similarly in a European setting. I have no idea how one can confuse the name “Obama” with “Clinton,” or why/if the word “husband” would be stuck in there at all, so I’m unsure about this being the translator’s fault.
She spoke sharply, and perhaps not with the graciousness and humor she showed during the campaign, but I don’t think it was “undiplomatic” to respond by claiming the authority of her position. Not knowing much about the people of the DRC (only that they probably had multiple reactions, as the people of the US did), what do you think would have been the best/most effective way for her to respond?
If a man had spoken in a similar tone, would he be regarded as “angry” and “uncouth”? Or would he be regarded as forceful, authoritative, etc?
@Spark: A man never would have been asked that (mistranslated) question, in Congo or anywhere else.
I was disappointed in how she handled it. I thought she would have been better served by being super cool and outclassing them at the same time that she slapped them down.