As you probably already know, noted 2016 election loser Hillary Clinton’s new book, What Happened, drops today, September 12. For weeks, we’ve been barraged with think-pieces, excerpt drops, and interviews with Clinton herself, which have shot pre-orders to the top of the Amazon bestseller charts. Yes, some people have been eagerly anticipating this book for months, and plan on staying up all night reading it and then re-living the horror of the 2016 election with their coworkers the next day. Maybe they really care what Hillary thinks happened, and believe that somehow that information will be useful in getting Democrats elected in 2018. I know, I know, it's very sad.
But maybe, just maybe, today is an incredibly special day for you, too — because you are a person who hates Clinton, and yet you LOVE to talk about her.
Life has been tough for you recently. Your tweets about hating Clinton have been getting less engagement — people seem more preoccupied with the actions of Donald Trump, that guy who actually won the election, and crises like hurricanes, North Korean nuclear weapons, and ending protections for 800,000 DACA recipients. Maybe your loved ones have requested that you stop walking into to family birthday parties/ memorial services/ brises announcing, “The issue was NEVER that she was a woman!” Perhaps your friends make you put a quarter in a jar every time you mumble “Bernie would’ve won.”
But today, just like on Fat Tuesday, or the Purge, the regular rules don’t apply. Today, you can talk about your dislike of Hillary to your heart’s content, on every possible social media platform. From Instagram to Twitter to Snapchat, you can let the world know that you simply can't understand Why She Won't Just Go Away.
Of course, you want to take some time to really craft your approach. Perhaps, like the L.A. Times’ Doyle McManus, you’ll talk about how you’re annoyed that Hillary Clinton didn’t write the book you think she should have — “Here’s the pity: She could have written a different book — a book that briskly summarized the lessons of her loss and suggested a path forward for the causes she loves. It wouldn’t have been a bestseller, but it might have been more useful.” (Could be a good angle for a Facebook post?)
Or perhaps, as Democratic Congressman Jared Huffman did while talking to Politico, you could note, “[Clinton's] got every right to tell her story. Who am I to say she shouldn’t, or how she should tell it?” before immediately asserting that Clinton shouldn’t tell her story right now and definitely shouldn’t tell it like this. Because it’s, like, kind of not a good time? Couldn’t she have done this later, when no one cared anymore? We as a culture just don’t have time for this — I mean, a lot of people haven’t even seen IT yet!
But what if you run out of criticisms for Clinton but still want to keep going? Ha ha, just kidding; sexism is a flat circle. The Earth will be consumed by the Sun long before you run out of new ways to say the first woman to win the popular vote was unlikeable. However, if you do get bored criticizing Clinton and her book today, or just want to spice things up around the old Twitter feed a bit, we’ve compiled a list of other women you could criticize for daring to think that their stories were worth telling, or for simply accomplishing great feats and then refusing to shut up about it. Like, we get it, ladies: you did some stuff. But men did all the same things first, and you don't hear them going on and on about it!
Oprah Winfrey
Ugh, will this woman ever zip it? Like, if people wanted you to become the first woman to produce her own talk show, run it for two decades and 4,561 episodes while also establishing a far-ranging lifestyle brand stressing personal empowerment for women of color, develop a net worth in excess of $2 billion, and then run a magazine and radio network devoted to sharing your thoughts and life lessons, we’d tell you, OK?
Peggy Whitson
First woman to have commanded space stations twice? More like first woman to have bossed around space stations twice, am I right? Shut up THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH GENDER. But also, so she spent more time in space than any other American or woman ever. Other than questions about what she did when she got her period in space, who really cares what that was like? Make room for new astronauts, lady!
Ellen DeGeneres
Listen, sure, I may not have experienced what it was like to come out as the first openly queer woman on primetime TV — dealing with the public bigotry, having my groundbreaking sitcom cancelled soon after I came out, rebuilding my entire career from the ground up and developing an incredibly popular, award-winning talk show that’s been on for over a decade — but I’m sure it’s a story no one cares about. I mean, definitely not best-seller material by a LONG shot.
Shirley Chisholm
Remember how Shirley Chisholm (1924-2005), the first African-American woman elected to Congress, said, “You don't make progress by standing on the sidelines, whimpering and complaining. You make progress by implementing ideas”? Uh, yeah Shirley, that sounds like a great plan. You’re just going to go implement ideas without even checking Twitter to see how people who didn’t even bother to vote feel about it? Good luck with that.
The Women of Ancient Egypt
Five millennia ago, the women of ancient Egypt were among the first on earth to experience something close to full equality with men — they were free to hold almost any job, maintain their own earnings, choose their own partners and divorce for any reason. But tragically, despite all its other great breakthroughs, ancient Egyptian society did not have social media, so we may never understand the full scope of how shrill and unlikeable these women may have been. Did they push for discussions of women’s rights, even though everyone knows the correct time to discuss women’s rights is “at a future date yet to be determined”? Did they publish a book, even though a man explicitly told them he would prefer if they did not? Mainstream archaeology has for some reason not prioritized confirming this — but come on, I think we all know.
*This piece is very much a parody.
