Tags:
Journalism of Courage
Now that Princess Diana is dead, the world has discovered a new fashion icon. She’s blonde, with highlights in her hair; she wears snazzy pearl and gold jewellery; sports enigmatic dark glasses; and has a nifty line in sea-green and sunflower yellow suits. So is it Queen Noor, who is also trying to make the visor a fashion statement? Or is it perchance Barbra Streisand, new husband, new nose and all?
Since this is not Mastermind and I am not Siddharth Basu (for one, I have rather a lot more hair) let me tell you the answer. It’s Hillary Clinton, of course. In the month that Bill Clinton has been up there on a crucifix, with and without Monica S. Lewinsky’s ties, she’s been hugged by Vernon Jordan, Kate Capshaw, even Graca Machel. She’s applauded her husband without wincing. She’s even sat through a performance of Lion King at Broadway without entertaining evil thoughts of feeding her husband to the king of the jungle.
What’s more, she has finally got credit for finding the perfect hairstyle, from no lessthan George, Washington’s answer to Vanity Fair, and edited by no less than the son of the original presidential fashion plate, Jackie O. All this while her husband conducts the biggest political Oprah Winfrey show of all time.
As someone who has to go through at least 50 international wire pictures everyday on account of having something to do with the foreign page I can tell you with some relief that this Hillary is a blessing. Ever since Diana died in August last year, the drought in glamorous wire pictures has resembled the one in North Korea. I mean, there are only so many pictures of Susanna that one can look at and they cease to matter if Ronaldo doesn’t score. There are also just so many times you can look at two wizened old men prancing about on the stage in Moscow, Beijing or London even if they happen to be the Rolling Stones. I really don’t want to see any pictures of Michael Schumacher’s wife, Corinna, ever again even if she is pregnant with little Schumacher. Cherie Blair’s nice, even in asari, but she looks too much like an Islington working mother. As for Madeleine Albright, if she hitches up her tiny skirt once again to cross her legs, I’ll have to report it to Sharon Stone. And much as my heart bleeds for the world, I cannot bear to see another picture of floods in Bangladesh.
So in the arid landscape that is the foreign desk, this Hillary is a Good Thing. Thank God she’s got rid of the bangs and the hair band which she experimented with in her standing-by-her-man phase. Gone too is the layered look that made even Monica Lewinsky look good and not just to the President. This Hillary has done a quiet little transformation of her own, unaccompanied by the psychobabble that Diana indulged in.
Funny, her husband went to Oxford but never did learn the virtues of either zipping his lips or his trousers. Hillary, on the other hand, a product of Jerry Springer land and not of Althorp like the let-it-all-hang-out Diana, knows more about reserve than even Alan Greenspan. And being a smarterpolitician than her husband, she’s using the global interest in every gesture she makes did she look her husband in the eye, did she hold his hand or Chelsea’s? to focus attention on policies.
So when she makes a speech on colon cancer, the photographers come out in droves. When she visits inner city children, so do the cameramen. And now that she’s visiting South America for two women’s conferences, you can be sure that part of her message will get through to the people back home. Since Diana’s charities have long looked for a successor, may I nominate Hillary Rodham Clinton, mother, wife, presidential partner and woman of style?
