Hillary Rodham Clinton. One would be hard-pressed to find someone who didn’t know the name. Hillary—spelled with two l’s—Clinton made a name for herself first at Wellesley College where she became the first student to deliver a commencement address in 1969. The speech was so great, it received a standing ovation and was reprinted in Life magazine. But we all know her best as our former First Lady, former senator, and her most recent role as secretary of state under the Obama administration. Clinton also ran in the 2008 presidential election as a candidate.
Now, eight years later, she’s back and “hitting the road to earn [our] votes.” The video, released over the weekend, set the stage for her campaign: a wholesome, bottom up approach focused on connecting intimately with voters unlike her 2008 run for presidency. This approach was seen in her first campaign event which was held at a community college in Iowa, a rather strange place as candidates usually choose something less nondescript. The event was a small gathering with very little reporters allowed in. Her campaign kickoff was not as smooth as it should have been for something that’s been in the works for a while.
The announcement has come with its fair share of controversy. There is the whole lingering email debacle in which Clinton used a private email during her tenure as secretary of state. All the emails were stored on a private server which was wiped clean during the controversy, with only a select number of emails turned over. Benghazi is the silent specter that keeps getting revived whenever Clinton’s name is uttered. There is a committee in the House still investigating the terrorist attacks in 2012 that left four dead, including U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens. And now, complaints about her campaign logo and an attack on her reputation as a feminist have arisen. Poor Hillary, it seems like she can never get a break.
Hillary Clinton’s campaign logo is simplistic and has received criticism for looking like it was drawn on MS Paint or by a preschooler. It’s very basic in form, a blue H with a red arrow through it. The red arrow seems to confuse people as red is the color of the GOP (but Obama’s logo, which everyone seemed to love, also had the color red in it). Her logo has also been compared to an image of the Twin Towers as well. In summary: Hillary’s logo has caught a lot of negative attention for being too simple. As The Guardian wrote: “A picture may paint a thousand words, but a logo helps make sense of a thousand policies.” And well, the logo doesn’t seem to be saying much to voters about what kind of candidate Hillary Clinton is.
Social media was flooded with posts exclaiming their excitement for a feminist candidate like Hillary Clinton. Some people are less than enthused, recalling a case Clinton worked on as a public defender back in 1975. Her job was to defend an accused child rapist against his 12 year old victim. The Daily Beast interviewed the victim after recordings from the 1980s were discovered last year. On those recordings, Clinton acknowledged that her client was guilty and laughed about it. The victim accused Clinton of lying about her in court documents and going to incredible lengths to discredit her story. Not only that, but the victim accused Clinton of being a hypocrite for portraying herself as someone advocating women’s rights. In the interview with Daily Beast, the victim said, “I would say [to Clinton], ‘You took a case of mine in ‘75, you lied on me… I realize the truth now, the heart of what you’ve done to me. And you are supposed to be for women? You call that [being] for women, what you done to me? And I hear you on tape laughing.” The article has been circling on social media as a counter to those excited about a feminist candidate running.
Over the years, Hillary Clinton has been surrounded by controversy including some not even her own like her husband’s well known affair with Monica Lewinsky. Despite this, Clinton is by far the most well known presidential candidate currently and seems to be the front runner for the presidency If she can successfully navigate the next following months gracefully and eloquently in the public eye while winning the hearts and votes of the people, she might just break that glass ceiling around the position of president.
Featured image source: Brooks Kraft/Corbis
