What Clinton's Temper Can Tell Us About Congo

Robert Mackey, writing for the New York Times's Lede blog, has a really interesting take on Hillary Clinton's testy answer to a question posed by a young man at a Congolese town-hall meeting this week. No doubt Gaggle readers have seen the clip of Clinton smarting over being asked to channel her husband's opinion multiple times by now. And you've also probably heard the cable-news rationale that the question was misinterpreted, and the questioner was actually asking for insight into Obama's opinion. Mackey's not buying that excuse:

It always seemed unlikely to The Lede that a translator working for Mrs. Clinton would make such a large error with a question asked in French─or that an African university student would say “Mr. Clinton” when he meant “Mr. Obama”─and my colleague Jeffrey Gettleman reports in Thursday’s New York Times that “further inspection of the audio recording of the event indicated that the translation was fine; the student had indeed said "Mr. Clinton." A second reporter traveling with Mrs. Clinton, a friend of your Lede blogger’s who is a magazine journalist, said the same thing in an e-mail exchange on Wednesday night, that a French-speaking colleague who was in the room confirmed that the student “did ask the question that way: "the mind of Mr. from the lips of Mrs.”

Mackey goes on to argue that Clinton got a raw deal from the press on this one. (Shock! Hillary's actions represented in the worst possible light by cackling pundits! No way!) He says the questioner was more interested in the view of a former NBA player who was at the event than a female secretary of state. What's most interesting about Mackey's piece is that he provides some relevant context:

While most of the derisive commentary on Mrs. Clinton’s flash of temper contextualized it by noting that her husband had just been lauded for his trip to North Korea, few noted that she was in the middle of a trip to Congo, where the plight of women, many of whom suffered violent sexual abuse during recent fighting, is a major issue.

Viewed in this light, Clinton's annoyance is not just symptomatic of a successful professional trying to establish herself outside the shadow of her husband. It could be construed as frustration with a culture where women have been systematically exploited as part of a political power grab. The United Nations has called Congo the rape capital of the world, and stories of sexual terrorism there are stomach-turningly horrific. Rather than gabbing about what Clinton's snark says about the state of her marriage, perhaps we should be thinking what the question says about the deliberate disempowerment of women in that tortured nation.