Less than a week after former secretary of state Madeleine Albright implied “there’s a special place in hell” for young women voters who aren’t backing Hillary Clinton in 2016, she apologized for the remarks in a New York Times op-ed.
“I have spent much of my career as a diplomat. It is an occupation in which words and context matter a great deal. So one might assume I know better than to tell a large number of women to go to hell,” Albright opened the column.
Albright said at a Clinton campaign event before the New Hampshire primary, “There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other,” which was widely read as her arguing that women should back Clinton solely for her gender.
But Albright wrote that while she “absolutely” believes women should help one another, she used the oft-repeated line in “the wrong context and the wrong time.”
“In a society where women often feel pressured to tear one another down, our saving grace lies in our willingness to lift one another up,” Albright wrote. “And while young women may not want to hear anything more from this aging feminist, I feel it is important to speak to women coming of age at a time when a viable female presidential candidate, once inconceivable, is a reality.”
Clinton defended Albright’s remarks in Thursday’s Democratic debate, and noted it was the first primary debate ever where women were in the majority on stage.
Memo to all Republicans everywhere forever:
This is how you apologize. Next?
As mea culpas go, this is one of the better ones I’ve heard in a while. She begins by acknowledging the worst possible spin that could be put on her remarks (“telling women to’go to hell”), but then rather than making excuses or arguing about why that spin isn’t fair, she just plain apologizes. That was a classy move.
I am not a big fan of Allbright, but as I’ve noted on other threads, I did not personally find that remark particularly offensive – to me it came off as a (somewhat clumsy) appeal to solidarity. But it was received in the context of Gloria Steinem’s much more offensive, dismissive, and condescending remark about young women supposedly flocking to the Sanders campaign because “that’s where the boys are.” In fact I suspect if it had not been for the fact that Allbright’s remarks came soon after Steinem’s, Allbright’s comment might not have received much press attention at all (if any),
But in talking to some female friends about both these women’s remarks, it quickly became clear that, fair or unfair, Allbright’s remarks were taken as deeply offensive by some young women (and at least one older woman I talked to about it). The level of offense ranged from mild annoyance to true outrage. Totally unscientific, totally anecdotal, but convinced me that at least some women were judging Allbright’s comments a lot more harshly than I was.
Damage control is never fun, especially if you’re the one who has to throw yourself on your sword to take some heat off your candidate. In this respect, Allbright took her medicine like an adult.
Yep, no “I am sorry if people misunderstood me and took offense.”
I agree. It was terrible the way it came out, but struck me as just spur of the moment unfortunate word choice under the hot lights while trying to make the somewhat less terrible, but still annoying, “vote for me because of our gender” plea. Nobody would deny that there’s a certain element of that happening or that it influences if not controls some peoples’ decisions, but HRC would be far FAR better off telling people “You know, just like I don’t want people not to vote for me because I’m a woman, I also don’t want people to vote for me just because I’m a woman. I want people to vote for me because they’ve listened to me, heard my ideas and positions and policies, recognize that they’re good ideas, positions aligned with their interests and policies that will help them, and that I’m the best qualified person to fight this fight for them.” Stick solely to the merits.