Hillary Clinton Student Letter Reveals High Mind - Political Forum

superdude17* · 07-30-2007, 12:19 AM

Source: Telegraph UK

Quote:

box of yellowed letters written in the 1960s by a self-absorbed, angst-ridden university student with a penchant for long words and philosophising has given intriguing insights into the author - the future Senator Hillary Clinton.

They were written by Mrs Clinton, the favourite to win the Democratic presidential nomination, between 1965 and 1969 when she was a student at Wellesley College, Massachusetts, and was keeping in touch with an old school friend called John Peavoy. The assured, fiercely disciplined politician had then "not yet reconciled myself to the fate of not being the star" at university and was unimpressed by the "boys" she had met "who know a lot about 'self' and nothing about 'man'".

In April 1967, she wrote of struggling to discover who she was. "Since Xmas vacation, I've gone through three-and-a-half metamorphoses and am beginning to feel as though there is a smorgasbord of personalities spread before me. So far, I've used alienated academic, involved pseudo-hippie, educational and social reformer and one-half of withdrawn simplicity."

She asked her friend: "Can you be a misanthrope and still love or enjoy some individuals? How about a compassionate misanthrope?" Six months later she informed him: "Sunday was lethargic from the beginning as I wallowed in a morass of general and specific dislike and pity for most people but me especially."

The 30 letters, which she describes at one point as "my usual drivel", are signed "Hillary", "H", or "Me" - which she suggests is "the world's saddest word". Their spelling is near-perfect, the handwriting neat and legible and the punctuation flawless.

Mr Peavoy, now an English lecturer in California and a self-confessed hoarder, kept the missives and provided copies to the New York Times.

Those searching for salacious details of sexual high jinks or drug taking will be disappointed. She wrote in late 1967 that she "met a boy from Dartmouth and spent a Saturday night in Hanover", a reference to the New Hampshire town that is the home of Dartmouth College, but appears to disapprove of girls sleeping with their boyfriends. Reporting that a fellow student had been caught in her boyfriend's apartment at 3.15am, she declared: "I don't condone her actions, but I'll defend to expulsion her right to do as she pleases - an improvement on Voltaire."

Hillary was moving away from supporting Barry Goldwater, the Republican presidential candidate of 1964, to become a critic of the Vietnam War who said in a 1969 graduation speech that her generation had the "indispensable task of criticising and constructive protest".

After mocking a visit to a Young Republicans convention as "a farce that would have done Oscar Wilde credit", she began referring to Republicans as "they" rather than "we".

The future Mrs Clinton, whose campaign last week reacted with outrage to a Washington Post article that focused on her cleavage, was apparently having fashion trouble even as a student. "I'm sitting here at a stolen table in a pair of dirty denim bell-bottoms, a never-ironed work shirt and a beautiful purple felt hat with a purple polka-dotted scarf streaming off it," she wrote in her final letter in March 1969.

a. How high was she in that picture?
b. Doesn’t seem to have been a very grounded or stable person even back then.

Sebelius for VP, not Hillary · 07-30-2007, 12:33 AM

Wow, an angst-ridden emotionally conflicted teenager. That's so.....unusual.

lol

CHUQ · 07-31-2007, 07:23 AM

Pretty pathetic to use letters written while a teenager to define what she is about today. I am not a supporter of hers but she deserves better than that.

Scribbler1 · 07-31-2007, 10:18 AM

Agreed. It would seem the only people who don't remember how different they were when they were teenagers are still teenagers.

SamInTheSouth · 07-31-2007, 08:54 PM

Move along folks...... Nothing to see here.