Hillary Clinton eschewed the true-blue shades of liberals on
Thursday’s Democratic National Convention. At least that’s the message
she wanted her clothes to send to Independents and Trump-wary
Republicans tuning in to her speech accepting her party’s nomination that night.
Instead of opting for one of her signature bold hues, Clinton stepped
out in gleaming white, a soothing, neutral beacon of hope amid a
chaotic, volatile election season. (Her daughter Chelsea’s sheath was a bit more transparent in its aim: it was a resplendent Reagan red.)
It was a smart choice. Clinton is a polarizing figure. But the soft
suit — which looked like something Olivia Pope would wear more than,
say, Angela Merkel — helped complete the image her husband and daughter
painted of her as a devoted wife and mother and a tireless crusader
(what emails?). First Lady Michelle Obama during the Inaugural Ball in 2009.
It also evoked the snow-colored dress that Michelle Obama wore to
Barack Obama’s first inauguration, all hope and change and #yeswecan.
And, perhaps most significantly, it tied her to the suffragettes, who
nearly 100 years ago succeeded in getting women the right to vote (while
wearing white), and paved the way for Clinton becoming the first woman
to be nominated as a presidential candidate.
Earlier this week, a New York Times fashion critic lamented
that America’s first woman presidential candidate would probably wear a
pantsuit to accept her party’s nomination, arguing that a gal shouldn’t
have to wear pants to convince others of her authority.
Yet, there’s nothing more appropriate for the first lady nominee:
Even after they could vote and hold office, women in the U.S. Congress
still couldn’t wear pants until 1969, according to the Washington Post.
And while an Ivanka Trump may look confident and poised in a simple sheath, Clinton has never looked comfortable in anything but pants.
She’s made the power suit her brand — and on Thursday she didn’t look
like she was trying to be one of the guys, she didn’t look like she was
trying to feminize a masculine garment with a touch of pink or a scarf
or whatever.
She just looked like herself. And that is what makes someone look
presidential. Now, let’s hope — after all that talk about manufacturing
jobs — that her suit was made in the USA.
British officials plan to invite President-elect Donald Trump and his wife, Melania, to meet Queen Elizabeth II next summer in an attempt to cozy up him. The courtesy is being used as a “secret weapon” by the British government to coax Trump into securing a free-trade deal with them and to influence his thinking on NATO, Syria and foreign affairs, an insider told The Sunday Times of London. Trump told Brexit backers last weekend that he’s “looking forward to it” because his mother always loved the queen, a government source said.
Donald Trump came up with a new insult for Hillary Clinton on Friday, calling her a “thief” and charging that she sucks up to President Obama so he will keep her out of jail over her email scandal. “Hillary hates Obama. She’s hated him for years. Bill Clinton really hates Obama. I know that as a fact,” he said at an outdoor rally in Redding, Calif., where the temperature hit 104 degrees. Trump tore into Clinton’s use of a private email server as secretary of state. “What a mess she’s in. Who would be so stupid to do what she did with her emails?” the presumptive GOP nominee said. “But I get why she did it — because she’s a thief. That’s why she did it,” he roared, adding a nickname to his usual favorite, “Crooked Hillary.” “Hillary Clinton should be in jail for what she did to our national security. She could have used a government server.” He claimed Clinton agrees with Obama’s policies only because she fears prosecution. “They are protecting her from going to ja...
Activists stage mock executions outside Saudi Arabia's embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, on April 1, 2010, after a Lebanese man was allegedly beheaded in Saudi Arabia for performing witchcraft. Photo: AP DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Saudi Arabia carried out at least 157 executions in 2015, with beheadings reaching their highest level in the kingdom in two decades, according to several advocacy groups that monitor the death penalty worldwide. Coinciding with the rise in executions is the number of people executed for non-lethal offenses that judges have wide discretion to rule on, particularly for drug-related crimes. Rights group Amnesty International said in November that at least 63 people had been executed since the start of the year for drug-related offenses. That figure made for at least 40 percent of the total number of executions in 2015, compared to less than 4 percent for drug-related executions in 2010. Amnesty said Saudi Arabia had exceeded its hig...
Comments