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Living History
by Hillary Rodham Clinton Rating: •• (Mildly Recommended) |
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Lifeless Some people have bought Hilary Rodham Clinton’s memoir, Living
History, as a sign of support for her. Doing that may be less painful for
some that reading all 534 pages. Senator Clinton writes as if she’s glanced
at her appointment calendar, describes what she recalls about the event, and
then launches into a policy essay. Despite some early family stories that are
engaging, most of the book comes across as distant and lifeless. Here’s an
excerpt (pp. 388-91) that captures what I mean: On our first visit to the Philippines in 1994, Bill
and I had toured Corregidor, the American base that had fallen to the
Japanese during World War II. There General Douglas MacArthur was forced to
abandon the islands, though promising, "I shall return." Filipino
soldiers had fought valiantly alongside Americans, paving the way for
MacArthur's eventual return in 1944. The Philippines had undergone wrenching
political changes in the decades since World War II and people were still
recovering from the effects of twenty-one years of autocratic rule under
Ferdinand Marcos. Corazon Aquino, whose husband was assassinated as a result
of his opposition to Marcos, had led the way in restoring democracy in her
country. "Cory" Aquino ran against Marcos for President in 1986.
Marcos was declared the winner, but his victory was attributed to suspected
fraud and intimidation. Popular protests drove Marcos out of office and
Aquino became President, another woman thrust into politics as a result of
personal loss. President Aquino was succeeded by Fidel Ramos, a
former general educated at West Point, who brought a quick smile and sense of
humor to his daunting responsibilities. He and his wife, Amelita, were our
hosts for both of the trips we made to Manila. At the state lunch in 19941 he
insisted that Bill play a saxophone, and when Bill demurred, he arranged for
the band to call Bill up to play, accompanied on the piano by Mrs. Ramos. She
also gleefully showed me one of the many closets in the former presidential
residence still filled with lmelda Marcos's shoes. After speaking at a conference attended by
thousands of women from all over the Philippines, I left Manila for the hill
country of northern Thailand and was to meet Bill in Bangkok for a state
visit hosted by King Bhumibol Adulyade and Queen Sirikit that coincided with
the King's fiftieth anniversary on the throne. Flying into the town of Chiang Rai, near the
Laotian and Burmese frontier, I savored the spectacular view of green rice
paddies and meandering rivers spread out below me. I was greeted on the
tarmac by musicians beating drums and cymbals and playing the sab, a
stringed instrument with a melancholy, piercing sound. Girls in traditional
hill country tribal garb danced, while miraculously balancing the array of
flowers and candles attached to their wrists. My arrival coincided with the
Loy Krathong Festival, when the streets are filled with celebrants on their
way to the Mae Ping River to launch floating clusters of flowers and candles
into the water. The ancient custom, I was told, symbolizes the end of the
troubles of one year and the hopes for the next. The hopefulness of this ritual stood in stark
contrast with the dire lives of the young girls I later visited in a
rehabilitation center for former prostitutes. This region of northern
Thailand was part of the "Golden Triangle," an epicenter of trafficking
of all kinds: drugs, contraband and women. I was told that 10 percent or more
of the girls in the area were coerced into the sex industry. Many were
sold into prostitution before they reached puberty, because clients preferred
young girls, wrongly convinced that they did not carry AIDS, endemic among
prostitutes. At the New Life Center in Chiang Mai, American missionaries gave
former prostitutes a safe haven and a chance to learn vocational skills they
needed to support themselves. I met one girl at the Center who had been sold
by her opium-addicted father when she was eight years old. After a few years,
she escaped and returned home—only to be sold again to a whorehouse. Now only
twelve, she was dying of AIDS at the Center. Her skin hung off her bones, and
I watched helplessly as she summoned all her strength to draw her tiny hands
together in the traditional Thai greeting when I approached her. I knelt next
to her chair and tried to speak to her through a translator. She did not have
the strength to talk. All I could do was hold her hand. She died shortly
after my visit. On a tour of a local village, I witnessed
disturbing evidence of local supply-and-demand economics that brought this
girl to her death. My guides explained that every house with a TV antenna
sticking out of its thatched roof represented a wealthier family—and that
almost always meant one that had sold a daughter into the sex trade. Families
in the poorer mud huts without televisions either refused or had no daughters
to sell. This visit reinforced my resolve to bridge the disconnect between
global politics and local lives. In a meeting with representatives of the
Thai government and women's groups, I discussed the government's plan to
crack down on the trafficking of women, particularly young girls, into
Bangkok's sex trade by toughening the enforcement of its anti-prostitution
laws and imposing serious jail terms for brothel owners, clients and families
that sell their children into prostitution. Trafficking in women is a human
rights violation that enslaves girls and women and distorts and destabilizes
economies of whole regions, just as drug smuggling does. Thailand was not
unique. Over the course of my travels, I began to understand how vast the
industry of trafficking human beings—particularly women—had become. Today,
the State Department estimates that as many as four million people, often
living in extreme poverty, are trafficked each year. I began speaking out
about this horrific violation of human rights and pushing the Administration
to assume global leadership in combating it. In Istanbul, Turkey, at the OSCE
(Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe) meeting in 1999 I
participated on a panel to urge international action. I worked with the State
Department and members of Congress already concerned with the issue. The
Trafficking Victims Protection Act, passed in 2000, is now the law of the
land, helping women trafficked to the United States and providing assistance
and aid to governments and NGOs combating traffic abroad. We
flew back to Washington in time for Thanksgiving and headed off for a family
gathering at Camp David. Our guests included Harry and Linda, and Harry's
brother, Danny Thomason, who'd known Bill since 1968, when Danny
taught school in Hot Springs. Best of all, we now had two nephews, Tony's
son, Zachary, and Roger's son, Tyler. The men played golf despite the
freezing weather, competing for what they called the Camp David trophy. We
ate our meals and spent our time in Laurel, where I had a big-screen
television brought in so that every play in every football game could be seen
from every corner of the room. At dinner we voted on which movie to watch
that night in the camp's theater, and in the event of a tie, or strong
dissent, we sometimes ran a double feature. The Republicans had lost nine seats in the House
and two in the Senate, but they still were in control of both chambers of
Congress, and they gave more leadership positions to ideologues rather than
to moderates or pragmatists. The new Chairman of the House Government Reform
and Oversight Committee, Rep. Dan Burton from Indiana, was the Hill's leading
conspiracy theorist. He had achieved minor celebrity for firing a .38-caliber
pistol at a watermelon in his backyard as part of a bizarre attempt to prove
that Vince Foster was murdered. Several key Republicans, including Senate Majority Leader
Trent Lott, had already vowed that it was their "responsibility" to
continue investigating the Clinton Administration. But the Whitewater inquiry
seemed to be losing momentum. Senator D'Amato had suspended his hearings in
June. Despite prolonged questioning, Kenneth Starr had failed to wrest any
damning tidbit from Webb Hubbell, who was serving eighteen months in federal
prison for defrauding his clients and partners. The first hundred pages take readers from
Hillary’s birth to Bill Clinton running for President. The second term begins
on page 378. Much of Living History,
is a recent memoir. If you want to
jump ahead and read about Bill and Monica, turn to pages 440-41, where you
won’t find out much. I awarded two stars to Living
History because it’s something of a curiosity and will be of interest to
political junkies. Steve Hopkins, July 25, 2003 |
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ã 2003 Hopkins and Company, LLC The
recommendation rating for this book appeared in the August 2003
issue of Executive
Times URL
for this review: http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/Books/Living
History.htm For
Reprint Permission, Contact: Hopkins
& Company, LLC • 723 North Kenilworth Avenue • Oak Park, IL 60302 E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com |
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