Discussion: Hillary Clinton, Colin Powell And America's Double Standard

Discussion for article #234358

Mr. Ben Railton,

There are of course reasons for the lack of widespread outrage about Powell’s revelations and actions; for one thing, he’s probably not running for presidents. But seen through the lens of history, the outrage over Hillary’s emails falls in line with one of America’s most longstanding social traditions: the overt application of double standards to men and women in both public and private life.

Not only Powell isn’t running for President, if I remember correctly he also left office before the policy on emails went into effect. How can a person follow a policy that didn’t exist yet? How can you claim, Mr. Railton, that there is a gender double standard in this case?

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Additionally, Mr. Powel is a Republican, and Sen Clinton is a Democrat. It’s not like the right has a history of crucifying Democrats (especially with the last name of Clinton).

Feminist exaggerations hurt the plight of women.

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To be fair, there is no “widespread outrage” about Hillary’s emails. The “outrage” (all faked) is 100% inside-the-Beltway and completely missing among ordinary Americans, all of whom routinely delete emails (or get nasty notes from their internet provider reminding them to do so.

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You bet they do… and as someone who first heard of email in the 69/70 time frame and has used ever since, including being the one responsible for archiving data, etc we encouraged that email deletion. Before wide use of PC’s we were charging users over $200 per month per Meg not Gig of data being stored, only made sense to keep around what was absolutely needed for the current job. We encouraged users to print copies if the felt they needed to store the information.

Know folks who never used pre-PC email just don’t understand. Here’s a couple of illustrations of some of the difficulties making it all work. 1) could not understand why an email sent from PC on a users desk took 3 days to arrive on the MF and be available to that same user via their terminal. After investigation found out the PC email server sent the message to/from the US and Australia 5 times before sending to the MF email server. 2) Investigated what it would take to send information to 6 different computers in 6 locations scattered throughout the US, each time picking up more data. All worked well except for the 5th machine where it always failed. Investigation found out that the program started to execute before the complete message arrived and therefore was missing data and parts of the program. Solution build in a 3 second delay. Both examples about ran on 128K of memory that is K of memory on the individual computers…

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Ben, Ben, Ben…don’t you already know the difference, in your heart of hearts?

IOKIYAR.

It really is as simple as that.

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If I understand the reporting correctly the policy wasn’t in place until after Hilary left as well.

As for the rest I suppose gender might be part of it, but it seems more likely to me that it has to do with the longstanding tradition of the Media’s overt application of double standards to Republicans and Democrats in both public and private life.

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It isn’t just from the old days. Until I upgraded a couple of months ago, my Time Warner service came with limited mailbox capacity. Anytime someone sent me a large file, I would get a message telling me to delete mails or I wouldn’t get any more.

The idea that everything must be kept forever strikes me as bizarre. Historians have managed to write tomes on the great events of the past based on actual events Future historians can do the same regarding the present and voters can judge candidates based on the results they obtained.

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Powell’s use of a personal e-mail account to conduct official business was also wildly inappropriate.

The coupled arrogance and cluelessness of these pukes never fails to astonish.

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Stop using FACTS in a argument with a zealot. It’s not worth the bandwidth.

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Incorrect, the National Archives policy started in 2009, about the time she took office. And the State Dept sent a memo at the same time addressing the issue, including the recommendation to avoid using private email. It’s documented.

She broke a rule. It’s not a scandal, nor did she break a law. It was silly, and is only being magnified because she is running for President. And had she just archived regularly, or only used private email on occasion instead of exclusively, no problems. Plus she had a remote server, etc. It just does not look good, especially when the President himself uses his .gov address. There is no comparison to this and Colin Powell since there were no rules in place then, and since he is not running for President.

Again, I think it’s overblown, but the point is she could have avoided any scrutiny by being smarter. I have said from day one that this is not a scandal or crime, but it was stupid. And if she signed a separation form saying she had turned over all documents, etc., that could be problematic as well. At this point she and her advisers have not stated if she signed such a form.

Get ready. We will soon be endlessly treated to nasty comments about Hillary’s hair, her clothes, her weight; as well as the dozens of cosmetic surgeries she must have had by now.

The ugliness has just begun…

What’s the big deal? The Government is storing all of everybody’s emails forever anyway. Right?

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This author seems to know very little about the history of persecution of non-gender conforming men and women. A Hasty Pudding drag show does not somehow prove that men who dressed as women were celebrated. Had the author done even a slight amount of research here, he could have found scores of both men and women (but more men) who were arrested in all of our major cities throughout the 20th century for wearing even basic indicators of clothing deemed non-conforming (often known as the three item clothing rule). In fact, had he wanted to still make this into a feminist issue, he could have analyzed that perhaps the more savage reactions to men dressing as women came from the fact that the feminine was more threatening than the masculine to these prejudiced minds. So many brave men AND women suffered daily harrassment at the hands of police and other citizens and to somehow pretend men had it easier in this regard is not only wrong but offensive and does not serve the greater point of the article on double standards in general.

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The policy wasn’t in effect until the end of 2014!! Hillary left the state department prior to that as well.

The State Department didn’t start saving emails until a few months ago.

Your argument, fails. Point, clinton!

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Thanks very much for that important comment. I entirely take your point–while I believe popular/culture narratives have allowed for male cross-dressing in a more acceptable way than female, that’s entirely different from attitudes toward and laws on individual/private choices, and I should have engaged with that side of the history here. Thanks again,

Ben

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There it is!

That’s the true media double standard.

I suppose that depends on which rules we are talking about, rules on the preservation of emails or the rules on the use of a personal email account. There were rules in place regarding the preservation of emails, which required her/her staff to ensure that copies of her official emails existed in the state departments records and which she may have broken if the emails she hasn’t turned over are/were official email. However, the rules the National Archives seem to have issued to serve as guidelines for handling personal email came out in August/September 2013, which would be after Hillary left office. So it depends on which rules we are talking about and what she has actually turned over, personally I was referring to the rules on the use of personal email.



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This is Railton’s schtick: construct a compelling argument on an exceedingly weak premise. This is the guy who argued that it’s a good thing that “Selma” falsified LBJ’s relationship with MLK.
The fact that Hillary is not only the presumed Democratic nominee, but also the clear front-runner for the presidency of course subjects her to increased scrutiny.
I want to make a broader point to all those claiming this is a non-scandal. It was an absolute outrage when the Bush administration hid its emails through a similar strategy during the run-up to the Iraq War. It’s also a scandal when HRC did it.
All of these people clearly were trying to do the public’s business in secret. After Watergate, Congress passed the Freedom of Information Act to stop this kind of shit and politicians since have used technology to thwart the spirit of the law. Having been a young lawyer who worked on the Watergate investigation, there’s no way Hillary was unaware of what she was doing.

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Correct, I was referencing the archive rules from the National Archives, so we were talking about two different things on “rules”. The personal email thing was a memo from the State Department and said to try to avoid using personal emails. It did not say not to do it, it only suggested not to. It would have been wise for her to keep two private accounts though, one for business, one for personal. Then she could have just turned over ALL the emails for the official biz account, nothing would have needed to be reviewed or deleted.

If she signed a paper saying she had turned over all docs when she left State, that again could be problematic.

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What is the evidence that better results in terms of the quality of the results obtained for the public by “open” government post-Watergate as compared to the earlier era? If anything, I would say, the results have proven worse. That may not have anything to do with opening the process, but it makes one wonder,