Cry Me A River ... Or, Maybe, A Brand New Car!

I have no idea whether Hillary Clinton won New Hampshire because she choked up after Iowa. And neither does anybody else.

But
the implication that women voted for her because they "felt bad," as
many pundits have suggested, is simply insulting. Not to Clinton (who
cares about Clinton?) but to me.

I have cried my eyes out for
things I have really wanted – a pony, my own island, a "free pass" for
a night with Johnny Depp. Have I gotten any of them? No.

 

       

It is
possible that people – even those silly female people who have only
been voting since 1920 – do not elect presidents or presidential
nominees based on how sorry they feel for them. If they did, Lyndon
LaRouche would have been sworn in, like, nine times.

But the
"experts" have told us without a quiver of hesitation in their voices
that, post-tears, women wanted to give Clinton their vote along with a
cup of Camomile and a backrub. Never mind that Marianne Pernold Young,
the very woman who asked Clinton the question that inspired her eyes to
well up, says she voted for Obama. The pundits have spoken and the
pundits are always right!

This means that everything I have ever
known about why women cry has been wrong. I have always been under the
impression that when a woman wept it was because 1. She was sad, 2. She
was hurt or 3. She ran out of things to watch on her TiVo (when, oh
when, will this writers' strike end?).

I mean, any high school
girl would tell you that women are just as ready to bring someone to
tears as they are to bring someone a Kleenex. Or that crying is neither
a sign of weakness nor strength. Or that, when casting a secret ballot,
women will only vote for another woman if – and this is a wild concept
here – they truly want that woman to win.

But I guess those high
school girls would be wrong. And worse – they're apparently not getting
enough mileage out of their tears.

When I was in high school, I
remember crying when the first Gulf War broke out. I remember crying
when my boyfriend and I broke up. I remember crying when Melissa
Reisbord made fun of my acne by saying my face looked like "Mount St.
Helens ready to explode."

But I don't remember ever getting an
"A" on a test just for showing up to class with puffy eyes. And I
certainly don't remember expecting to.

Boy, was I a chump.

The
Weekly Standard's Bill Kristol assessed Clinton's New Hampshire win
this way: "It's the tears. She pretended to cry, the women felt sorry
for her, and she won."

Hear that, girls? You don't even need to really cry to get all kinds of goodies from your tears. Just pretend to cry, and you, too, can manipulate people into bending the will of democracy and changing the course of history. How cool!

Now, if you'll pardon me, I'm headed over the BMW lot to see if I can weep my way into a free new car.