NPR Interview with Clinton Emerges: ‘My Roots Are Conservative, I’m Proud I Was a Goldwater Girl’

[progree]

47. Such a chameleon. Here she is in a 1979 interview pandering by heaping scorn on urban America

From "The Nation" 9/14/15

A cover article on Hillary Clinton. It starts off with a 1979 Television interview (that Buzzfeed recently uncovered) with Hillary Rodham (she didn't take the Clinton name until later, under pressure) who had just become the first lady of Arkansas.

The interviewer asked what she found attractive about Arkansas.

Outsiders, he noted, complain that "We're so unprogressive here. We're just not as progressive as they are up North."

Appearing eager to finally ingratiate herself, she replies by pouring scorn on urban America:

[font color = blue]"You know, if it's progress to default on your bond obligations so that your city's going into bankruptcy, or if it's progress to have such an incredible crime rate that people don't venture outside their doors, or if it's progress to live in a city whose air you can't breathe, well, then, I hope we are unprogressive, and I hope we never get to the point where that's our definition of progress." [/font]

This exchange exemplifies a dynamic we would observe over and over for more than 2 decades -- that when her reputation as a leftist and feminist threatened the viability of her husband's political career, she had a tendency to overcorrect.

The full interview (both text and video) is at http://www.buzzfeed.com/andrewkaczynski/hillary-clinton-1979
The segment discussed above begins at 21:13