Mark today on your calendars as the day that Hillary Clinton stared boldly into the face of an aggressive and violent patriarchy—and cackled.

Actually, what happened was that an attendee at a Team Clinton Q&A on veterans and the military got a little too heated with his comments about Carly Fiorina, and Clinton laughed it off.

The man—who is a veteran and who claims to have been an HP employee from 1999-2005—expressed his frustration with Fiorina by saying, “every time I see [Carly Fiorina] on TV I want to reach through and strangle her.”

Clinton’s reaction? LOL:

On a loop:

I want to pump the brakes on the outrage train for a second. I have no doubt that within the next 24-36 hours, we’re going to see this guy (or maybe other members of the audience) on the primetime circuit crying out, “for the love of God, no, I don’t feel a burning desire to actually strangle Carly Fiorina.”

Do I believe this guy would physically murder Carly Fiorina with his bare hands? No. Do I believe the majority of the people in that room would sit by and giggle if someone murdered Carly Fiorina with their bare hands? Obviously not.

But that’s not the point.

The point here is that this happened at a Hillary Clinton event, filled with people who wanted to ask Hillary Clinton questions. This is the same Hillary Clinton who, time and again, has pulled the gender card to a) make excuses for herself, b) make excuses for others, or c) attack opponents over seemingly innocuous statements that may or may not have pertained to Hillary Clinton’s candidacy.

You would think, after all the time this woman spent hauling herself up ladders and crashing through glass ceilings, that she would take great offense to the idea of a man—those men and their man feelings, ugh—sitting in an open forum and even joking about wanting to commit an act of brutal violence against a fellow sister.

This is the outrage. It’s incomprehensible to me how a candidate—or for that matter, a movement—can attack and harangue an innocent populace over invented offenses and “microaggressions” while at the same time laughing off a comment that, if made by anyone else (read: a republican, for example) would be immediately labeled as misogynistic, violent, dangerous, and a product of a patriarchal lynch* mob.

Clinton will play this off as she always does, but conservatives can chalk this one up as yet another example of how the progressive double standard works when it comes to just what sort of woman feminists will stand up to protect.

Hint: it’s not me, or you, or Carly.

*There, I made it racist, too!

Follow Amy on Twitter @ThatAmyMiller



