Hillary Clinton

About

Hillary Clinton is an American politician and former First Lady of the United States who represented New York in the U.S. Senate from 2001 to 2009 and served as the 67th Secretary of State under the Obama administration from January 2009 to February 2013. Since the re-election of Barack Obama in 2012, Clinton has been widely considered the front runner for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016.

Political Career

Since first entering the public stage as the First Lady of the United States in January 1993, Hillary Clinton has been actively involved in the U.S national politics in both official and non-official capacities.

First Lady of the United States

Under the administration of her husband Bill Clinton, she chaired the task force for devising the Clinton Health Care Plan, a healthcare reform package officially known as the Health Security Act, though it ultimately failed to gain approval from the U.S. Congress. During the second term of Bill Clinton’s administration, she played an instrumental role in advocating and shaping the consensus within the Congress for a number of reform initiatives in healthcare and social welfare. Clinton’s strong presence and power of influence in political affairs during her years as the First Lady drew a polarized response from the American public, which were further compounded by her congressional subpoena regarding the Whitewater controversy in 1996, as well as the Monica Lewinsky Scandal in 1998.

U.S. Senator of New York

Following the end of Bill Clinton’s presidency, she ran for the U.S. Senate election in the state of New York and won, entering the office in January 2001 as the first and only First Lady of the United States to have been elected to a public office.

U.S. Secretary of State

After Clinton’s defeat in the 2008 Democratic presidential primaries, she was nominated to be the U.S. Secretary of State by her former rival candidate and incoming president Barack Obama. During her service as the Secretary of State, Clinton visited more countries than any of her predecessors and advocated for the Arab Spring movement in the Middle East, including U.S. military intervention in Libya, though her diplomatic efforts were marred by the 2012 Benghazi attack that resulted in deaths of American diplomats and officials due to security lapses in the compound.

Online History

Hillary 1984

On March 5th, 2007, YouTuber ParkRidge47 uploaded a video titled “Vote Different.”^[16] The ad cut together elements from a 1984 Apple Mac ad first aired during that year’s Superbowl and Clinton’s announcement of her candidacy. The ad urged voters (or in the case of the original ad, consumers) to make up their own minds and resist conformity. It was later revealed the ad was created by Phil de Vellis, who worked for Blue State Digital, a company offering tech support to some of the presidential candidates. De Vellis left the company after he revealed he created the ad, and in an article he published on The Huffington Post^[17] he explained:

"The specific point of the ad was that Obama represents a new kind of politics, and that Senator Clinton’s “conversation” is disingenuous. And the underlying point was that the old political machine no longer holds all the power."

2008 Presidential Primary Campaign

Clinton announced she would be running for president in the 2008 election on January 20th, 2007.^[14] During her campaign both ads she ran and attack ads against her gained a wide audience online. She officially ended her candidacy on June 7th, 2008, putting her support behind Democrat candidate Barack Obama.^[15]

The Sopranos Spoof

On June 19th, 2007, political strategist Patrick Ruffini uploaded a Clinton campaign ad to his YouTube channel.^[20] The ad depicts Clinton with her husband Bill sitting down at a diner and flipping through music at a table-top jukebox and acts as a teaser for the reveal of her campaign song, which was Celine Dion’s “You and I.”^[21] The video also stars Soprano’s actor Vince Curatola and imitates the final scene of the show. As of January 2014 the video has over 510,000 views.

“Hot for Hill” Music Video

On July 2nd, 2007, comedian and singer Taryn Southern uploaded a music video on her YouTube channel^[18] titled “Hot For Hillary.” The video depicts Southern singing about her admiration of and attraction to Clinton, sometimes explaining it to a classroom full of children. The video was created as a kind of response to a similar video supporting then Senator Obama performed by the Obama Girl titled I Have a Crush on Obama^[19]. As of January 2014 the video has over 2.2 million views.

Dancing in South Africa

On a trip to South Africa in August 2012 Clinton danced at a dinner held in Malawi.^[7] A video of the dance, which involved Clinton doing a bit of grinding, was uploaded to CNN’s Youtube Channel^[8] on August 8th. As of January 2014 it has over 95,000 views. The video was broken down into GIFs in a Buzzfeed^[9] article published the same day titled “The Animated GIF Guide To Hillary Clinton’s Adorable Dance Moves.”

Meryl Streep / Clinton Selfie

On December 1st, 2012, Clinton attended a state department dinner for the Kennedy Center Honors in Washington, D.C.^[11] After the dinner she and actress Meryl Streep were photographed taking a selfie together on Streep’s iPhone. The photos were reported on across the web, and Streep ultimately made the photo available for purchase at Shuttertothink.org, a charity that allows celebrities to sell their photography and funnels the proceeds to charities that support education for girls.^[12]

2016 Presidential Bid Announcement

On April 10th, 2015, the Republican National Committee released a 30-second video titled “Stop Hillary,” featuring a silhouette of Clinton walking up to a lectern while voices criticizing her past political controversies play in the background (shown below). The same day, The Onion^[31] published a satirical “candidate profile” for Clinton,

On April 11th, Saturday Night Live aired a sketch parodying how Clinton would declare her candidacy for president (shown below, left). On the following day, Clinton announced her bid for the Democratic Party nomination in the 2016 U.S. presidential election in an YouTube video titled “Getting Started,” in which she expresses her desire to be America’s “champion” (shown below, right).

Additionally, Clinton tweeted a link to her updated website,^[32] featuring her new logo designed as a blue letter “H” with a red arrow protruding out of the right side (shown below, left). On Twitter,^[27][28] many mocked the new logo for appearing amateurish (shown below, middle, right).

Also on April 12th, The Daily What and Bustle^[30] published round-ups of Internet reactions to the presidential candidacy announcement. The same day, Redditor Very_Creative invited viewers to photoshop a picture of Clinton pointing at a crowd with a wide-eyed, open-mouth expression on the /r/photoshopbattles^[34] subreddit (shown below, left). Within 24 hours, the post accumulated more than 4,200 votes (91% upvoted), 580 comments and many photoshopped variations of the image (shown below, middle, right).

On April 13th, Redditor ghostofpennwast submitted a video of Clinton speaking in support of a video game ratings system titled “Hillary Clinton speaking in support of video game censorship” to the /r/Libertarian^[33] subreddit, where it reached the front page gathering upwards of 1,300 votes (89% upvoted) and 200 comments in seven hours (shown below).

Body Double Conspiracy Theory

On September 11th, 2016, Clinton attended a memorial ceremony in honor of those who perished in the September 11th, 2001 attacks, where she abruptly left claiming she felt “overheated.” While waiting for her vehicle, Clinton appeared as if she were about to collapse before aides helped her into the van (shown below, left). After the incident, Clinton visited her daughter Chelsea’s Manhattan apartment, where she emerged hours later and was filmed by reporters (shown below, right).

That day, some conspiracy theorists on social media began speculating that a body double was posing as the presidential candidate after the incident, along with the hashtag #HillarysBodyDouble^[40] (shown below). Additionally, many argued that Hillary Clinton impersonator Teresa Barnwell was performing the body double role. In the coming days, several news sites published articles about the online conspiracy theory, including Snopes,^[35] New York Post,^[36]USA Today,^[37] The Daily Mail^[38] and Inquisitr.^[39]

Social Media Presence

Hillary Clinton joined Twitter on June 10th, 2013, and gained over 180,000 on her first day.^[13] As of January 2014 her account^[10] has over 1.08 million followers, though she herself only follows nine accounts including her husband and her daughter Chelsea.

Reputation

Among her supporters, Clinton has garnered a reputation as a role model for aspiring female politicians and a powerful figure in advancing women’s rights. She is also widely considered the overwhelmingly favored potential candidate for the Democratic Party’s nominee in the upcoming 2016 U.S. presidential election. In addition to her political stature on the national stage, Clinton has frequently been impersonated, caricatured and parodied in the news media and pop culture, most notably as a poker-faced, stoic female politician portrayed by Amy Poehler on Saturday Night Live during the 2008 Democratic presidential primaries.

Related Memes

Texts from Hillary

Texts from Hillary is a single topic blog featuring a series of vertical, multi-pane image macros based on a photograph of Clinton^[1] sitting aboard a military aircraft while wearing sunglasses and reading from her smartphone. The image of Clinton was taken by Reuters photographer Kevin Lamarque while she was awaiting departure aboard a military C-17 Globemaster III^[2] flight from Malta to Tripoli, Libya on October 18th, 2011. The photograph was subsequently featured on the news site^[3] on October 20th, 2011. The Tumblr blog Texts From Hillary was created by friends Adam Smith^[4] and Stacy Lambe^[5] who both work in public relations in Washington, D.C. On April 4th, 2012, the first image was posted to to the Tumblr^[6], featuring Clinton’s photo paired with one of Obama texting (shown below). Within the first 48 hours of the post, the image received 9,094 notes.

New York Times Magazine Cover

Hilary Clinton’s New York Times Magazine Cover also known as “Planet Hillary,” refers to a magazine cover featuring a composite image of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s face superimposed on to the surface of a planet. On January 23rd, 2014, New York Times Magazine editor David Joachim tweeted the cover for its upcoming January 26th issue, featuring Hillary Clinton’s face on the surface of a planet in space. The same day on January 23rd, 2014, several other Twitter users began posting photoshopped images featuring cutouts of the Clinton planet edited into other base images of various contexts.

#HillarysLosers

On the evening of the U.S. midterm elections on November 4th, 2014, as the Republican Party’s takeover of the majority in the U.S. Congress became evidently clear, U.S. Senator of Kentucky Rand Paul^[26] tweeted a black-and-white photograph of Clinton posing at a rally with Alison Lundergan Grimes, Kentucky’s incumbent Secretary of State and the Democrat challenger for U.S. Senate in Kentucky against the Mitch McConnell, captioned with the hashtag #HillarysLosers.^[22]

The tweet also linked to a photo album of additional images on Senator Paul’s Facebook page^[23], which show Hillary Clinton with other Democrat candidates who had failed to win in the midterm elections.

Search Interest

External References