Bill Clinton went on a politician-splaining rant of epic proportions in Philadelphia when confronted by Black Lives Matter protesters in the middle of a speech.
We were all shocked. It sort of felt like when the cool teacher that you always respected in high school finally started feeling wear and tear from the job and showed you his or her true colors. True colors are scary.
Whatever the case was, Mr. Clinton is feeling the heat, as both the media and public reacted in kind, as our shock turned to disappointment. I would say that most of us are still in the third stage of grief, anger, over the metaphorical death of the first honorary black man to a big part of our millennial generation.
In reference to the incident, former president Clinton, who was recently in Erie, Pennsylvania said,” I rather vigorously defended my wife, as I am one to do, and I realized, finally, I was talking past her the way she was talking past me. We gotta stop that in this country. We gotta listen to each other again.”
Then, the justification came. He continued, “I know those young people yesterday were just trying to get good television and they did. But that doesn’t mean that I was most effective in answering it…So I will say again, when I signed that crime bill, I was worried about the excess sentences but the Republicans demanded it and we couldn’t pass it without it.”
The crime bill that he refers to is the 1994 set of laws that instated tougher penalties for nonviolent drug offenders, built a number of brand new prisons, banned assault weapons and sent 100,000 police officers to various cities around the country. This is the very bill that the Black Lives Matter protesters in attendance were there to contest.
Whether all is forgiven or not, won’t really be determined until more time has passed, but it’s very clear that Mr. Clinton wanted to dig himself out of a hole without really changing much of his position.