Hillary Clinton

About

Hillary Clinton is an American politician who served as the First Lady of the United States from 1993 to 2001, Senator of New York from 2001 to 2009 and the 67th Secretary of State from 2009 to 2013. A longtime member of the Democratic Party, Clinton has run twice for the presidency of the United States, first as a candidate in the 2008 Democratic primaries, and later as the Democratic nominee in the 2016 general election.

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 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.

2016 Presidential Campaign

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). Her campaign slogan was I'm With Her.

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^[29] 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).

The Democratic Primaries

Hillary ran in the 2015-2016 Democratic Presidential Primary against Bernie Sanders, Martin O'Malley, Lincoln Chaffee, and Jim Webb. Her strongest competition was from Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, who had strong support from young people due to his populist message. After a hard-fought campaign, Clinton declared victory on June 7th, 2016.

General Election

Following her win in the Democratic primary, Clinton began campaigning against Republican nominee Donald Trump.

Presidential Election Debates

Trump and Clinton met for a total of three presidential debates in the fall of 2016. The first debate was held at Hofstra University on September 26th, and inspired a high volume of memes. The second presidential debate took place in Missouri on October 9th, and also inspired a high volume of memes. The third presidential debate did not feature as many memes as the first two, with only Bad Hombres and "Nasty Woman" generating much spread.

Election Day

[note: currently researching; refresh the article for real-time updates]

Online 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.

Email Controversy

In March of 2015, Clinton came under fire for use of personal email accounts hosted on privately-managed servers, in lieu of official email accounts maintained on secured federal government servers, in conducting official businesses on behalf of the U.S. State Department during her tenure in the Obama administration.

Initial Discovery

On March 15th, 2013, the existence of Hillary Clinton's private e-mail address hosted at clintonemail.com was confirmed for the first time when Romanian hacker Marcel Lazar Lehel (better known by his pseudonym Guccifer) released a batch of email correspondences between Sidney Blumenthal, a former senior White House adviser to Bill Clinton during his presidency, and Hillary Clinton, the-then Secretary of State, which contained confidential memos relating to foreign affairs and regional security in Libya, including the 2012 attacks on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi (shown below)

FBI Recovery of Clinton's Personal Emails

On September 22nd, major media sources began reporting that the FBI had successfully recovered the 30,000 emails Hillary herself had deemed personal and deleted before officials were able to read their content. The recovered emails have not yet been released to the public and the FBI has offered no comment on what they contain, though sources who spoke under the condition of anonymity would say that the emails are being sorted into "work related" and "actually personal" categories, inferring Clinton had deleted emails that were not strictly person in nature as she claimed.

End of Investigation

On July 5th, 2016 FBI director James Comey held a press conference in which he announced that 110 classied emails were found on Clinton's server. He stated she was "extremely careless" in handling classified intelligence. Comey later advised Attorney General Loretta Lynch not press charges. On June 6, 2016 Loretta Lynch announced no charges would be pressed against Clinton. Some this considered to make Clinton seem "above the law".

Democratic National Committee Email Leak

On July 22nd, 2016, Wikileaks published a collection of nearly 20,000 e-mails exchanged among key staff members within the Democratic National Committee (DNC), the governing body of the United States Democratic Party, as well as unofficial correspondences with members of the press, between January 2015 and May 2016. The leaked emails detail how several officials within the DNC, which is supposed to remain neutral during the primary electoral process, had attempted to sabotage Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign in order to secure Hillary Clinton’s victory in the primaries. As a result of the leak, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the chairwoman of the DNC, announced her resignation from the position. As of July 25th, the source of the leak remains unknown and the Democratic party has yet to issue an official response regarding the scandal.

Related Memes

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]

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. CBS^[24] and NewsBusters^[25] covered the story.

Bernie or Hillary?

In the 2016 Democratic Primary, a series of photographs showed Clinton and Bernie Sanders with quotes about apolitical topics. These were designed to show Hillary as less knowledgeable than Sanders.

The initial series of 12 posters were originally posted online by user ObviousPlant on both Tumblr^[1] and reddit/Imgur on January 28th, 2016, with the added caption, "Left in the streets of Los Angeles." The original reddit post, in the subreddit /r/pics, received 550 points (97% upvoted) and the Tumblr post had received over 38,000 notes as of February 2nd, 2016.

"Basket of Deplorables" Gaffe

On September 8th, 2016, Clinton was interviewed on the Israeli television, where she said that Trump supporters are in “two big baskets,” one of which contains “deplorables” who consist of “racists” and “haters” (shown below, left). The following evening, Clinton made a similar statement while speaking at a private fundraiser, where she said “you can put half of Trump supporters into what I call ‘the basket of deplorables’” (shown below, right).

Meanwhile, the hashtag #BasketOfDeplorables began trending on Twitter, where many critics of Clinton denounced her statements regarding Trump supporters (shown below).

Also on September 10th, Redditor ToTheRescues submitted a photoshopped picture of Pepe the Frog in a basket along with the caption "On my way to The White House in my / #BasketOfDeplorables" to /r/The_Donald (shown below).

#HackingHillary

During a rally in Cleveland, Ohio held on September 5th, 2016, Clinton began coughing repeatedly while delivering a speech, during which she joked "Every time I think about Trump, I get allergic" (shown below, left). Later that day, the Fox 10 Phoenix news station posted footage of Clinton having a similar coughing fit while being interviewed on a plane (shown below, right).

This led to rumors from Trump supporters that Hillary was physically unfit to hold the presidency, spread under the hashtag #HackingHillary.

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]

#HillaryFly

#HillaryFly is the nickname given to a house fly that landed on the face of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton during the second 2016 United States presidential debate at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri on October 9th, 2016. Shortly after its on-screen appearance, many viewers on the social media became fixated with the fly, spawning a series of satirical jokes involving the fly and both of the candidates.

Clinton-Trump Duet

Clinton/Trump Duet refers to a series of jokes about pictures taken at the second 2016 United States Presidential Election Debate of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and Republican nominee Donald Trump that make the candidates appear as though they are singing a karaoke duet.

Search Interest

External References