Hillary Clinton and Madonna: Both Unbowed and Uncowed — They're Virtually the Same, and They Will Rule!
Who knew that Hillary Clinton and Madonna were practically the same person? Here they are — both middle aged blondes in the battles of their lives. Hillary, to wrest back the Democratic nomination for president from Barack Obama and Madonna, to prove that with her 26th album, Hard Candy, she can outsing and outsell her sexy younger pop star sisters like Gwen Stefani and Fergie.
One needs to come out on top of the polls, the other needs to top the charts. Both are such deeply determined women, they continue to amaze their detractors with their refusals to throw in the towel and concede that their time has passed.
No doubt, younger fresh-faced Obama, 46, can't believe that he's still going toe to toe with a 60 year-old woman, saddled with multiple Bill issues, and now the Bosnia gaffe. And worst of all — the woman doesn't sleep. He can scoff at her claim that she's a reincarnated Rocky — "I never quit, I never give up, and neither do the American people," she insists — but she's right. Sorry Obama and Nora Ephron, she's not giving up just because you're tired of her. So there!
Then there's Madonna. Despite a $325 million personal fortune, three young kids, and a 
passel of press hounds who snap after her every controversial move, she won't go away and retire quietly on her English estate. What's wrong with her? Why won't she just put her feet up, do pilates, and leave the stripping down to next-to-nothing to the Pussycat Dolls?
But no, instead she admits to working out two to three hours every day so she can still slither into a little Dolce & Gabbana body suit, Azzedine Alaia corset belt, and over-the-knee dominatrix boots, for the new cover of Vanity Fair and then presumably for her next global concert tour. Not surprisingly, "there are no shortcuts to being Madonna. It's all about hard work. There is no easy way. If you want to look like I do, it's diet and exercise and constantly being careful..." she told British Elle in a new interview. "I'm not going to slow down, get off this ride, stay home and get fat."
And boy has she not. I don't care how much airbrushing may have been applied to the fierce new Madonna pics — she's looking 50 in the face and giving it the finger.
What makes these two petite powerhouses run right now is surprisingly similar. "Hillary gets up in the morning and she really does think she can make a difference. She does care about people. The idea that she wants power for the sake of power is wrong," insists someone who knows her, former White House Press Secretary under Bill Clinton, Dee Dee Myers, who is now the author of Why Women Should Rule the World. I believe Myers, and I believe Hillary — I can see that earnestness in her eye when she says she's not just about selling hope, she's about saving peoples' houses.
Madonna has her own cause — the plight of orphans in Malawi — and she's taken just about the same amount of heat as if she had been running in a presidential election. Imagine being accused of stealing a baby from its impoverished father, after you found that baby deathly ill in a third world orphanage? It's as equally an ugly accusation as being accused of cynically sticking by your straying husband, just because you wanted to be president.
These women have both had to develop armor-like skin. In the meantime, Madonna has doggedly continued in her children's crusade, producing a new documentary, I Am Because We Are, about the motherless children in Malawi. And Hillary continues on her dogged campaign for the Democratic nomination.
Sure, Hillary gives off good-girl vibes — you just know she was that girl in high school who ran for student council president — while Madonna was the bad girl ("I didn't fit into the popular group — I had hair growing under my arms. I refused to wear makeup," she tells Vanity Fair). But both women can elicit that visceral negative reaction that strong women get too often, even from other women (like Air America host Randi Rhodes). They're powerful, they're perfectionists, they're mothers AND career women. They take their BlackBerries with them to bed...and check them. They don't care that some people view what they do as unseemly. They stay focused on their goals.
And they don't appear femininely vulnerable. That may be what bugs some people most about them. It was only when Hillary teared up that many women finally rushed in and handed her New Hampshire.
Truthfully, Hillary and Madonna can do more than most other women. And men. Wardrobe choices and specific areas of interest aside, they are essentially the same person. Madonna should vote for Hillary. She is "absolutely voting" in the upcoming presidential election, according to her rep Liz Rosenberg. "Madonna has enormous respect for Hillary, but she is not officially endorsing anyone," Liz tells me. Too bad. But whether Madonna ends up voting Team Hillary or not, they should be best friends. They could understand each other and support each other. And you know what, I absolutely don't mind if they rule the world. Bring it on, babes!
UPDATE: Oh my God! Hillary and Madonna are actually related! No wonder they are the same person. Hillary fessed up on the Ellen DeGeneres show. These two definitely need to get together — not only do they have personality traits in common, they share genes!
Now if anyone out there actually knows the chain of how they are related please tell us!
Follow Bonnie Fuller on Twitter: www.twitter.com/bonniefuller
Loading comments…
Want to reply to a comment? Hint: Click "Reply" at the bottom of the comment; after being approved your comment will appear directly underneath the comment you replied to
Ms. Fuller, you are a disgrace.
There is one problem with your analysis of Hillary as someone who doesn't just want power but gets up each morning believing she can make a difference. Hillary has been around enough to know that her chances of getting the nomination are now much less than 50-50. If she were indeed concerned with something more than her personal stakes, an acknowledgement of that reality would guide her campaign tactics. Believing herself to be the most qualified candidate, she would continue to fight her heart out for the nomination. However, recognizing the odds are with Obama, she would fight by highlighting her strengths rather than by making attacks on Obama that will show up in Republican commercials if he is the nominee. Her husband would not group Hillary and McCain as the two candidates who love their country (conspicuously leaving out Obama). She would not assert that she and McCain are proven leaders while Obama is a good public speaker. In short, Hillary Clinton running to make a difference would not run in such a way as to improve the chances that the Republicans would get 4 more years in the White House. A candidate willing to cripple the frontrunner in a longshot effort to make up enough ground to capture the nomination is someone who has either placed her own ambition over all other considerations or someone who labors under the hubris that there is no difference between McCain and Obama because only she can save us.
i couldn't agree more...well said....
i heard Madonnas new song and its devoid of talent.
If she worked with today's most talented musicians and this is all she can come up with then it is embarrassing - and its time to give it up.
Her older music (although not brilliant) was however of a better standard.
Her music is universally regarded as brilliant. www.acclaimedmusic.com will give you some insight. She ranks very very high on quality of her music. To hear some of her detractors now start trying, desperately, that her music wasn't very good is being a bit thick. She has 2 albums consider masterpieces( Like A Prayer and Ray of Light). That is 2 more than 99% of artists. The critics have spoken and they are unanimous. Google some of her Rolling Stone reviews for Like A Prayer, Ray of Light. They call LAP as close to art as music gets. Also, when 500 female musicians were asked to pick the 100 Greatest Female Artists of all time for VH-1, Madonna ranked #8. No comtemporary artist was above her. Nuff said really. As for her new song, don't really care for it but this was her last album for WBR and she was just throwing out some very mainstream hip/hop Top 40. None of it meant to be classics but it seems like everyone is loving it as it has been #1 on I-tunes for a week now.
The Clintons and their supporters rationalize that Hillary and company WANT a better American. The scary thing is that they think a crash and burn, take-no-prisoners campaign is the way to get it. They actually think that somewhere inside of the dark heart of this woman is a small core of decency that will become manifest if only she succeeds in winning the presidency.
This same woman who RIGHT THIS minute is trying to get people to wonder about whether or not there is some latent core of racism in Americans, maybe even in THEMSELVES, that will--at the last minute--cause them to turn against a black man if he is the Democratic presidential candidate. A woman who is pinning her hopes on this ugliness actually being true and doing everything she can to make it come true..
The truth is that the Clintons had 8 long years to do something for the little guy, and instead we got NAFTA, a decade and a half of no decent health insurance and price gouging and untrustworty insurance companies. a vote for an invasion of a country that did nothing to us, and a plot to take over the Democratic party and hand it to their corporate pals.
Madonna may not be the most talented person in the world, but she is smart and knows how to market herself to get what she wants and she wants it all. "Blind Ambition" says it all. Yes, this does sound like Clinton.
The difference is that Madonna's blind ambition is not singular, but Clinton's is: there can be only one president.
You are absolutly right! Both Madonna and Hillary Lieberman are both a has been!
The irony here is the cold hard truth that Madonna is the most electable of the two. Not on their shallow similarities though, but on the vast differences they've got remaining inside.
Drive. Inspiration. Passion. Balls. Determination. Dedication. Loyalty, for instance...
One look at Madonna's face shows each and every factor remains strong as ever even after achieving her stated goal several times over, and then some galore. Love her or live life hating her, her success and ambition are undeniable.
For Hillary, these traits are what's lacking... replaced by habits born out of comfort that's less becoming for any star. They're what we saw her so stunned having lost after the Iowa caucus as she grasped fast and frantically for them as if they'd fallen out of her purse and all over the floor.
Sure, HRC could've benefitted from Madonna. THEN. In the beginning. With a pencil and pad of paper. Too late now, I'm afraid. Just like all the other steps she's taken in this campaign, it seems her habit of listening to nobody but herself is going to keep her in that beat behind status until the exit gate re-opens.
Tick tock tick tock tick tock... Hillary may only have 4 minutes left in the race, period.
Isn't Madonna America's only WORLDWIDE export and talent these days? Such a shame that our country has yet to realize and respect her for it. Could Hillary even compete to rate in comparison?
Great post, despite the younguns' who do not yet understand they are a product of what came before and the old, judgemental-uns who never had a shot in hell at a real life with or without a husband! Neither knows anything about that knowing their "past" and being doomed to repeat it.
I beg to disagree. I am only 33 years old, and realize that I have benefited greatly from the sacrafices and inroads made my feminist mothers before me. Most of my friends, including my partner of 15 years, however, are in the 55-70 age range. They all made it on their own, with much struggle but nearly all without husbands or some other man supporting them. Only one of my 10-15 best/close friends in this group ever married and chose to have children, but all of them made their own lives, pursued their education - typcially to the masters and PhD level, and they all retired making well into the six figures, with wonderful careers, friends, and astrounding self-reliance.
So, while I appreciate your opinion and realize that everyone has their own life experience, I would ask that you not imply that women of your generation (boomer or older, I assume) had NO choices in life and could only get ahead when partnered with man - it exposes you as being lazy or a coward, and is completely discounts and disrespects the incredibly contributions made to society by all of the strong-willed feminist women who I greatly admire, and from whom I continue to learn and grow every day. You did indeed have a choice, as did all of my friends. Unfortunately, it sounds like you may have chosen the path of least resistance by not insisting upon a "real life" for yourself.
BTW...air brushing is so 1979.
These days with digital we can underexpose the shots and get rich skin tones without making the subject look tired. Then we go in (almost on the cellular level) with a healing brush and/or clone tool and clean the pixels, never sacrificing the rich skin tones. It's done in layers. Once all the skin cleanup is done we can locate the highlights using color range, select them all and fill them with white, dial them down and put a beautiful gaussian blur over it, then dial it in until we have perfection. I mean, just look at how beautiful the highlights on Madonna's legs look. They look wet and dry at the same time. That's how it's done these days...CS3 baby, CS3...not airbrushing.
Bonnie. Pilates is NOT YOGA.
It's the most vigorous workout one can do. It's total core work. It grabs hold of the deepest part of any muscle belly (the belly of the muscle - not the belly of your stomach), and mercilessly works it until it is completely spent. It tones and builds muscle quickly. It lengthens your body and corrects your posture. Pilates is not for wimps.
Okay...carry on.
"No doubt, younger fresh-faced Obama, 46, can't believe that he's still going toe to toe with a 60 year-old woman"
Oh, Bonnie, Bonnie...nice and typically Clintonian attempt to move the goalposts again, but I think that the "I can't believe I'm still going toe to toe" hat is on Hillary's blonde-tinted head. A year ago Barack Obama was speaking to crowds of 18 people and Hillary and her crew assumed that by this time the nomination would be locked up and in her handbag. The primary process was supposed to be a coronation march--hers! Now she's just the favorite to lose.
All in all, this was an unusually stupid attempt at analysis, but then it's only the Entertainment section and you've entertained a lot of us.
Madonna and Hillary? I don't see the comparison.
Madonna is anti-war. Hillary isn't.
Madonna did not marry into success. Hillary did.
Madonna has accomplishments. Hillary does not.
It's okay for Madonna to focus solely on personal success; ambition for personal success is fine for a pop singer, but is not okay in a person who wants to become President of the United States.
The Clinton campaign is running on fumes. It's all smoke and mirrors. An 8 year Senate career and not one significant piece of legislation passed? We can't let this charade continue forever. Gettng called names by the Republicans and then voting like one doesn't make a person a fighter. I hear alot of "fighter" talk from Clinton, but...well, how come she only became a fighter once her opponent became a Democrat?
Barack Obama. President. 2008.
If Obama loses support from the left, he can thank people like you. Your spin is every bit as sexist as Imus; you are obviously a person ignorant of history.
Did you know Hillary made TIME magazine while in college long before she even met Bill. She was the first student invited to speak at commencement. She organized and ran civil rights demonstrations at her college to increase minority admissions. She worked as a law clerk for the people taking down the Watergate conspirators. There she met the brother of Tom Vilsek, past demoncratic governor of Iowa (and she helped him get elected by the way....making him the first dem gov of Iowa in 35 years).
Hillary worked in the Children's Poverty center.
Did nothing but get married.
Take your sexist self back to the middle ages where you belong.
We're not voting based on who talked at a college commencement in 1968. I understand that that's difficult for many of Hillary's diehards to swallow. As for her research work as a junior nobody in the Watergate hearings, wasn't it her boss there who says she's one of only three employees in 17 years that he refused to write a letter of recommendation for? Something about massive dishonesty and untrustworthiness?
Look, we got George W. Bush because he was catapulted into political power on the back of his father's name and fame. That's quite enough of that syndrome.
I find it curious that so many people go to great lengths to proclaim them "over". Madonna has the #1 song in the world, #1 in the US, last album was Top5 best selling album in the world for 2 straight years, had the most successful tour ever by a female and looks to be even stronger this time. That is your definition of over? Seems millions upon millions still want her product as much as ever. Scream all you want about being over, the public seems to think otherwise.
Hillary as well. She is a US Senator from a populous state. She is a frontrunner for Prez of the US. She is extremely accomplished in every way. How is that being over? and Obama supporter.
HuffPost's Pick
#1 song, #1 album .... you're unintentionally reinforcing the point that both these figures are about yesterday's methods of defining success. While the whole world is dumping the record labels' centralized control of music distribution and the marketing machines of intertwined recording & publishing conglomerates that make something a "No. 1" before anyone has even heard a note, there's still the old guard saying "See, see, I'm still relevant!"
So yes, Ms. Ciccone-Ritchie will be on the covers of magazines and her CD's will be on the shelves of Wal-Marts and Targets nationwide .... but that doesn't make her anything except one of the figureheads of a system that's going the way of the Dodo as younger, faster, more flexible and egalitarian distribution systems come to the fore.
Probably not a comparison Hillary would be eager to be a part of.
You are intentionally trying to miss the point. Not very well either.
Success is success. If millions of people want it and like it and buy it, that is success. I don't even think you understand what you just blathered about. It made no sense. Sounds like you are trying to move the goal post in a attempt to take something away from Madonna/Hillary or both. Btw- Madonna dumped her record label.
Relevant is as relevant does. Come back with a better argument.
They are very much alike: Both are in public life not to make things better, but to satisfy some deep craving for fame, power and money. This is not to say that they haven't done any worthwhile things in their careers, and it's probably not possible to succeed in public occupations such as theirs without a certain amount of ego to buttress the inevitable criticism. But the extent to which they both have used their positions to promote themselves and grasp for ever more influence shows that whatever talents they have, has been used to aggrandize themselves more than to improve their chosen professions or society in general.
I was never a fan of Madonna (overly hyped not overly talented) though I liked the song Borderline and Oh Father. I was a huge fan of Hillary until she went borderline insane and I had to get on my knees and exclaim, Oh Father, why has she forsaken her integrity and values for ambition?
You must be logged in to comment. Log in or connect with
