Saturday, January 9, 2016

Esquire's Tom Junod on His Third Hillary Clinton Interview

In 2010, Tom Junod published the second of his articles about Hillary Clinton in Esquire. Both that one and his 1999 article were featured here.  Junod has a new article coming out about Hillary and sat down for an interview with Esquire's Alex Belth.  Since Junod has also published an article about Donald Trump, that name comes up in the interview as well. Clearly this third Hillary article is going to be a keeper. Junod's always are.  Here is a short excerpt from the interview.   You can access Esquire from there and get the new article. I can't wait to read it!

The Candidate We Love to Hate and Hate to Love

Alex Belth
January 7, 2016



Tom Junod: I was forty-one when I wrote the first Hillary piece, now I’m fifty-seven, but one of the things that those sixteen years have not changed is my complete bafflement that men would hate her on the level they do. It’s deeply, deeply sexual. People hate each other politically all the time, and I get that, but the added complication that men seem to hate her physically is just a head-scratcher to me. Because I’ve seen her, I’ve spent time with her, and she’s an attractive person. And I don’t mean to sound patronizing. She’s an attractive human being. It’s what makes this election so interesting—this strangeness is finally going to all come to a boil.

EC: You began your first profile, in fact, by talking about Hillary Clinton’s sexual appeal.

TJ: The thing that I wanted to counter in that piece—and what seemed radical at the time—was this widespread revulsion of her. Which was that she was a terrible person and incredibly repellent sexually. I just figured I would take that head-on.

EC: I love how her laugh—which you describe as full and appealing—makes it into all three of the pieces.

TJ: She’s presented as this sort of mean nun. I went to school with mean nuns, and they don’t laugh spontaneously like she does. There’s a thing about her that has always been very winning. To me she has a wonderful kind of sense of humor, of the absurd, and she has a twinkling in her eye. Just as a man—and I say this not as a writer but as a man—I’ve never understood Hillary hatred. I just don’t get it.

Read the interview >>>>

donate
VOLUNTEER