All politics aside, and that is hard to believe from the title of this piece, sometimes wisdom is withheld from youth. Sometimes, it is embodied within them.
At a town hall meeting in Salem, New Hampshire on January 7, 2008, while Hillary Clinton
addressed the crowd, a pair of young men unfolded a sign and began chanting, "Iron my Shirt!" Hillary responded admirably and the event was reported in the news. The perpetrators were eventually discovered to be associated with a Boston show that regularly orchestrated similar antics. OK, that's done, one would have thought, but no.
My daughter Sara Walters is a senior at the University of Michigan 
and she received Facebook notification a few days ago that several of her "friends" had joined a new group called, "Hillary Clinton: Stop Running for President and Make Me a Sandwich." Well, as the attached op-ed piece details, she was perplexed and decided to check out the group. There were over 30,000 student members of this new Facebook group! I would detail her reaction and thoughts but she did it far better than I ever could. The Ann Arbor News agreed and will be running the piece as a guest editorial, complete with head shot and biography, in the February 3rd Sunday edition.
Interestingly enough, Sara has not decided yet whether Clinton will be her candidate of choice, should she win the Democratic nomination, but she is wise enough to know discrimination when she sees it. At times it is as blatant as this; at other times it is suggested in remarks such as, "Cleavage sells". I was told that by an older realtor when I first entered this business 3 years ago. I've got news - it is not the cleavage that is selling; it's the brains. I'm with you Hillary, and Sara may be too.
Here is Sara's original piece, with her permission:
Sara Walters
University of Michigan
Today I am disappointed in America, and the reason is tucked, unassumingly, between a party invitation and a photo upload announcement on the homepage of my Facebook account: "7 of your friends joined the group Hillary Clinton: Stop Running for President and Make Me a Sandwich."
With a feeling of intrigue mixed with disgust, I click on the link and discover that 30,027 of my fellow students evidently espouse this Stepford Wives philosophy of politics. My stomach begins to turn before I even scroll down to reveal a link to the group-sponsored T-shirts for purchase, which feature an inspired pictorial equation: Hillary Clinton minus White House plus sandwich equals thumbs up. Inexplicably, the design is available on a choice of two shirts-a standard adult-size cotton tee, and a fitted women's top with capped sleeves.
What is happening here?
I did not imagine that as the first presidential election of my adult life approached, eighty years after the suffrage movement, that I would see collegiate men and women coming together so eagerly to preserve the male leadership status quo. It's one thing to disagree with Clinton's politics, and the members of Make Me a Sandwich certainly do; the discussion board's most-commented topic, Why Do You REALLY Not Like Hilary? [sic], is saturated with arguments against every issue from her platform, many of them well-reasoned and articulate. But it is an entirely different matter to imply, even jocularly, that Clinton's main offense is her noncompliance with antiquated gender roles. Clinton's femininity seems to be the key complaint of many less enlightened respondents to the prompt, who betray their bias in hasty, ungrammatical rants. Explanations of malcontent mostly begin with vague theses like "shes a bitch," or "bill clinton cheated on her," although some are more pointed: "she is a woman!!!!!! she will menstruate all over the country!!!!".
Maybe these Make Me a Sandwich devotees are just jumping on the bad-joke bandwagon, a kind of willing suspension of dissent in the name of non-PC hilarity. Maybe they are supporters of Republican candidate Mike Huckabee, whose 1998 support of wifely submission seems too much like a Leave it to Beaver throwback to elicit much response, in my age group at least, besides a shake of the head and kind of nervous laughter. Or maybe they're just adapting Clinton's unique position to their mudslinging needs, the same way that nineteenth-century voters balked at John Quincy Adam's fashion ineptitude or Abe Lincoln's gangly physique.
If Clinton wins the nomination, I expect the group's membership will only increase, welcoming in frightened conservatives and disgruntled liberals. I just hope that when election day rolls around and the members of Make Me a Sandwich head en masse to the polls, proudly displaying their witty his-and-her protest tees, that it will be Hillary's politics- not her phenotype-that will make them bypass her name as they cast their votes, hoping against hope for a 44th male president of the United States.
***Sara is majoring in English Literature with a minor in art history, following a study abroad program in France this spring. She expects to graduate a semester early, December, 2008. She hopes to secure a position in the publishing industry upon graduation.
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What a great article that your daughter wrote! It is very well articulated and I would hope that it gets people to think!