At a speech last night celebrating 100 years of Planned Parenthood, Hillary Clinton pointed out, indirectly, that we can't let the bastards grind us down.
That line, in Latin, is a core plot device for "The Handmaid's Tale," Margaret Atwood's 1985 novel now a Hulu miniseries. Nolite te bastardes carborundorum.
But Hillary Clinton kept it PG: "To paraphrase Margaret Atwood, ‘We can never let them grind us down."
Hyuh. The "bastards" part is assumed. Nevertheless, she persisted:
“We come tonight to celebrate the last 100 years, the progress that so many generations have fought so hard for — and what a time it is to be holding this centennial, just ask those who’ve been watching ‘The Handmaid’s Tale,’ a book I read and was captivated by years ago,” she said, drawing a low laugh from the crowd.
“Now I am not suggesting this dystopian future is around the corner, but this show has prompted important conversations about women’s rights and autonomy.
“In ‘The Handmaid’s Tale,’ women’s rights are slowly stripped away. As one character says, ‘We didn’t look up from our phones until it was too late.’"“It is not too late for us,” Clinton added. “But we have to encourage the millions of women and men who support Planned Parenthood to keep fighting.”
Hillary Clinton asks that we remember four words:
Resist, insist, persist, enlist.
