LOS ANGELES -- Love her or loathe her, Hillary Clinton is something else. In 1995, for instance, the then-first lady stood on a Beijing dais and delivered a tough speech that denounced violations of women's rights worldwide. With steely passion she said: "Human rights are women's rights."
The occasion was the U.N. Fourth World Conference on Women, an event that attracted delegates the world over. It was a poignant and moving address, and neither First World nor Third World countries were exempt from her critical cascade. She knocked Saudi Arabia for its medieval attitude toward women; she kick-boxed Africa for unspeakable antiwoman practices, and she chastised her own country for its tortured legal contortions on the issue of a woman's right to control her own body.
In her unsparing indictment, the first lady pulled no punches about her host either, denouncing China's policy of one family, one (preferably male) child. It was a gutsy performance in a Beijing assembly hall surrounded by grim-faced security personnel.