Madeleine Albright Apologizes For ‘Special Place In Hell’ Comment

Washington (CNN)Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who made headlines last week when she said women must vote for Hillary Clinton or they would go to a “special place in hell”, said Friday that her controversial comment was “undiplomatic”. It is an occupation in which words and context matter a great deal.

I think I’ve been using the line about the “special place in hell” for women who don’t help women for even longer than Albright has (she’s stolen your line, Yahoo blogger Brian Goldsmith wrote to me in jest; he knows Albright is welcome to anything of mine).

Two days after her humiliating New Hampshire defeat, White House hopeful Hillary Clinton sought to regain the upper hand against her Democratic rival Bernie Sanders in their debate Thursday, denouncing his proposals as unrealistic and costly.

Clinton laughed at the line when Albright said it. “I did not mean to argue that women should support a particular candidate based exclusively on gender”.

Now, coupled with Gloria Steinem’s comment about how some young women are flocking to Bernie Sanders because that’s where the boys are, a lot of people didn’t like the suggestion that women should be supporting Clinton and not Sanders. “If heaven were open only to those who agreed on politics, I imagine it would be largely unoccupied”.

Albright defended her original remarks in an interview with TIME earlier this week, saying people need to understand who has been fighting for issues on their behalf and that women are generally judgmental of each other. She also maintained her view on the importance of women continuing to help one another, especially when women still make less on the dollar than men and paid family leave is not a right across the country.

Sanders won young women by huge margins in the New Hampshire primary.

“It is a phrase I first used nearly 25 years ago, when I was the United States ambassador to the United Nations and worked closely with the six other female UN ambassadors”, she wrote.

So if you’re anti-choice and against immigration reform and gun control and gay marriage and you name it, why should the fact that you share anatomy with Hillary Clinton be more important than what she believes and what you believe?