Bill Clinton: I’m Hillary’s ‘Token Redneck At The State Fair’

During one of the lighter moments of Bill Clinton‘s keynote speech at Javits Center on Friday was the former president’s recounting of a recent trip with Senator Hillary Clinton to the New York State fair.

“[It's the one place where] I’m an asset to her,” Clinton said. “I’m her token redneck at the state fair.”

Clinton said he was given $50 in cash by a woman who worked at the fair for Tsunami relief, illustrating, he said, the ability of the Internet to empower people other than Bill Gates to enact global change.

“The rise of the Internet gives you power,” Clinton said.

It wasn’t the only moment Clinton sounded like his former Internet-founding, activist-auteur vice president. Clinton repeatedly invoked Al Gore‘s message of global warming as an issue of national security.

He also peppered his talk with anecdotes from his humanitarian work (at one point recalling a trip to a refugee camp after the Tsunami where he saw “the most beautiful boy I have ever seen”) and criticism of the Bush administration, but no mention of his recent run-in with Fox News.

“[We need] to make more friends than future terrorists,” Clinton said. “It’s so much cheaper than going to war.”

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