-
Speaking of "whore" and other such eptihets, how great was Tina Fey's "Bitch Is the New Black" on SNL last week? An astute friend of mine points out that while Fey has gotten lots of attention for mocking the press for falling at Obama's feet, this is her real recent genius. Fey owned "bitch," mocked it, and skewered strong-women haters, all at the same time. This is the kind of gender satire the phenomenon of the Clinton candidacy has been woefully short on. Here's the clip—you can fast forward to the last minute.
-
Cindy Loose, a Washington Post reporter, writes this guest post:
I was stuck in a crowded parking lot at the grocery store the other day in my minivan, the woman in a station wagon in front of me waiting for a space to open. Driving up next to me was a middle-aged man in a black sports car who found that he couldn’t squeeze past me. He rolled down his window and started screaming about “F---king stupid women! Stupid f---king women shouldn’t be allowed to drive.” I finally said to him, “That’s quite a mouth you have on you.” He responded, “You f---king whore!” Without thinking, I leapt out of the car and headed toward him. I could hear him click his door locks as he put his car in reverse and drove back as fast as he could. I got to his window and screamed, “Get out of the car and call me that. Get out of the car!” Still in reverse, he sped out of the lot. Several people clapped for me, then a middle-aged woman pulled up next to me, rolled down her window, and said, “I’m so glad you confronted him! Are you voting for Hillary? If you are, will you come to Texas with me and campaign for her?”
-
I hear you. But let's just all agree that in debates, at least, she's the Aston Martin while he's the pimped-out Honda Civic. Or maybe the pimped-out Prius, if we can imagine such a thing. After all, Aston Martins can be finicky, impractical and hard to maintain.
-
It's interesting that you're focusing on Obama and I on Clinton. But if she does have superior positions and intellectual firepower, plus near-universal name recognition and every institutional advantage in the world, doesn't that make her inability to sell this Aston Martin of a candidacy even worse? What an indictment of her political skills—and surely some indication of what she could accomplish if elected, no?
-
Hanna, you're right that Obama has to do a better job of showing his dark side, or at least his response to the world's dark side. But can't he sort this out after he wins the nomination—or at least Texas and Ohio? In a race against John McCain, the questions you're raising are going to be tantamount, because McCain will remind us of them as often he can and then some more. I get Wieseltier's argument that this is all the more reason for Obama to prove himself on this front now. But I don't think the contest with Hillary is lending itself to drawing that grim and resolute contrast—much as she wishes otherwise. And, for now, I also find Obama's "Hope" mantra useful as well as a smart tactic. A Democratic candidate who has persuaded voters of his "Yes, we can" vision is one they're more likely to trust on the hard and bleak stuff. So for me the test is whether Obama's "Hope" primaries have a second act. There's plenty of time for that long, stiff drink of realism we're all going to have to swallow down.
About the debate last night: The moment that stuck with me was the one at the end, when Obama said that of course Hillary is a worthy nominee. It wasn't as lovely as her "I'm honored to be here with Barack Obama" remark (I'm paraphrasing) at the previous debate. But it was in the same spirit, without sounding like the beginning of a concession speech. It's more boring when they recognize each other's accomplishments but a lot healthier, too.
-
Yes, it matters what you're selling! You hit on precisely the two things I am finding troubling about Obama: 1) the persistent absence of any specifics and 2) the absence of any darkness—or recognition that there is darkness—both here and abroad. The fabulous part of the Obama hope message is the call to collective responsibility, a refreshing antidote to big-government liberalism and what Andrew Sullivan calls Clinton's "technocratic meliorism." He makes us all feel that we are responsible for our own destiny and charges us up to do something about it. The disturbing part is the absence of a road map or recognition of land mines. It's one thing to urge racial reconciliation at home or to urge an end to anti-immigrant rhetoric. It's another to imply that the same strategy works in Iraq, or Pakistan, or Gaza, or North Korea, or Russia. As Leon Wieseltier writes, "What is the role of a conciliator in an unconciliating world?" Maybe Obama can answer this question, but he doesn't. Or he does with the same pat answer: "Yes, we can."
-
Have you no shame, Madam, in your shocking refusal to see things exactly as I do? Nah—but tone and temperament do matter, not only in winning elections but in working with Congress, moving public opinion, and negotiating with our allies and adversaries around the world. I just didn't hear Hillary's answers the same way you did, Hanna; treating relatively minor differences between her health-care plan and Obama's as monumental and catastrophic seems to me to be precisely the kind of all-or-nothing thinking that doomed her previous efforts. And even if she were better on paper, after the Bush years a lot of people want a president they can stand to watch on television.
-
I'm afraid to even say that in this crowd, but I'm just trying to be fair. I mostly read the transcript of the debate, because I got home too late to watch it. And from the transcript, one gets a whole different impression. For one thing, you don't get the full force of her pettiness when you don't see it delivered from her pinched mouth. For another, she is just much more impressive, intellectually. Time and time again, she comes up with a smart and, more importantly, specific response that seals the argument, like the line: "It would be as though Franklin Roosevelt said let's make Social Security voluntary." That is a perfect and pithy summary of what her plan does, and it kills his complaint. And in this case, it was Obama who whined no fair and appealed to the moderator: "Brian, I'm getting fillibustered here." Whereas usually he just resorts to generalities, or refers to his days as a community organizer, or some version of the hope riff.
It's hard not to like him more than her. When I'm watching him, I'm thinking about his first book, and some of his great lines, and his wife, and all the things I like about him. When I'm watching her, I'm thinking of Bill's Jesse Jackson line, and her incredibly tedious books, and that embarrassing "Hillary" jazz-hands video. Unlike her, Obama seems constitutionally incapable of losing his cool. But he does not win these debates. On nearly any subject—health care, Iran, Korea—she's more impressive. So, I guess what I'm saying is I wish people would admit they prefer him just because they prefer him, and not give him points he didn't earn.
-
Melinda, I'm with you that Hillary's performance last night was a devastating blow to her argument that she is cool, collected, and ready. Fine that she is incapable of inspiring (but it's probably not a good idea for her to mock people who have been moved by Obama, what has been called the "insult the voter" strategy), but at least you knew that if you pressed her navel, out poured thorough policy positions on everything. Last night she was a battering ram, and Obama's cool jujitsu kept turning her attacks back on herself. In her attempt to win every point by endless harangue, she lost the strategic goal: to convince people it would be bearable to have her around for four years.
He got the better of her in so many ways, but especially, I thought, in response to Russert's question about having to go back into Iraq if, once we left, the country became a base for al-Qaida. She said it was just a hypothetical and went on nonresponsively. He said that, yes, anywhere forces were massing that threatened the safety of the American people, he would act. So, Obama came off tougher on a crucial national-security question. She may complain that she is treated worse by the press. But at least nobody last night asked, "Senator, how do you justify continuing this campaign when you lose race after race, often by double-digit margins?"
-
On the campaign trail, Chelsea Clinton compares her mom to Margaret Thatcher. But can you imagine Thatcher whimpering that it seemed like she always had to go first in debates, and that just wasn't fair? One thinks not, and I was surprised when Hillary Clinton did so last night. In so enthusiastically casting herself as the injured party, she undercuts her central argument about what a rock she is and comes across as more a whiner than a fighter.
Barack Obama had just refused his shot at aggrievement; he said he took her at her word that she didn't know anything about how a photo of him in traditional African garb got leaked to Matt Drudge. Then he briskly moved on. So, it seemed extra small when, after repeatedly extending a back-and-forth on health care, she then complained at length about being asked to go first in answering the next question, about NAFTA. Normally, debaters like to go first, but she tried to make this seem like part of the vast media conspiracy against her:
"Can I just point out that in the last several debates I seem to get the first question all the time, and I don't mind, you know, I'll be happy to field them. But I do find it curious, and if anybody saw Saturday Night Live,'' she said, referring to a skit in which the press is seen waiting Obama hand and foot, "you know, maybe we should ask Barack if he's comfortable and needs another pillow. I just find it kind of curious that I keep getting the first question on all these issues,'' she repeated, throwing her arms up in frustration, "but I'm happy to answer it.'' Just like your mom is happy to sit home in the dark alone, insisting Oh, don't worry about me.
Clinton also tried to stop Brian Williams from cutting to a commercial -- a losing proposition if ever there was one. And she suggested that she would have made her tax returns public by now if she weren't already too overburdened to sleep. When asked if she would release the returns before the Texas and Ohio primaries next Tuesday, she answered, "I can't get it together by then, but I will certainly work to get it together. I'm a little busy right now; I barely have time to sleep.''
She did show 12 kinds of chutzpah, though, in calling out Obama for merely denouncing rather than denouncing and rejecting Louis Farrakhan, who recently endorsed him: She noted that she, by contrast, had made clear during her first Senate race that she would not accept the support of an independent party with a history of anti-Semitism. Which was a bold boast, given that this was around the same time she listened as Yasser Arafat's wife, Suha, accused the Israelis of gassing women and children on a daily basis; after the speech, Clinton rose and kissed Mrs. Arafat on both cheeks.
-
Just now back from the land of consumptive coughing to discover that in my absence Hillary Clinton has somehow decided she’s running against us. Between this Hillary-versus-the-media meme and the Obama/messiah silliness, we in the media may have finally managed the inconceivable: The entire focus of the primary race has officially become ourselves. It reminds me of that old joke: But enough about me, what do you think of me?
-
Torie,
You and Jezebel are right that Heather Mac Donald goes off the rails with her rant against drunk college girls. Which is too bad, because before that, she was making an important point. At first I wondered, why is she rehashing this now? Because I thought so many others, including Christina Hoff Sommers in her excellent Who Stole Feminism more than 15 years ago, had cast significant skepticism on the 1-in-4 trope. But, despite all the back and forth on the study by Mary Koss back in the 1980s that gave us this statistic, and despite all the healthy debate about what the real numbers are (anywhere from 2 percent on up), this number that should be controversial is still bandied about as accepted fact. (Even the CDC uses it. And my alma mater, too.)
No doubt that the activists and counselors who cite it are well-meaning and want women to be aware of what can happen to them. But it still peeves me to no end. This inflated statistic is actually harmful, because it trivializes the women—whatever percentage that may be—who actually are raped. If one in four of us is brutalized and we're all walking around just fine, then, hey, it must not be a big deal, right? It happens to everyone, so just get over it already, why don't you?
There will probably always be gray areas in defining rape. And such crimes will probably always be under-reported—it's unfortunate but true. But there have to be ways to address those problems that involve neither trumpeting a flawed statistic or attacking young women for being irresponsible.
-
Hanna, you've made me realize that to me, there is really only one red dress, this one, and all the others are knockoffs.
-
In a Sunday column for the Los Angeles Times, Heather Mac Donald of the Manhattan Institute questions the incidence of campus rape, which is reported to affect 20 percent to 25 percent of college women. (Penn State, the college I attended, is among the schools Mac Donald scolds for repeating the statistic. I say “college I attended” because alma mater’s a little highfalutin for my state school.)
She argues that the statistics are flawed because some of the women counted as being raped did not, in fact, consider themselves to have been raped. She writes, “A 2006 survey of sorority women at the University of Virginia, for example, found that only 23% of the subjects whom the survey characterized as rape victims felt that they had been raped.” That means either A) college women are woefully uneducated about what constitutes rape or B) the stats are inflated. Mac Donald, of course, believes the answer is B, though I suspect it’s a combination of the two.
It’s fair to question the accuracy of the numbers and to debate the definition of rape. The real problem with Mac Donald’s piece is, as Jezebel puts it, that she “descends into a Laura Sessions Stepp-like rant against drunk sluts.” Feministing also slams Mac Donald for “think[ing] girls who dare to leave the house and socialize are getting what they ask for.”
The article concludes primly, “College is for learning.” I’m always confused by that admonition. Of course college is for learning. But learning and partying (that all-encompassing term for drinking, hooking up, eating greasy pizza at 4 a.m., singing along to “Livin’ on a Prayer”—sorry, getting a wee bit nostalgic here) aren’t mutually exclusive. I graduated in 2006 and had a good time in college. I partied my fair share and also managed to learn, land internships, work, and take part in extracurriculars. I guess she was just looking for a pat way to wrap up the piece, but scolding college women for spending too little time with books and too much time with booze isn’t the cure for any of the ails Mac Donald bemoans. It won’t keep women from being raped or make statistics more accurate. She seems more disturbed by girls getting drunk than the prospect of sexual assault.
-
One recent Hillary line that sure works for me is the one about how it's no more OK to discriminate against sick people than it is to discriminate on the basis of race or ethnicity. For the last two years, my friend Lisa Girion of the Los Angeles Times has been documenting how insurance companies currently get away with murder in this regard, canceling policies as soon as customers file a claim by hoking up evidence of some pre-existing condition. As it turns out, there is a word for this: recission. And secret bonuses for the most prolific recissors! On Saturday, Lisa finally had some good news to report: One of California's largest for-profit insurers, Health Net Inc., has reversed course and stopped canceling sick policyholders. But what caused the switch? On Friday, the judge in a case that would have been perfect for John Edwards ordered Health Net to pay more than $9 million to a breast cancer patient it had dropped—wait for it—in the middle of her chemotherapy. Don't you wonder how many millions more they'll have to spend in pink PR, trying to get across how much they really do care about us? This is why God made trial lawyers—to convince companies it is cheaper to do the right thing the first time.
I also see where the formerly admirable Ralph Nader claims he is being discriminated against; the New York Times reports that he has even compared the terrible marginalization suffered by independent candidates to bias against blacks in the Jim Crow South: "One is based on race," he said, "and the other is based on status.'' Exactly! And don't we have a right to hold his status as a world-class irritant against him? I say yes—and wonder if he doesn't have more safety concerns than Obama. Wouldn't you think Nader would get more invitations to step into the alley than he'd get votes at this point? Whenever I get into one of my global warming funks, his is the face I see.
-
I too think we need to revisit our first ladies in red conversation after the Oscars last night. With Hillary and Michelle, the color just seemed derivative, a pol-gal's safe way of standing out in a crowd. But last night the meaning of red seemed much clearer. The most memorable Oscar gowns came in black or red. Both choices were very serious (no room for Cameron Diaz's spaced-out airy-fairy pale pink). Black was the more stern choice (war, writers' strike, grim set of movies), while red allowed some possibility of grounded celebration (writers' strike over, movies this year very good). The color came in all varieties: Heidi Klum (mistress of the mansion), Anne Hathaway (thorn fairy), Helen Mirren, Ruby Dee (great dames), Katherine Heigl (Marilyn Monroe with morals), Miley Cyrus (tasteful prom). All sent the same message: Red is what you wear when you want to show up at the party but stay sober.
Look for Hillary in red, should she squeak by in Ohio or Texas.
-
As Oscar host, Jon Stewart let the woman talk! He deserves an award of his own—a plate of brownies, maybe?—for bringing the silenced Markéta Irglová, who won for best original song but got the hook before she could open her mouth, back onstage to have her say. I wasn't sure how well Stewart's Hillary joke went over; he said the Julie Christie movie Away From Her, about a woman with Alzheimer's, "is about a woman who forgets her husband. Hillary Clinton called it the feel-good movie of the year.'' But everyone from Miley Cyrus to Helen Mirren seemed to have been shopping at that red dress store Hillary and Cindy and Michelle like so much. And since I've already blown Lent anyway, isn't Nicole Kidman too young to be looking so waxy?
-
Over on his blog at Psychology Today, frequent Slate contributor Peter D. Kramer (author of, among other things, Listening to Prozac) notes what plenty are rushing to note: that Clinton, having accused Obama of Xeroxing, went ahead and echoed other people's lines herself last night. But Kramer—astute psychiatrist that he is—probes a little further and notices that she cribs when she's reaching to express emotion, when she's trying to be heartfelt. And then he pushes a bit more, beyond the usual gender point that it's ironic to find the female failing to convey empathy persuasively. Instead, Kramer focuses on the partisan implications: Democratic candidates, he proposes, "only prevail if they have substantial social skills." Republicans can get away with being stiffer, less sincere. Think of the losers Kerry, Gore, Dukakis: wooden, not "whole people" on the stump. And think of Nixon, a winner. If you buy Kramer's formula, the best Democratic choice this time around is obvious. Does the insight, I wonder, also suggest McCain wouldn't be wrong to bet he could get away with less than his usual straight talk?
-
1) As usual, a woman's skinny blondness is admitted as evidence against her, once again deflecting suspicion from zaftig brunettes.
2) As noted by Emily Y., insinuations about said skinny blonde are better than a spa week for making an old soldier young again.
3) Thank you, New York Times, for reminding us that unless the mistress (or mister) steps to the microphone, the teller of the tale is the one who comes off looking like the villain.
4) There's something touching about a man whose young friend so closely resembles the missus; is this the ultimate backhanded compliment? (And is that why Cindy McCain looked so oddly but genuinely pleased standing beside her man yesterday as he denied doing anything wrong ever?)
5) Is that an earmark in your pocket...? The possible sex scandal also diverts attention from the fact that Iseman's firm specializes in getting earmarks for clients—and didn't I hear that McCain was against those?
-
As our resident McCain supporter, I'd be remiss not to weigh in on the strange story in the New York Times about the affair that the presumptive GOP nominee may or may not have had with lobbyist Vicki Iseman (who, as Hanna points out, looks eerily like McCain's wife).
It's entirely fair to report on a candidate's affairs, I agree-throw the information out there and let the electorate decide what to do with it. Same with a candidate's drug use or other nebulous behavior. (Though some harder evidence in this case would be nice.) Such nuggets generally don't affect my support for a politician, but they're not altogether irrelevant. And this doesn't scare me from McCain. No candidate is perfect, and I'm more focused on his record. I don't agree with him on everything, but I agree with him on the issues that are important to me.
Emily B., you brought up the sleaziness of the favors McCain did for Iseman's clients. I think if you look that closely into the career of anyone who's been in the House or Senate for 24 years-even a "reform advocate" like McCain-you could find letters to a government agency or flights on private jets. That's probably one reason we haven't elected a senator or former senator to the White House since Nixon (and he was 16 years removed from a three-year Senate stint by that point). That might be an argument against an "experience" candidate, but if you compare it with Kirk Watson's struggle to name a single accomplishment by Barack Obama, I'd guess it's a wash.
-
John McCain may be denouncing the New York Times' story about his possibly inappropriate relationship with a young, fetching lobbyist, but doesn't it subliminally help him? One of his big problems is that he's so old—he keeps trotting out his 96-year-old mother to prove that as far as his genes are concerned, he's still a pup. But doesn't an affair with a sexy blonde do more to testify to his vigor?
-
I entirely agree, Anne and Hanna, that the affair/maybe-not-affair aspect of the Times' McCain story makes the piece seem weirdly bonkers. Still, what about this toward the end (for those who wade past the rehash middle):
A champion of deregulation, Mr. McCain wrote letters in 1998 and 1999 to the Federal Communications Commission urging it to uphold marketing agreements allowing a television company to control two stations in the same city, a crucial issue for Glencairn Ltd., one of Ms. Iseman’s clients. He introduced a bill to create tax incentives for minority ownership of stations; Ms. Iseman represented several businesses seeking such a program. And he twice tried to advance legislation that would permit a company to control television stations in overlapping markets, an important issue for Paxson.
In late 1999, Ms. Iseman asked Mr. McCain’s staff to send a letter to the commission to help Paxson, now Ion Media Networks, on another matter. Mr. Paxson was impatient for F.C.C. approval of a television deal, and Ms. Iseman acknowledged in an e-mail message to The Times that she had sent to Mr. McCain’s staff information for drafting a letter urging a swift decision.
Mr. McCain complied. He sent two letters to the commission, drawing a rare rebuke for interference from its chairman.
It's not sexy, it's not sex, and it ain't the makings of good TV. But doesn't it reek of the other kind of political sleaze? It seemed to undermine this, "Mr. McCain’s friends dismiss questions about his ties to lobbyists, arguing that he has too much integrity to let such personal connections influence him." Assume for a second that McCain didn't have an affair with Vicki Iseman. Is there evidence that their relationship is still troubling, for the candidate who's supposed to be Mr. Lobbying Reform?
UPDATE: Here's the McCain campaign's response to those grafs.
-
Hanna,
I read the Vicki Iseman-the-cute-lobbyist/John McCain-isn't-ethical piece, too, after no fewer than three people told me to—none particularly enthusiastic about McCain. All were apalled, not by the content of the story, but by the transparent thinness of the reporting. If the Times has evidence that McCain had an affair, they should come out with it. If they have evidence that he showed improper favoritism toward a lobbyist, they should come out with that, too. The fact that they do neither—most of the article rehashes old stories—must mean they don't have anything at all; perhaps they are hoping the blogosphere will produce it. The only "evidence" comes from two anonymous aides who claim they told Iseman to buzz off and stop distracting their boss—behavior which strikes me as quite normal and rather admirable. Sounds like they were doing their job.
Thanks to lack of evidence, the article reads not like an exposé but like an elaborate and extended piece of insinuation. Surely this must will damage the New York Times more than John McCain: Who will believe their reporting on him now?
-
That New York Times story about McCain's "self-confidence on ethics" is one of the weirdest news stories I've ever read. This is not a story about McCain's coziness with lobbyists and whether his line about money corrupting politics is a lie. It's not a story about his post-Keating career. It's a story about his post-Cheating career. I guarantee you 99 percent of readers will skip over that fat historical midsection rehashing Keating to the end, where they get back to what John Weaver did or didn't tell Vicki Iseman at Union Station.
Why can't the Times just admit this? I understand the New Republic was ready to out them, but so what? Either they write the cheating story or they don't. They can't dress it up as a serious story about his policy positions or his general "ethics." As it is, it just looks like a lame story where they quote a bunch of anonymous old campaign sources but don't have any actual evidence of the affair themselves. And they make it much easier for McCain to just stomp on the story by blathering on about his integrity and honesty and his long record of getting money out of politics, blah, blah.
As for whether newspapers should report on affairs or not: I always say yes. It's not an absolute damnation, but it says something about a man, especially one who sells himself on his character and integrity. And if America doesn't care, well, then that says something, too—that the era of family values is officially over.
My only remaining question: Why did he bother? She looks exactly like Cindy.
Read more posts about John McCain and Vicki Iseman.
-
When I heard what Michelle Obama said, I thought uh-oh, classic DiKinsleyan gaffe: She said something true but unflattering, and thus a total no-no for someone in her position; that's why they call it impolitic. I also assumed she was talking about race, though that might be a total projection, because when I say I've never been prouder of my country, what I mean is that though the sickness of racism has afflicted us from the beginning, we may finally be ready to prove ourselves better than that.
The more scandalous quote, if we took it at all seriously, would be the one from Cindy McCain, about how she has always been and always will be proud of her country. I'm sure she did not mean that Abu Ghraib or water-boarding or cherry-picking intel to justify the wrong war have filled her with pride; and honestly, under her husband, I don't think any of those occasions for shame would have occurred. But, apparently, you can never go wrong saying things that everyone knows not to take too literally. Which may be why Hillary carries on giving victory speeches.
-
I agree, Emily, that we don't have to go to Lady Macbeth territory over Michelle Obama's ill-considered remark. (If only she had said, "I am really proud of my country" instead of "For the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country.") But the first job of a spouse on the campaign trail is: Don't embarrass the candidate. How much damage a spouse can do is evident by the work of Bill Clinton. But as this smart column by Carol Marin points out, an Obama campaign's central belief is that "words matter"—so it matters what Michelle Obama says. Now Barack himself is giving a defensive explanation of her remark. Wouldn't it be better to have Michelle say that of course she is proud of her country and that she expressed herself poorly?
And speaking of Hillary, how can she lose nine (now 10) in a row and make no mention of it in her "victory" speeches? I have a different take, Dahlia, than that the problem is that Hillary makes us respond in sexist archetypes. Watching her last night, I began to wonder about her ability to talk about, and to face, difficult truths. Sure, she has to plaster on a game face, but she's so plastered, she starts to make you worry that the caulking is going to crack. (These post-rout speeches have given me a better understanding of her marriage: ignore painful reality until it bites so hard you're forced to scream.) But it's one thing to be resolute and tough; it's another to come off as if you prefer to stay oblivious when things are bad. Don't we want a president who can deal with reality, even if it's unpleasant?
-
Emily, your passing reference to Lady Macbeth just now reminded me of something I’d been meaning to post for a while. A friend suggested yesterday that one of Hillary Clinton’s great weaknesses as a candidate is that—fair or not—she seems so completely familiar to us. Not just because she’s been around for years but because the characteristics for which she's inevitably criticized are themselves these centuries-old archetypes: the castrating shrew, the righteous scold, the manipulative weeper ... I liked these characters the first time, by the way, when Chaucer did them. We often talk about all that Clinton baggage, but we forget that she’s carrying Lady Macbeth's duffel bag as well.
No matter what people say about Obama, I very rarely hear about him in shopworn, centuries-old literary clichés. That may explain some of the media hagiography. She is such a familiar type and the folks who hate her can just repurpose the stuff they've hated about strong women for centuries.
Maybe this is a discussion better suited for Meghan or some of you more literary lionesses, but I can’t help but think that Hillary pushes buttons that light up at Sigmund Freud’s house.
-
Over on Kausfiles, Mickey Kaus is giving Michelle Obama a hard time. Here's her full quote (or watch here):
"What we have learned over this year is that hope is making a comeback. It is making a comeback. And let me tell you something—for the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country. And not just because Barack has done well, but because I think people are hungry for change. And I have been desperate to see our country moving in that direction and just not feeling so alone in my frustration and disappointment. I've seen people who are hungry to be unified around some basic common issues, and it's made me proud."
Mickey says that John Podhoretz may be right to say this suggests that the Obama campaign sees America as fundamentally flawed and occasionally good, rather than the other way around. That seems like a stretch to me, but, OK, I see the argument. What I don't get is Mickey's next speculation: "If Michelle Obama's default position is set to 'Aggrieved,' it also suggests something personal, no? Maybe, like many strong wives, she wonders why her husband is the one on the top of the family ticket. ... "
With all due respect, Whaa? Why default to the gender-driven, Lady Macbeth explanation for which there is no evidence? Seems utterly unhelpful to me. Mickey, am I missing something?
-
After Super Tuesday, Slate's William Saletan pointed out
that Obama had made serious inroads with white voters, passing the 40
percent mark in eight Super Tuesday states. From last week's elections,
add Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Columbia. Obama tied
Clinton with white voters in Connecticut and beat her among them in
Virginia, California, Illinois, and Utah. Obama did this even though,
until tonight, he has lost to Hillary among white women in every state
except Illinois and Iowa. If you crunch the exit poll data for race and gender in 20 states, you come up with the following two-part rule:
1) When Hillary wins white women by 20 points or fewer, she loses white men.
States this has been true for: Maryland, Georgia, Connecticut,
Virginia, New Mexico, and California. Plus tonight in Wisconsin, where
more than nine in 10 voters are white, Hillary won women by a slim
margin and Obama walked away with men. (Exception to the first part of
the rule, sort of: South Carolina, where she lost white men by one
point with John Edwards still on the ballot.) 2) When Hillary wins white women by more than 20 points, she wins white men.
States true for: New York, Arizona, Oklahoma, Nevada, Missouri,
Louisiana, New Jersey, Tennessee, Arkansas, Arizona, along with an even
split of white men in Delaware. Exception to the second part of the
rule: Massachusetts, where Hillary won white women by 31 points,
according to the exit polls, and lost white men by one point.
The 20-point fulcrum suggests that to win white men in a state,
Hillary has to do really really well there. Which since Super Tuesday
of course hasn't happened, and is getting harder and harder to imagine.
Without white men, she has only won over all a couple of times, most
notably in California. Hillary still has the solid support of Latinos:
They broke for her
strongly—especially women, but men too—in the four states I checked,
which have sizeable Hispanic populations: Arizona, California, New
Mexico, and New Jersey. But even in Texas, how can that be enough?
-
Barack Obama brought up Hillary Clinton's period! "I understand that Senator Clinton periodically,'' (See? He said it!) "when she's feeling down, launches attacks as a way of trying to boost her appeal." Clearly, he was saying his rival ought to look into hormone replacement therapy.
What, this sexism is too subtle for you? Not for pro-Clinton blogger Taylor Marsh, who accused Obama of "demeaning women,'' or even straight-down-the-middle Andrea Mitchell, who said on MSNBC, "When you start describing a female candidate as being 'down' and 'striking back,' I don't know, that's a little edgy, don't you think?" Karen Stabiner, the author of well-received books about single-sex education and breast cancer, wrote that when she heard what Obama had said, "That was the moment when I, and other women of a certain age, all over the country, winced. The change candidate had embraced one of the oldest clichés in the book—that women are held hostage by emotion, that we can't be trusted with the big decisions because, depending on our age, we're either on the rag or having a hot flash.''
Beyond this accusation itself—so ludicrous my eyes might twirl right out of their sockets—what makes me wince is how such claims undermine actual affronts to women: One in six American women has been raped or endured an attempted rape, and stories about pregnant women killed by their boyfriends are commonplace. Female employees in this country made 77 cents for every $1 a man earned—in 2007, for heaven's sake—and the workplace has not, alas, been utterly transformed since as a college kid, three male supervisors at my summer job in a Texas bank called me in to say I should be wearing a real bra instead of camisoles. Then there was the boss who guessed my weight every time I walked by his office—with such accuracy that, had the whole newspaper thing not worked out, he could always have joined the circus. So far be it from me to say women should declare victory in the war on stuff that shouldn't happen but does, still, all the time. Yet I'm not sure that Clinton supporters who read sexism into Obama's recent remarks are helping her candidacy. And wouldn't we hate to look back on this presidential race as the moment feminists themselves undid some of the progress that has been made—by reviving the defunct stereotype of the hysterical female, strategically overreacting to imagined offense?