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You know, Rachael is also saying something important here, something we forget at our own peril: Looking down on Mr. and Mrs. Middle America isn't smart, and it IS what smarty-pants liberals in Washington (and beyond!) sometimes do. (And why is that? Would we rather show off than win?) Case in point: Richard Cohen, in a column in today's Washington Post, sneering that those who praised Sarah Palin's debate performance must have "inferred that her performance would go over well in homes with aboveground swimming pools.'' (For some reason, this makes me want to pass the Boone's Farm and push him into the cement pond; ugh.) 'Nother one: Tim Robbins on the Daily Show last night, praying to God for a smart president this time around. With the economy heading for Argentina, such slights may not matter as much as they otherwise would. But they're still hateful—and until the votes are counted, downright dumb.
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No, Emily, we should not judge Sarah Palin as a mother, no matter how beguilingly she and her impulsive soulmate invite us to do so. Remember when the Earth was young, 10 days ago, and we were still wondering about the Hillary Holdouts? If they haven't been scared straight by now, they aren't coming back. But one thing I hope we learned from them is that sexist attacks helped Hillary more than they hurt her, energizing her supporters and winning her some converts, too, among women who weren't totally sold until they saw her criticized in ways a man wouldn't be. Every sexist shot not only boomeranged, but was held against Barack Obama. Which is why everyone who wants him to win should mind Dahlia's advice to Joe Biden and avoid certain modes of attack altogether.
This is especially critical given the latest polling, which suggests that many women really are switching from Obama to McCain because he's chosen a female running mate: According to a Washington Post-ABC News poll, "white women shifted from an 8-point pre-convention edge for Obama to a 12-point McCain advantage now.''
Like Hillary Clinton and every Republican in my lifetime—with the exception of Sen. Soulmate, before he got religion and lost our phone number—Palin is running against the media. So our sins will be held against the Obama-Biden ticket, too. With time so short, she did not even wait to be attacked before throwing down the victim cards of gender, class, and media bias: "I've learned quickly, these past few days,'' she said in her convention speech, "that if you're not a member in good standing of the Washington elite, then some in the media consider a candidate unqualified for that reason alone.'' (Are these the same "some'' who want us to make nice with terrorists? Or the "they'' who hate us because we're free?) Sure, but then why bring the straw man to life by lunging for the bait? Mike Barnicle played right into her hands, worrying on MSNBC about who'd be minding little Trig if Mummy was off working in the Executive Office Building.
And the more Democrats rant about God, guns, babies, and Sarah P., the better for McCain, who must have been doing the happy dance after Harry Reid described her tone as shrill, and when Biden joked that one big diff between them was that she was better lookin'. I was in Toledo for that one; that is what he said, and Obama was just as casual with his words that day, repeatedly addressing older women in the audience as "young lady.'' :(
This past weekend, my 12-year-old son, who totally knows how to work me, suggested that we celebrate my return from the Sarah Palin Party Convention in St. Paul by watching The Contender in her honor. I'd forgotten, but it's one of those heavy-handed, here-comes-the-crowbar and there-goes-your-cranium liberal morality tales about a Sen. Laine Hanson, played by Joan Allen, who's tapped to become the vice president after the guy in office dies. Her top adviser is her husband, but that's about all Hanson and Palin have in common. Early in the movie, we see the Clinton-ish president, played by Jeff Bridges, wondering whether a woman who has served only a decade in the U.S. Senate will be seen as experienced enough to handle the job, especially on the foreign-policy front.
Only oops, he was so busy trying to stump the White House chef that, just like John McCain, he seems to have neglected to vet his pick, whose past is more exciting than he might have hoped. For one thing, though it has somehow previously escaped the nation's notice, she appropriated her best friend's husband while he was managing her first campaign. A story that she had sex with a bunch of guys at a drunken college party turns out not to be true. Hanson would rather withdraw her name than dignify her accusers with a denial, but Bubba convinces the country that we're better than that, too, and don't need to know. So yay, she's in, and sex scandals are out!
There is one scene relevant to life on this planet, however: When consultants advise Hanson's craven shell of a formerly good-guy rival to "gut the bitch,'' he winces but goes along, and is ruined in the end. Though part of me is looking for a reason to wag my finger and say, "Let that be a lesson to you, young man," it's not really Obama or jaw-flappin' Joe that I worry about getting carried away like that; it's the rest of us I'm not so sure of.
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Emily, I absolutely agree that the personal and professional have become hopelessly entangled in this election. In her 11th day in the spotlight, Palin has already been compared to movie stars, a TV chef, and an '80s pop star turned reality TV darling. Faster than you can say, "Bitch is the new black," it seems, a new celebrity comparison emerges.
Honestly, the mind reels. A partial list of purported alter egos:
Rachael Ray: The New York Times' David Carr portrayed Palin's relationship to the media as that of "Rachael Ray with a 4x4, who can not only make a meal in under 30 minutes but hunt and kill the main course."
Tina Fey: Apparently, "every American with access to 30 Rock and a blog" sees a resemblance between the VP nominee and NBC's brightest comedian. Seriously?
Audrey Hepburn: Drawn in by Palin's bangs and updo, Ann Althouse compared the self-described "pit bull with lipstick" to the 20th-century icon of elegance personified. A stretch.
Paula Abdul: The New York Post saw Althouse's movie star and raised her an American Idol judge, saying, "Palin won style points for updating from an Audrey Hepburn to a Paula Abdul look" by wearing her hair half-up to give her acceptance speech.
Margaret Thatcher: The one relevant, if not exactly accurate, analogy in the mix. The British press have jumped on the comparison. But isn't it a bit early to see the gravitas of a woman who ran a country for 11 years in the face of a novice candidate? Besides, Hillary Clinton garnered her fair share of comparisons to the "Iron Lady," and drawing a line between Clinton and Palin by way of Thatcher seems to test the laws of geometry.
The other nods to celebrity, though not entirely unflattering, are a distraction with less than two months to go until the election. Margaret Thatcher aside, should we really be thinking of Palin in terms of her inspired tresses or domestic prowess? I don't think so.
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John Edwards is reminding me more and more of poor Henry Cisneros, who was on his way to becoming the Latino Obama before he cheated on his saintly wife, Mary Alice, while she was pregnant with their third child, a son born with no spleen and a malformed heart and stomach. Bill Clinton asked Cisneros to serve as his housing secretary anyway, a few years later, and by then, the affair was such old news that it never even came up during his confirmation hearings. Yet in the course of his background check for the cabinet post, Cisneros lied to the FBI—not about whether he was supporting his former mistress, but about the amount he paid her—and as a result, was subjected to a four-year investigation by a special prosecutor, a probe that cost taxpayers $9 million. Heck of a public servant, Henry, so big-hearted and capable; watching him work a crowd in San Antonio back in the day, you'd have sworn you were looking at the future. But at some point after he stopped paying Linda Medlar, she started taping their phone calls, and triggered the investigation. When the judge who presided over his trial finally asked Cisneros why he'd lied in the first place, he explained that while he wasn't positive himself about the amount he'd paid Medlar, he was positive he didn't want his wife to know how high that figure was. He pled guilty to a misdemeanor, and when he left public life, we all lost out. So, what's the relevance?
First, it's that scary as we wives can be, federal investigators are scarier, and if any of the $15,000 a month that's being paid to Edwards' ex-girlfriend came from campaign funds, I cannot overemphasize how seldom fudging the facts with the Feds works out. Second, what do Monica Lewinsky, Linda Medlar, and Rielle Hunter have in common? All were employees, and world-class blabbermouths. (You never really hear about the guys who get involved with the quiet types, do you?) It's silly to say we don't care if politicians fool around as long as they don't lie about it; how is that supposed to work? (Though if we replaced those one-minute morning speeches they give in Congress with a daily adultery roll call, CSPAN would definitely do some box office.) And until we figure it out, we're stuck pretending these people are perfect and then, when we find out otherwise, pretending we're surprised.
As it is, we're so perplexed about how to treat this stuff I can't even tell what this first-person Newsweek piece is trying to say. In it, reporter Jonathan Darman tells about his own adventures with Rielle Hunter, a woman so fascinating that after meeting her on a trip to Iowa with Edwards in 2006, Darman spends weeks trying to track her down and months getting to know her. After concluding she's an unreliable source, he keeps in touch anyway: "I continued to see her. ... I liked Rielle'' and "let her do my astrological chart.'' From the way he describes their boozy first lunch, I can't tell if he suspected she and Edwards were carrying on or not: Is the tone confessional because he missed the story, because he had the story and sat on it, or because he fell for the "I can tell you're an old soul'' hoodoo himself? (The last guy I knew who talked like that wound up blowing town with the life savings of several women who each thought they were going to marry him and start an ashram.) Hunter told Darman that in this incarnation, she wanted to help Edwards become a transformational figure on a par with Gandhi or MLK; better luck next time?
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OK, here's a question: Years before the sex-scandal press conference or the chunky pearls, do political wives see their husbands differently than the rest of us see the mere mortals we promised to love, honor and so on? Obviously, there's no one model for a marriage in the public eye, any more than there is for a marriage only the neighbors care about—and even then, not that much as long as you keep the noise down. But I do wonder whether some of these spouses don't end up extra disillusioned because they're required to put their mates on the kind of pedestal that Mr. Ellen Tien has never set foot on. (No, that most certainly does not mean that whatever happens is on them, especially since idealizing these politicians is such a big part of their job description.) And yes, I am thinking all this because of the current John Edwards scandal, and because to say that Elizabeth believes in John is like saying that Washington is on the warm side this time of year, or Middlemarch is not a bad book.
But most mates of the contenders seem to feel that way—or maybe it only looks like that because when they don't appear to believe their men were born in a manger, we totally freak out, like how dare Teresa Heinz mention her deceased husband, the father of her children, and how unheard of for Michelle Obama to remark upon even the most minute and mundane of her husband's flaws. I keep thinking about Cindy McCain, when her husband was running the first time, telling me that she found her husband "a real inspiration'' -- and then stopping herself, quite charmingly, and adding, "I guess anyone would say that about their husband.'' No, they wouldn't; in fact, outside the bubble, I've never heard any woman say, suggest, hint, or infer any such thing, no matter how nice her husband or contented her marriage. So, without letting any of these guys off the hook, I guess my question is, isn't the public's demand for a mythic narrative that no actual person can ever live up to part of the problem?
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Here's the thing: I just do not see you chasing anybody into the men's room in the middle of the night, Emily B. Or you either, Mickey. And believe me, I mean this as a compliment. So, if you wouldn't want all-night stakeout duty outside the hotel where the National Enquirer seems to have cornered John Edwards and his "love child''—sorry, but I can't hear that phrase without imagining Diana Ross breaking into song—why are you so enthusiastic about having someone else do the dirty work?
Isn't cheering and leering from the comfort of the cheap seats on something like this (yeah, you go out and get that sleazo story that I personally would consider beneath my dignity) the journo equivalent of being a Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld-style chickenhawk? And isn't there a journalistic equivalent of the fruit of the poison tree? I mean, this is how sex scandals become news: Either the stories burble up from the tabloids, like toxic sludge at a superfund site, or the former lover steps to the microphone, a la Gennifer Flowers. (I used to think the reason we had so many more Democratic than Republican sex scandals was that the conservatives were rather more liberal in taking care of their former close personal friends—a theory developed after some or other supposed mistress was busted for failing to pay duty on several fur coats she was bringing into the country. But this is an outdated assumption on several levels.)
Anyway, the relevant question isn't whether every time a fire breaks out in somebody's pants it's news; if people want to know about it—and oh, we do, and me as much as anybody—then of course it meets that low bar. To me, the question is whether this is how we in the news business want to spend our time, energy, and ever-shrinking resources. Mickey quite fairly accuses me of failing to get totally "inside the marriage'' of John and Elizabeth Edwards and I don't disagree; that is an awfully big claim. (That he saw my piece on them as a PR release in defense of their big ol' house, however, just shows that the reader brings at least as much to the story as the writer does; I'd be willing to bet good money—euros, in other words—that Elizabeth didn't see it that way.) In any case, there is a difference between "inside the marriage" and inside the pants! We can learn plenty that's legit and pertinent about a candidate by looking at his or her spouse and their relationship without necessarily providing a detailed sexual history.
And if you think stories like that are no problem to double rivet even if you wanted to, just look at the debacle of the NYT piece on John McCain and Vicki Iseman; four top reporters were on the case for months and netted only hearsay that struck readers across the political spectrum as cheap and beneath the paper's usual standards. Not that I'm looking down my nose at their efforts, because the exact point at which the public interest outweighs privacy concerns is not always so easy to pin down, either. On the contrary, it's because I've been sent out on so many stories like that—located out there somewhere in the vast expanse of moral gray area—that privacy issues are not theoretical for me.
Grieving relatives? I've knocked on their doors at daybreak and approached them coming out of church. Politicians and their personal lives? I've asked questions that made even me wince lots of times, and written a handful of stories that were true but broke my own heart to see in print. On one memorable occasion, I was ordered to "dress up like a delivery girl if you have to'' to get the scoop on Donald Trump's first divorce. (No, it didn't come to that, but I did come back with the story and made my editor's day.) So I'm not pure, pretending to be pure, or acting like these aren't ever hard calls. And if you've never toiled in these particular vineyards, then how much easier it must be to declare, as Emily did at this week's "Gabfest," that love affairs involving public figures are always news and that proof of philandering is automatically disqualifying. (Can I possibly have heard you right? You really couldn't bear having an AG who had fooled around? After all we've been through with this crew of perhaps perfect husbands who happened to be lousy public servants?)
So here's my invitation to Emily and Mickey: If you are so high on stories like this, if they seem to you such a cinch to nail down and such a no-brainer to run with, then what's stopping you? It's not like all the good ones are taken, just because the Edwards story is already in print and available at your local supermarket. No, there's a wide selection of rumored philanderers out there—gay and straight, old and young, R and D—just waiting to be bagged. And once you have done that, then you can get back to me on whether that experience has altered your opinion at all, about either the righteousness or the relative value of these stories.
Meanwhile, the bottom line for me looking at the Slate site back when we started this conversation was wow, here we have this great, well-reported story on how a bunch of top Bush officials may have committed war crimes they will in all likelihood never be prosecuted for—but a luv child, now that's a clear career-ender? Sometimes, I just think that when it comes to sex, our whole country needs some kind of therapeutic intervention.
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OK, Rachael, so how about the selfish reason most of us wouldn't want to be that particular messenger? Unless I trip over a presidential candidate in the Bois de Boulogne some night - unlikely, as I live in Maryland - I am just not that eager to write up whose-what-is-going-where; that sort of thing might give readers a little wahoo, she said haughtily, but they will not respect you in the morning. Or on any subsequent morning. This is an especially tragic admission, I know, coming from your adultery, I mean, marriage correspondent. (While I'm confessing, I also got thrown out of Arthur Ashe's apartment building on purpose the day the world found out he had AIDS, so as to avoid having to ask him, "So, sir, plan on dying soon?' And doesn't every reporter have at least one story like that, about hiding behind the potted plant when they were supposed to be harrassing people?) Nobody who could also make a living doing data entry wants to be the one to break a story like this. I mean really, I try to put myself in the gum-shoes of the guy who says he chased John Edwards into a bathroom stall, and is there any chance in heaven he is thinking ah, now this is the reason I got into the biz; why can't every day be like this? No, he is going home, drinking himself to sleep as it's getting light outside, and dreaming about the various ways God will pay him back. Bad juju, I tell you.
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By the time The New Yorker
landed in my mail slot today, I'd seen the cover so many times already
it was like, "You, finally!'' As if it had stopped off for a couple of
drinks on the way over here and lost all track of time. So, allow me to
be the last to tell Jack
why I totally hate this image of the Obamas: It would be funnier if
half the country didn't actually think of this hardworking,
high-achieving woman—remind me again what Michelle Obama has not done right?—as
Angela Davis in a sheath. I don't know whether to cry or spit for every
morning she got up before it was light outside to make sure she
got every single thing on the do-list done, only to be looked at like
this. But I am not tempted to laugh.
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I don't know how this escaped my notice, unless maybe it's because I never read anything newspaper ombudsmen (or ombudswomen) have to say, and not only because they are so boring. (With the business model failing, the industry in apparent freefall, staffs shrinking so fast the survivors have to scurry just to keep up on government disinformation, and left and right uniting against the lazy, dull-witted, and otherwise very bad people without whom we would know nothing—nothing!—that is going on in the world, aren't in-house scolds superfluous?) Anyway, as the rest of you doubtless saw, the public editor at the New York Times, Clark Hoyt, called out Maureen Dowd for her supposedly sexist Hillary coverage. Maybe I wouldn't feel this way if I hadn't agreed with every last nasty word of it, but since when does the public editor tell columnists what to think? "Dowd's columns about Clinton's campaign were so loaded with language painting her as a 50-foot woman with a suffocating embrace, a conniving film noir dame and a victim dependent on her husband that they could easily have been listed in that Times article on sexism,'' he wrote. OK, I never read Clark Hoyt, but he never reads Maureen Dowd? (And since she is a woman, does that make Hoyt's opinion of her opinion sexist, too?)
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Why is the New York Times still flummoxed by the idea that women might embrace technology? The paper's Technology section today ran a "trend" story marveling at how women are expected to buy the new iPhone in record numbers (sample quote: "'Companies need to be careful to not think that to sell smartphones they just need to be pink," she said. ‘There are other things women want.' " Gosh, really?) It's not even been a year since the paper wrote another color-schemed piece on the breaking news that women had really gotten behind improvements in technology, with the headline "To Appeal to Women, Too, Gadgets Go Beyond ‘Cute' and ‘Pink.' " In February, it delved into the world of girls who create Internet content (quoting an expert as saying that to these girls, hotlinking is "the digital equivalent of arriving at a party wearing the same dress as another girl).
To affect surprise that women are using technology and the Internet in an era when it's nearly impossible to be engaged with the world and ignore either one is a rich bit of condescension for the paper that endorsed Hillary in the Democratic primary. Was the editorial board expecting her to receive those 3 a.m. phone calls on a hot pink Swarovski-studded BlackBerry Pearl? This feels a little like hearing someone express surprise that women might want to play sports or enjoy sex. The notion that using technology would make you a geek is also a straw man argument that's years out of date—can't remember thinking that way since perhaps middle school, which was right around when IMing became cool, not just the late-night pastime of pimpled anime enthusiasts. (And besides, haven't pimpled anime enthusiasts become cool since then?)
Despite the price scale-back and functionality improvements, the iPhone is still at least as much status symbol as useful tool. The Times is clearly no stranger to the commodity fetishization beat, especially when it comes to women, so you'd think they'd be all over the digital desideratum angle. But I guess the paper thinks this recent story sheds some light on how technology is changing the way women live.
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Just received this e-mail from a friend, a Washington lawyer who is a lifelong Democrat and a generous donor to the party. She supported Hillary in the primary and is undecided about what she'll do in November:
I just read your XX column, and I wanted to share a couple thoughts. Even though Hillary characterized her campaign as a big feminist movement in her exit speech, I'm not sure all her supporters saw it that way. I also think the risk of defection to McCain is very real, and not limited to uneducated, working class types. Just in my office, I know 6-7 women, all lifelong Democrats from VA who are now planning to vote for McCain. They are all highly educated people who follow politics closely, and a couple even worked for Dems on the Hill at one point or another. The decision to defect to McCain has nothing to do with Hillary as a woman or Obama's personality. They like Obama enough as a person, but they think he's an empty suit—rhetoric with little record behind it. Even if they agree more with Obama's positions, it seems risky to put such an inexperienced person in the White House—especially after what happened last time. I think the media misses this. It is not all about feminism.
Having said that, I know there is a bit of truth to the feminist argument. I also know a strong, pro-choice Democrat from Maryland—someone who regularly hosts NARAL dinners—who is defecting to McCain, even though she understands his views on abortion. I doubt if this woman ever even voted for any Republican before in her whole life, and she just contributed to McCain's campaign. Truly amazing! I think Obama will have a real problem in the Electoral College if he does not find a way to reach out to the people who voted against him—for whatever reason. For now, I'm undecided and I'm planning on staying that way for a while. My big issue is the economy and both Obama and McCain are weak in that area, so it probably doesn't matter much.
I answered her that the experience issue doesn't resonate with me, especially as Cheney and Rummy had been around since the last ice age, and where did that get us? Hillary has been in the Senate only four years longer than Obama: big whoop. If you count his time in the Illinois Senate, he's actually had more experience as an elected official. (And while of course her experience as first lady counts for something, would we give Laura Bush full credit for those years—even though, as she belatedly tells us, she, too, had a big policy role all along?) The whole experience question just feels like a stand-in for race, or maybe something else I'm missing. Because when someone says they would slit their wrist before voting for Obama, that is NOT about Clinton having been in the Senate longer.
And here's my friend's response, which shows that hurt feelings cut both ways during the primary season, and opened some wounds that Obama must now work hard to help heal:
I think her years as first lady count for something, but regardless, she has a much better command of the issues. He was a back-bencher in the state senate, not committee chair, etc. ... He improved during the debates, but even at the end he was flubbing basic tax, economic, and foreign policy issues. Maybe I've been dealing with those issues for too long, but honestly, he is constantly struggling for answers and contradicting himself. I think it would help if he gave voters a sense of who he would appoint to his Cabinet. If he is just going to be an inspirational figurehead, I'd like to know who's going to be advising him. ... Bottom line—the divisions here are very, very deep for all sorts of reasons, and Obama has got to find a way to reach out. Many people are hurt by all the name calling in the campaign. [My son] was repeatedly called a racist at school for supporting Hillary, and I know they have had to address similar issues in [a private school in Washington]. I've heard that some African-American women who supported Hillary were subjected to threats and taunting. Of course, it's not Obama making those comments, and people need to realize that there is a downside to all that young voter passion, but it does not make you want to switch to the other team. Five years ago, I would have voted for McCain in a heartbeat because I've always liked him. He's definitely sold out to the right in those five years, though, and that's what gives me pause.'
That she's even thinking McCain should give her party pause, too.
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It's interesting that Ruth and Rachael both used the word evil—as in, what Hillary said about RFK's assassination was unfortunate but not evil. Now, I wouldn't use that particular word to describe Clinton or what she said about Bobby Kennedy, either. In fact, I'm not sure I've ever described anyone on this side of—let's give Adolf the day off—Idi Amin that way, at least in part because it brings to mind Margo Channing's wonderful mocking of "Eve Evil, little Eve Evil,'' in All About Eve, and you shouldn't say that word and grin. But another way in which we in the media have not learned all we might have from the fiasco of 2000 is in our peculiarly American determination to see strategery everywhere but no evil, ever.
Which is why we bat down any impugning of motives with that sobering word: To question intent at all is to ascribe evil, and only nuts go that far. Paul Krugman did this just yesterday when he explained that Clinton's invocation of RFK's assassination is actually Obama's problem: "One more trumped-up scandal won't persuade the millions of voters who stuck with Mrs. Clinton despite incessant attacks on her character that she really was evil all along.'' So, there is nothing in between A-OK and ... that word he said? What an odd paradox in which we assume we are always being played—but never with really bad intentions. Especially since it was fear of appearing to be too hard on Junior that got us this president in the first place. And, as even his former press secretary Scott McClellan says outright in his new memoir, that's also how we marched off to his purposeless war. The assumption was that Bush (and even more to the point, Colin Powell) would never have told us the war was necessary if that weren't the case -- because who would do that? No one we'd put in charge. Just as Hillary would never have stirred the pot on purpose—because that would be evil and she isn't evil, thus she couldn't have done it. For a bunch of skeptics, we really have a weirdly high opinion of human nature.
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While everyone has been busy analyzing the campaign of the first viable female presidential candidate and gossiping about rumors of a possible female vice presidential candidate; while we've got women running the House of Representatives and telling John McCain what to do about the economy, Yahoo has been cooking up a site that focuses on our interests: Yahoo for Chix. I mean, "Shine." And all I can say is, "Wow." I mean, "Ewww."
I admit, I read the occasional InStyle, if only to look at what clothes I'd buy if still in possession of my pre-childbearing waistline (slimmer) and budget (fatter). And I am, after all, writing from Slate's very own no-boys-allowed blog. But the problem with women's-only content is not the concept. It's the execution. And Shine comes off looking like all women care about is sex, shoes, and "surprisingly cute wall decals."
I don't come to women-focused media outlets necessarily looking for the latest on Iraq. And sure, I like sex, and I like shoes. But there's an enormous middle ground that sites like Shine don't make use of. Rising food prices affect every trip I make to the grocery store. The housing crisis has me worried about my home's value. How the hell did no one notice that hundreds of women and children were being treated like chattel in Texas? You can take almost any front-page story and cast it in a way that's meaningful to women.
But at least the site doesn't totally ignore the news of the world. There is a tiny area that links to news headlines, and it's called the "Cheat Sheet." In essence, "We know you are too dumb to care what's going on in the world, so here's some news to help you carry on a conversation with your husband when he tires of hearing you talk about Rob Lowe's nanny."
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Anybody else read the NYT Magazine piece on Harvard's intentional virgins? It was in many ways right off-the-rack: Not all young people who are virgins on purpose are dum-dum religious nuts. Some of them—brace yourselves—have even infiltrated Harvard. And have complicated philosophical reasons for this lifestyle choice. Too complicated, in fact, even to take a stab at explaining. But don't sweat it, because underneath—who would have guessed?—they're religious nuts, too! With hilarious hang-ups, as you'll note when I torture Harvard's Head Virgin with completely disrespectful questions about just how far she'll go. So ciao for now and see you next time, when I pull the wings off butterflies. ...
OK, so it infuriated me, but it did sound one hopeful note. When the head virgin (who doesn't even order dessert after lunch, poor sensually starved child) debated a campus sex blogger (who voraciously gobbles every crumb of her ginger cake with cream-cheese frosting and raspberry compote, get it?) the two women showed mutual respect. They declined to supply the crowd with a catfight and refused to live up to their billing: Harvard's Jezebel Takes On Campus Virgin Mary. "The women themselves saw their encounter as a meeting of two feminist positions,'' the story says, and good for them. Afterwards, they probably headed out for a glass of water and a chocolate martini. Oh, and according to their chronicler, the men of Harvard indicated that after some serious reflection, they would indeed rather marry Mary Ann than Ginger—though I'm not sure either of them would say yes.
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As far as meta-themes go in this presidential campaign, this week’s “Hoppin’ Mad” trope has quickly become tiresome. Yesterday we heard endless reports about an incident in which Barack Obama ostensibly had a “testy” exchange with a reporter that proved testy only in the eyes of someone at ABC trying to bump up their page views. And today’s headlines are all screaming about Bill Clinton who allegedly “lays into” “unloads on” “gets fiery” and otherwise freaks out on a CNN reporter. But if you watch the video–of Clinton responding to a question from Jessica Yellin about reports of vote suppression in Nevada—I just don’t see much laying into or unloading. Wordiness? Yes. Misdirection? Some. But up until the very end when he says “shame on you”—with a big smile on his face, and in much the same way you might if your dog had peed on the bathmat—I just don’t see much rage here.
So, what’s up with the whole media manufactured tantrums thing? Is it just some lame attempt to create a psychodrama where none exists? Is it reporters trying to stand out by putting themselves at the center of the story? Is Clinton right in saying that—like hockey—the press watches campaigns only for the bleeding?
In his great 2007 book A Bee in the Mouth, anthropologist Peter Wood describes an America in love with a “social anger” that is more performance than real. It’s bad enough when we feign anger in public life in to engage voters. But engaging viewers with the suggestion that candidates and their spouses are constantly out-of-control is exponentially more revolting.
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Erica Jong posted yesterday on the embarrassing lack of substance in our political coverage. I don’t disagree on the merits. The media (ourselves included) have now devoted exponentially more energy to Hillary’s non-tears in Portsmouth, than they have to the sixth anniversary of Guantanamo, which occurred almost unnoticed last Friday. But she also falls prey to a piece of Steinem-ism that shouldn’t go unobserved. Jong claims that “women writers are only drafted for the most trivial subjects. We comment on style not substance, beards not policy, clothes and shoes and chick lit and cooking. The men get the big topics like war, though women have the most to lose. ... ” The implication must be that women writers are disproportionately responsible for producing the poufiness that is the mainstream media.
Wrong, wrong, wrong. For one thing, women—including many on this blog—write about the “big” topics, now more than ever. For another, as Jong herself admits in this post, women who choose to write about style over substance (as she has done “because that's all the news that's fit to print and I like shooting my mouth off on the Op-Ed page as much as anyone”) cannot then turn around and complain they’re being marginalized.
Some women choose to write about shoes and chick lit and cooking. Good for them. Other women choose to write about CIA black sites and national security. Excellent. But I am sick to my teeth of the complaint that women are only tapped to write fluff. Here, by way of a valentine to Meghan: An interview with Harold Bloom (hat tip Scott Horton) offering the same critique of the media as Jong: “Democracy, whether in Sweden or the United States, depends on the voter’s capacity to think. If you have read the best of what has been thought and said, then your cognition and understanding is on a much higher level than if you have read Harry Potter or Stephen King. So what this decline into half-literature and mediocre media really means is de facto a self-destruction of democracy.” Bloom’s interviewer, by the way, is a woman.
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We all knew Chris Matthews was no Hillary-lover, but what he said on air this morning takes the cake: "The reason she's a U.S. Senator, the reason she's a candidate for President, the reason she may be a front-runner, is her husband messed around. That's how she got to be Senator from New York. We keep forgetting it. She didn't win it on the merits. ... " Nice. As Greg Sargent points out, what's egregious about this statement is that Matthews went right back to offering a reductive narrative about what voters do or don't like about Hillary. No wonder the commentators at MSNBC were so surprised when Hillary took the lead yesterday; they assumed all the undecided voters would go heavily for Obama, because they wanted it to happen that way. And now they are suggesting the Bradley effect is responsible. I agree with Juliet: I don't buy it. Like Emily Y, I'm hoping the commentators figure out by the next primary that they need to start offering up some more sophisticated analysis of just what is taking place.
via TPM.
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On Sunday, the front pages of the New York Times and the Washington Post went to the hair salon. Because this is where black women hang out--in particular, black women who vote in South Carolina. As both papers tell us once they've gotten past the scene setting, African American women make up 29 percent of the state's Democratic primary voters. Which makes them "a crucial constituency" in this early primary state (NYT). "Seriously, we have to go where the voters are." (WaPo, quoting Clinton's state director).
There's nothing wrong with this, exactly--cliches are cliches because they have some truth to them. So is it just the double coverage that makes the pieces seem sudsy? To be sure, there's a serious and sad theme in both of them: Black women are reluctant to support Obama because they doubt that a black man could become president, and because they fear for his safety if he were to be elected. That may help explain why Hillary is polling ahead of Obama among black women, at least according to the Washington Post. (The Post article, by Krissa Williams, cites a recent Post-ABC poll showing black women supporting Clinton over Obama 54 percent to 35 percent. The Times article, by Katherine Seelye, cites a poly sci professor who says that black women are equally divided between the two, and that a third are still undecided. My conclusion: It's early yet, the numbers are shifting around, and no one really knows.)
Here's what bothers me, even though it seems inevitable: In both articles, the central question is whether black women will vote their gender or their race. As Williams puts it explicitly, "Do you identify with Obama because he's black or Clinton because she's a woman?" This framing I find depressing. I know, I know, race and gender matter in politics. And I also know that this is the first presidential election in which a woman and a black man have a real crack at winning the nomination. And yet it irks me that no one is going to head over to the cliche place in South Carolina where white men hang out (the gym? Home Depot? a NASCAR race?) and ask them whether they're voting for Clinton because she's white or Obama because he's a man. The essentializing only applies selectively.
Or maybe it's all about the thrill of hot irons and hair weaves.