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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.
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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?”
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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.
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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?
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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.
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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."
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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.
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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.
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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?"
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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.
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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?
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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.
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Hanna, you've made me realize that to me, there is really only one red dress, this one, and all the others are knockoffs.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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?
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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?
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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?
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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.
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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?
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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.
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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?
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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.
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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.
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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?
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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.
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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?
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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?
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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?
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Remember back when we didn’t believe in torturing people? Turns out it's way more interesting to reopen the whole question and bicker with the umps about their recent calls. Let’s go to the telestrator:
Out on the field this week, we have Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., announcing yesterday that water-boarding is legal whereas “putting burning coals on people's bodies” is torture. Shooting the breeze with the BBC, Justice Antonin Scalia declares that he would have no problem shoving a little “something under the fingernails, smack him in the face” but conceded that these are not easy questions. And Sen. John McCain scores a touchdown for the opposing team when he says he wants torture to be illegal unless the CIA is doing it, in which case it isn’t. Finally, the week closed with Steven Bradbury, who heads up the Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department and is confident that it isn’t really water-boarding if it’s changed since the Spanish Inquisition.
It would be totally awesome if we could just throw open the whole U.S. Code and race around the football field renegotiating all of it for ourselves, don’t you think? I'm going to redefine shoplifting this weekend and go find me some Prada sandals.
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I never thought the day would come when I'd look at a photo of civil rights hero John Lewis and think unflattering thoughts, but here we are. When I first moved to Washington 35 years ago—OK, 13, but some of those years were longer than others, which I think is how Hillary Clinton does her math, too—there was no one I admired more. So dignified and brave, Lewis had after all led a 1965 voting rights march across the Edmund Pettis Bridge in Selma, Alabama, where police responded to the non-violent protest by bashing his head in. So, it was more than a little disappointing that after the embattled Clinton campaign started throwing down the race card—like this and this and this—establishment black powerbrokers including Lewis joined in the attacks on Barack Obama. Lewis did not just stick by Clinton, but went out of his way to be condescending to her rival, saying Obama "is not Martin Luther King. I knew Martin Luther King. I knew Bobby Kennedy. I knew President Kennedy. You need more than speech-making.''
Yesterday, Lewis appeared to have revised that harsh assessment, and suggested to the AP that he might switch teams: "It could happen with a lot of people ... We can count and we see the clock.'' This morning's New York Times went further, reporting that Lewis had decided to vote for Obama as a superdelegate because, "In recent days there is a sense of movement, and a sense of spirit,'' and a sense of uh-oh, better to jump on the caboose than miss the train altogether. Now a Lewis spokeswoman has called the Times story inaccurate. But however he votes this summer in Denver, in a larger sense I'm not sure how much it matters.
Voters were ahead of their leaders in seeing that, as Lewis told the Times, "Something is happening in America and people are prepared and ready to make that great leap'' to elect a black president. Obama's repeated warnings that no one in public life should be put on a pedestal make more sense than ever. Loyalty to Clinton doesn't seem any deeper than hers was for her "goddaughter'' Patti Solis Doyle, who has been replaced as her campaign manager. And Lewis has the audacity to tell the Times that, on second thought, the fancy-talking empty suit has gotten much more impressive lately: "He's getting better and better every single day.'' Craven is the word that springs to mind, and how depressing it that?
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More from Tim:
We should probably share with XX readers Slate’s rough consensus that the censored word in “Joey doesn't want me. S- this campaign, I'm quitting” was Screw. Why the Journal would omit the word screw here I can’t explain. On the very same day, the Journal quoted Dylan Lauren, daughter of Ralph Lauren and founder and CEO of Dylan’s Candy Bar on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, describing her daily carb intake this way: “"I have to have breakfast otherwise it screws up my whole day. ...” Six days earlier, in a Journal excerpt of Donald Ray Pollock’s book, Knockemstiff, the author’s father was quoted expressing the following opinion of motion pictures: “Screw a bunch of make-believe.” Indeed, it’s hard to see how anyone could publish a newspaper or magazine about the world of business without printing the verb screw on a fairly regular basis. But for some reason the editors omitted screw from Solis Doyle’s quote. Unless it was a different word. Other candidates suggested by Slate staffers included stuff, shove, stop, sauté, shore up, and sod.
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The pertinent fact about Patti Solis Doyle's explanation for leaving Hillary's campaign (that her little boy cried for Daddy instead of for her) seems to me to lie outside its factual veracity. It's probably a fictionalized condensation of something that's happened many times, to Doyle and to every working parent, especially men (who, if they quit their jobs over a toddler snub, get less moral credit for it than we do). Though I can identify with the pain of being the (momentarily) rebuffed parent, the unspoken assumption that the mother must be the child's default choice (or be a bad mother) makes me want to say, boo-frigging-hoo. So Junior wants Daddy in the middle of the night? Great, more sleep for me!
What really makes me smite my forehead is Doyle's choice to use the anecdote now—and make no mistake, true story or not, the woman is cannily using it to protect herself and her boss. It's getting downright painful watching powerful women shoot feminism in the foot in their attempted support of HRC's campaign. Thanks a lot, Patti, for making the rest of us sound as if we're crying wolf when we talk to our bosses about needing flextime or extra sick days. If "my baby needs me" becomes the new "it's my time of the month," an all-purpose cop-out available only to women, that's just one more way to convince the misogynist wing of Hillary-haters (and, paranoid as Erica Jong may be, they're out there) that we're incapable of holding down the big jobs—like, say, president of the United States.
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Granted, Tim, the timing is convenient for Patti Solis Doyle's mommy crisis. But couldn't both versions of events be true for Hillary's former campaign manager? Say your life's work is going down in flames—to the point that One Life to Live seems more realistic all the time, and that storyline about waitressing in Paris, Texas, not altogether unappealing. And just when you're at the absolute snapping point, the one bright spot in your life ... wants Daddy? Not that this is a historical first, no, but when you're overwrought, I could see it being a moment of clarity, just as Hillary needed to make a change. (And as Paul Begala said on CNN the other night, when a campaign is in trouble, you can't fire the candidate, so somebody else has to take the hit.)
"The kids needed me'' may be poll-tested, but it's also a narrative I can't say no to—unless, and this is absolutely unfair—a man is telling the tale. For instance, I heard George Allen on the radio Tuesday saying how it was worth losing to Jim Webb because his 9-year-old daughter made him pancakes last Saturday, and that I found pukatrocious.
As for the crazy goddesses, I'm just as fond of them all the same as I was of my Aunt Ginny who spoke to dead people; they've earned those off-the-meds moments, and may even feel they are required. Though snits like that do suggest that somebody's power is being threatened, which is why I also take them as a sign that the abortion lobby worries that Obama—who is 100 percent pro-choice, despite Hillary's claims to the contrary—might fail to get into the kind of big pointless fights that raise a lot of cash for interest groups.
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Yesterday, Erica Jong argues the current feminist equivalent of the Jews control the media. "Unfortunately the Hillary-Haters are in charge," she writes in Huffington Post. "They monopolize the networks, the newspapers, the talk shows—both radio and TV. They are crossing their legs for fear of castration."
Crossing their legs for fear of castration? I mean, come on. Who talks like that anymore? Jong's earlier piece in the Washington Post was a relatively sane defense of women of her generation, who had to fight twice as hard to get half as much. In this new post, she's gone off the deep end. God, I don't even know where to start.
First, it's the usual—they make fun of Hillary's thick ankles and wrinkles. They say she pimps her daughter. They say she slept with Vince Foster and then something about bees and royal jelly, which was over my head. Then there's some subtle racism about Michelle Obama (a blind spot which seems to afflict women of a certain feminist generation). Then: "They believe HRC boils eye of newt with unborn baby's hair and little Jewish children not yet circumcised."
And that's not even the best one. The best one is: Hillary Haters Can't Spell.
Well, which one is it, they're in charge or they can't spell?
Unfortunately, Jong is not alone. Ever since Hillary lost Iowa, the icons of pop-feminism have been going crazy—Robin Morgan, Gloria Steinem, Erica Jong. Either they can't stand to watch Hillary lose, or their publishers are urging them into a crazy war, a la East Coast and West Coast rappers.
Its not that the zipless fuck was War and Peace or anything. I guess I just want my feminist icons frozen and preserved in their era. It is such an absolute pleasure to watch Germaine Greer and the rest of the feminist street poets take on Norman Mailer in that 1971 town hall, which I recently watched on video. Nothing they are saying is at all relevant to my current existence. Greer is going on about the oppression of housework (which I rarely ever do), and the rest are slamming about their vaginas and the pleasures of lesbian sex, and they are sexy and kick-ass and not faintly ridiculous because that's what it was all about back in the day, and you can watch the good NYU girls in the audience practically ripping their bras off as they stare at Greer in awe.
But that same rant fast-forwarded to the Hillary age DOES seem ridiculous and out of place. A woman is a viable candidate for president, for God's sake!! I cringe to think of what a Germaine Greer tirade about Hillary's oppression would sound like now. In fact, maybe as an exercise I'll watch the video again tonight and rewrite it substituting "Barack" for "Norman," just to see how crazy it sounds.
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A guest post from Timothy Noah of Slate's "Chatterbox" column:
It's the recently that provokes my skepticism. Are we to believe that Solis Doyle's 6-year-old reached his mommy-deprivation limit at precisely the same moment that Solis Doyle's candidate began to falter in the polls? That would be a remarkable coincidence.
Emily Bazelon responds:
I am with Dahlia on this: I find traveling to be the hard part of working. Tim, you also must be right that the timing of the story is too good. I can't decide whether to be offended because the mommy narrative is being used as a transparent cover or grateful that another working parent is saying out loud, as Karen Hughes did before her, that some demands are just too great. I loved it when Mark Warner gave spending time with his kids as a reason not to run for president, making this about fatherhood, too.
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A report in the Wall Street Journal today about the departure last weekend of former Clinton campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle offers up this explanation for the departure:
Ms. Solis Doyle recently returned home after two months on the road to find a family accustomed to her absence, she told colleagues. When her 6-year-old son cried out one night recently, he rebuffed his mom, saying, "I want Daddy." Ms. Solis Doyle flew out of the room in tears and told her husband: "Joey doesn't want me. S- this campaign, I'm quitting."
Aside from prompting a desperately funny string of intramural Slate e-mails about what the S stands for (Fraysters???), the anecdote raises a whole lotta questions for the mommies and daddies on this blog: Like doesn’t this scene happen to every mom after every single business trip? My heart goes out to her. My 4-year-old spent much of October ritually biting some kid at preschool every time I left town. On the one hand I was about ready to quit over Coby’s daily nibblings (especially when he started telling his teacher “Mommy is on vacation in Washington for 100 days” each time he did it). On the other hand, this smells like a gender-fraught cover story to justify what Josh Green says was definitely a firing. Help?
Follow the rest of the conversation.
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Dahlia, your post about McCain's powerful message of hopelessness cracked me up and reminded me of this great spoof of Obama's "Yes We Can" video: You might call it McCain's "No, We Can't." Check out the actors' expressions toward the end.
That said, I have a grain of admiration for McCain's willingness to take a politically unpopular position during the season of high political posturing. I cringe when McCain argues that we could be in Iraq for 10,000 years, and should be, if that's what it takes. But then I also cringe after watching the Oscar-nominated Iraq documentary No End in Sight, as I did last night, and realize that an early withdrawal from Iraq could leave not only America but Iraq much worse off in terms of security. I'd love to believe in the message of hope but it needs to be anchored by some pragmatic foreign policy, and sometimes I wonder just how pragmatic these pull-out-of-Iraq plans are. We don't want to bolster America's terrible (i.e., nonexistent) postwar strategy with a terrible withdrawal strategy.
Meanwhile, anyone who hasn't seen it yet should check out No End in Sight. It's not exactly a Valentine's Day treat, though.
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A couple of years ago, for reasons that I can't remember, if they ever existed, I decided to do an unscientific research project on circumcision. I asked men who'd been circumcised as adults and experienced sex both ways, to write in about which they liked better. My findings, two Valentine's Days ago:
Of the 79 men who'd experienced sex snipped and unsnipped, 43 said sex improved (55 percent) after their circumcisions, 23 said it went downhill (29 percent), and 13 said there was no change or a mix of pros and cons (16 percent). My numbers don't differ much from the latest research: Based on a sample of 84 men who'd been circumcised as adults for medical reasons, a 2005 article in Urologia Internationalis found a 61 percent satisfaction rate, with 38 percent saying that penile sensation improved after the procedure, 18 percent saying it got worse, and the rest reporting no change. (Read more if you really want to.)
In the meantime, to my surprise the topic has become unfrivolous. Studies have shown that circumcision helps prevent the transmission of HIV and AIDS. In the absence of a vaccine, it looks like the next best thing. (Though apparently only for men--no evidence that it decreases the risk for women.) A South African study found that men who thought that circumcised men enjoy sex more than uncircumcised one were seven times more likely to have the procedure. And so a research team in Uganda conducted a large-scale study: 2,210 men were randomly chosen for the snip; 2,246 served as a control group. They were followed for two years. Results: A sexual satisfaction rate of more than 98 percent for both groups.This is so high that it seems incredible. But Ronald Grey, one of the lead researchers and a Johns Hopkins professor, defends it. He pointed out to me that in know-nothing studies like mine, people who feel strongly are inevitably over-represented, and that could bring the anti-snip folk out in droves. The Urologia study has a different problem: The men in it were circumcised for medical reasons, which means their experiences may not reflect other men's. The Uganda research, Grey thinks, is the first and only effort to track thousands of men who were perfectly healthy etc, before and after. So for the moment, at least, the question seems to be settled: circumcised men shouldn't worry about what their missing. Except there's just one thing: The researchers didn't ask them the relative question--whether sex got better or worse after the snip. Next study. Or maybe there are some things we're better off being left to wonder.
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Emily, I wish I had amnesia. Because when push came to shove, they played the race card, repeatedly, and called it the fun part. And after that, all the policy mastery in the world couldn't put her back into the running as a role model for my daughter.
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To go back a couple of steps, but still in the general XX spirit of today, I think: Hanna, you've put your finger on what I've been thinking/worrying about lately—which is not the candidates themselves, actually, so much as their followers. I'm not sure where Paul Krugman got the impression that Obama supporters "want their hero or nobody," but I think there is a potential irony in the kind of "movement" backing Obama has: At least to judge by Dreams From My Father, he himself really doesn't have a crusading temperament at all, yet he seems to owe his success to stirring up those sentiments in voters. What remains to be seen is whether fervent followers turn out to be good compromisers, since surely that's the kind of constituency it takes to build the bridges, forge the consensus Obama so often invokes.
As for Clinton's followers, I think it's a big mistake to elevate Robin Morgan as the emblematic Hillary-ite (or as all that much like Hillary herself, though what do I know). There are plenty of fad-allergic realists of both genders—people who are miles away from being aggrieved feminists—who find themselves in her ranks. What remains to be seen is whether they really are no-nonsense pragmatists, eager and ready to join forces with Obama when—if—the time comes.
In the meantime, I keep remembering how much I liked that incredibly civil debate in Los Angeles, when both Democrats sounded like supersmart people, ready to tackle a lot of unwieldy problems—in a league apart from the Republican buffoons who had debated the night before.
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Dahlia and Melinda, here's what I don't get. Yes, there have been moments of excess and misfire in Hillary's campaign--gender traitor, J'accuse moments. I haven't liked them, either. (And this latest from Erica Jong is a doozy.) But it wasn't all Robin Morgan, Gloria Steinem, emotional blackmail, and martyrdom. Was it? In fact, I don't think Hillary 2008 mostly or even substantially stands for those things. She has been on her game in every debate I've seen. She consistently shows better mastery of policy details than anyone else in the field. She has smart and thoughtful and comprehensive positions on the issues I think we all care about.
And there's also this: As David Greenberg points out today in Slate, working-class people have been supporting her presumably becasue they remember the first Clinton administration as better times, and trust her to take them there again. Shouldn't we celebrate all of that, and thread it into our memories of this campaign season, rather than making it all about the appearances of feminism-wielded-as-battle-ax? Those moments have been enthralling and instructive, yes, but I just don't think there were enough of those to justify the overall characterization, or to come close to erasing the good this campaign has done for women.
Running for president is utterly exhausting and awful. No one pulls it off with utter grace (not even Obama). She has had to walk through the gender prism every step of the way, and yes sometimes she stumbles and sometimes she feels sorry for herself. OK. This week, at least, I'm ready to ease up on her.
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Emily and Hanna, I’m with Melinda on this one. Pity is the least interesting political impulse around and the faster we banish it the better.
Last night I had dinner with my former Fairy Slate-mother, Margo Howard—a second-wave feminist in feather mules. She captured what it is in the Hillary campaign that can really misfire with all the mass scolding and the guiltings. She said her problem with the Gloria Steinem/Robin Morgan story line was that she just doesn’t recognize her own life in it. Sure, there is and has been sexism, and it sucks and it should engender outrage. But her life just hasn’t been defined by those slights and obstacles. Mine hasn’t, either, and I don’t much like to be slapped around the room and accused of treason for feeling like my story isn’t one of pervasive gender suffering. Maybe if I were a Hooters girl, that would be my story. But I just can’t imagine a more disrespectful message to the generation of women who smashed through glass ceilings than, “Everything you did was for nothing. Life is as miserable for women today as it ever was.”
I’d been wondering how John McCain was going to inspire his followers with a rousing message of powerless victimhood, and yesterday I saw him do it: Dismissing Obama’s promises of hope as “only rhetoric” and “platitudes," McCain insisted that the events of 9/11 defined the scope of American hopes and freedom forever. This country can no longer afford hope! We’ve been hurt too badly! It’s all just fear and worry from here on out! Our enemies feed on our hope! The decision to see yourself as the sum of the worst things that have ever been done to you by your enemies used to be the sole province of liberals. I say that if McCain wants to reimagine the GOP as the pity party for the new millennium, he’s welcome to it.
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When Hillary Clinton tugs on me, Emily and Hanna, it is usually not in a good way. Sometimes I do feel sorry for her, but I can't imagine casting a pity vote for president. Nor do I want to be guilted, frightened, fooled, or worn down to the point that I'll agree to anything. I do think her health-care plan is marginally better than Barack Obama's. But I'm not sure why I owe her anything for running a campaign that makes it look like the default mode for a woman, even with all of her advantages and abilities, is martyrdom and emotional blackmail. Where oh where is the feminism in the Evita model?
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Emily, I'm with you. Last night, despite the hoarse, bordering-on-Howard-Dean-breakdown speech, I felt a wave of gratitude toward Hillary. Even Maureen Dowd felt it. She managed to get through nearly two-thirds of her column this morning and keep her Hillary hatred in check. And this morning I found myself giving my daughter a spontaneous what-we-owe-Hillary speech on the way to school.
One form this wistfulness takes is the very beginnings of suspicion about Obama, or at least reluctance to being sucked into the charisma. And this, for me, is focused on that "Yes We Can" video. Each time I watch it, I find it a little more creepy. First of all, I'm not so happy to see him surrounded by the likes of Amber Valletta and Scarlett Johansson. This blind Hollywood love is a little too Clinton throwback to me. Secondly, the phrase "Yes we can" is not one I find inspiring (It's better in Spanish). This is not Martin Luther King Jr. territory. It's more like the kind of pablum you hear around D.C. public schools. Thirdly, the worrisome thing about Obama is that people see in him what they want to see. The George Packer piece in last week's New Yorker inadvertently got at this in his quotes from Robert Reich. Reich talked about how the power of Obama, like the power of Robert Kennedy, lies in "his effect on others rather than in any specific policies." The "Yes We Can" video captures the most disturbing aspect of this phenomenon -- a group of people, and not necessarily intelligent or admirable people, literally stealing the words from Obama's mouth. In that video, Obama fuses with the supermodels and Hollywood starlets. They all forge into one big, bright light shining in your eyes.
Charisma is strange like that. It leaves you feeling high and ungrounded. Women (outside of Evita, of course) have good reason to be wary of it.
Of course, none of this will help Hillary. Wistfulness is usually a feeling you have when the game is over.
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When Hillary lost Iowa I started to regret my Obama allegiance (though I recovered by the New York primary) because I'm a sucker for the underdog. But now I find Hillary-as-loser a major turnoff. She really hasn't mastered the art of the concession speech.
At her El Paso rally last night she didn't congratulate Obama and failed to officially concede defeat (or did I miss something?). In fact, she only mentioned her opponent by name to criticize his health care plan. I also found her riff on the old "all hat, no cattle" joke a little off; she said "after seven years of George Bush we need a lot less hat and a lot more cattle!" Obviously she meant Obama's all talk, whereas she would bring home the bacon, or something. She also clearly meant to suggest that Obama is like the current president, which made me shudder. I hate to say this but last night it was Hillary who reminded me of W. - she can't admit her weak points and goes on the attack too much.
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When I lived in Seattle, I was a regular at Cineoke, where participants sing along, karaoke-style, to songs from movie musicals. My big number was “Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina,” from Evita. I’d bring audience members up on stage to serve as my descamisados, swaying and humming in the background as I did the signature double-arm raise of the former Argentine first lady from Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s musical.
I’m telling you all this because I caught Hillary Clinton’s speech in El Paso, Texas, last night, and I swear the former U.S. first lady was making the Evita arm motions. Hillary was a little hobbled by a hand-held microphone, so she couldn’t do the full double-arm benediction, but she did strike that pose before she took up the mic—check out her Evita form in the photos below. Could she be channeling Evita Peron to attract Latino voters?
Analysts have offered a lot of theories to explain Hillary’s appeal to Latinos, who, along with Asians, women, and over-50s, gave her the edge in the California primary last week. I’ve always resisted the “Latinos are used to women leaders” explanation. After all, of the many disparate groups that comprise the Latino electorate, very few have roots in countries that have or have had female rulers (Argentina, Chile, Panama, Nicaragua).
But, hey, in Hillary’s current position, I suppose it’s a good idea to try everything.
I did wonder if the Evita lyrics held any wisdom for the Clinton campaign. Let’s hope this snippet from “High Flying, Adored” doesn’t reflect the former front-runner’s experience too closely:
So famous, so easily, so soon, is not the wisest thing to be
You won't care if they love you, it's been done before
You'll despair if they hate you
You'll be drained of all energy
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Hillary Clinton lost women in both Virginia and Maryland tonight, and not by a little; nearly 60 percent chose Barack Obama. (Or Oback Barama, as former Maryland Rep. Kweisi Mfume just called him on MSNBC, which I'm sure made all those who've ever mispronounced his name feel better.) So, does that mean we're not her human firewall? Yes, it does, and here's why: Black women were supposed to be her biggest fans—remember the whole "women with needs" narrative?—only, they aren't. The new, amended story line is that, well, at least white women are squarely with Clinton—but even there, her 55 to 45 advantage tonight was an Al Gore-sized gender gap, not a yippee, a woman to vote for at last margin.
I don't think the point is that women are not responding to her the way African-American voters are responding to Obama—though that is true—but that no demographic is responding to her as it is to him. The guy won every income group, the Catholic swing-voters everybody said he'd have trouble with, independents by a mile, and Latinos. Which is a blow to identity politics but not, as I see it, to women; on the contrary, isn't it a testament to how far we've come that just because she is a woman doesn't mean she's automatically our woman? Yesterday, when a friend of mine said she didn't understand how any woman could decide not to support Hillary, all I could think was that that made no more sense to me than if she'd said she didn't understand not voting for the white person.
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Since the Iowa caucuses, I've been feeling the Hillary tug. Most of the women I've talked to in the last couple of months have felt it, too: Even if they weren't sure they'd vote for Hillary, they were rooting for her on some level. They wanted her to make a strong showing. They didn't want the girl who worked hard to lose willy-nilly to the guy who waltzed in. Those feelings must have helped bring more women than men to the polls in state after state, almost always in favor of Hillary.
But you know what? The tug doesn't feel the same to me now. I wonder if that's true for other Democratic women who could have gone either way, too. If Obama's margins are wide enough to carry women in Maryland and Virginia and D.C.tonight—and so far, according to the exit polls, he has the majority of women in Virginia, by a lot—maybe this shift will help explain why. Hillary has been an excellent first for us. No one else could have done what she's done, with all her aplomb and professionalism and seriousness. But she doesn't have to be the nominee, or the president, to have come through. She hung in there past every other contender, save one. She made it to the finals, the last round, overtime—whatever sports metaphor you want to use. I don't mean to suggest that she's done. But if she loses for good in the next weeks or months, she loses with dignity and heft and heart. And she'd leave us feeling, in a way I know I've never felt before, that a woman can be elected president. We already owe her. We'd owe her for that, too. Even if we don't owe her, or give her, our votes.
Read more posts about Hillary's losses in Maryland, Virginia, and D.C.
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Wow, Rachael. Kudos to you for highlighting the McCain Blogette. That is quite a campaign artifact. Like mother, like daughter, eh? That little anime silhouette in the corner wearing nothing but BRIGHT RED heels and a tank top, a certain part of the anatomy lit up by the glow of the laptop. A BBF named La-Toria, a la Paris and Nicole. Dozens of viewer letters from girl-fans saying some version of Wow! This is an awesome Web site! or You definitely bring a brighter side to your father's campaign!!! Dozens of links from boy fans saying some version of "Is she smoking hot?" (referring to Meghan of course) And the other sister, the adopted one with the braces and the scared look onstage, conspicuously absent.
I remember when Karenna Gore did campaign dispatches for Slate, and they were, as one McCain Blogette fan says, "refreshingly authentic." They were funny and ironic and just short of telling tales out of school. This Meghan McCain blog is something entirely different. It's like a poll-tested perfect shout-out to the MySpace generation. A little Ramones, a little Wonkette, a little Hannah Montana, some candid family pics and short, grainy clips from a cell-phone video.
Poor Chelsea. Earnest 4eva :(
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Coming in late to the "pimped out" conversation, I know, but I had a revelation while checking out Meghan McCain's blog. I wonder if the perception that Chelsea is being used by Hillary's campaign (like Dahlia, I need my job, so I'm not using the p-word) comes from what kind of work Chelsea is doing for the campaign, not the mere fact that she's out there at all. (And I want to say before I go on that I totally agree with Hanna's point that of course kids campaign for their parents.)
Chelsea is making phone calls and giving speeches (kinda boring ones, if I read Melinda correctly). Meanwhile, John McCain's daughter is telling us that "Riding on the plane for 5 hours to San Diego felt like: Rufus Wainwright's ‘Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk (Reprise),' " and "Having such a rockin' Super Tuesday felt like: Michael Jackson's ‘Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough.' " She intersperses photos of rallies and campagin stops with goofy pictures from her travels and talks about her love of fashion and going to In-and-Out burger. The clear message is that she's an otherwise normal twentysomething who loves her dad and thinks he will be a great president—there's so much visible warmth and enthusiasm. She's reaching out to young voters without making it seem like work.
I'm not so far removed from my 20s that I've forgotten that there's a difference between being 23, like Meghan, and 28, like Chelsea. But just because Chelsea is a successful, mature young woman shouldn't mean that she should have to stand up in a business suit and pumps and tell us how fiscally conservative her mom is. A recent piece from the Boston Globe—which is accompanied by a photo of Chelsea with Hillary that does convey great warmth—says that Chelsea is becoming more comfortable on the trail. If so, that's great for Chelsea. Maybe if she gets to find her own voice, people won't be so skeptical about it.
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I've written before about the effect of birth order on intelligence. It's not my favorite topic, because it pits older siblings against younger siblings and inevitably makes parents feel guilty. Here's a new study from Brigham Young University economics professor Joseph Price that offers a possible explanation for the IQ edge that firstborns supposedly have, on average, in addition to higher earnings and educational attainment. The central finding is that "first-born children get about 3,000 more hours of quality time with their parents between ages 4 and 13 than the next sibling gets when they pass through the same age range." More inequity. More guilt. Parents spend time evenhandedly on any given day. But, the study found, parents spend less time with children daily as families grow older. "First-born children get more quality time simply because they pass through childhood when there is more overall family time to be shared." What's more, the time that younger siblings do spend with their parents more often involves TV. Lucky them. I guess the good news is that more time with parents is good for kids' brains.
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After the events of this past weekend, it’s very difficult to hear Hillary Clinton extol the virtues of forgiveness. Indeed it’s extremely hard to hear Sen. Clinton say anything at all today over the relentless drumbeat in my own mind: “Don’t say pimp ... don’t say pimp ...”
I really need this job.
Clinton is typically fluid and charming before more than 800 students in American Politics 101, a class taught by the legendary Larry Sabato, at the University of Virginia. Batting back questions about biofuels and stem-cell research and universal health care with data and talking points, Clinton gets a solid 10 for technical merit. Still, you can’t help but wince when she gets to the parts of her remarks in which she describes people who lose their jobs. Clinton’s compassion for America’s unemployed is seemingly boundless, unless the unemployed in question have dissed her daughter.
The remarks seem to spin off into a different stratosphere in response to a student question about the “most influential person in her political career.” After paying homage to the Roosevelts, JFK, and LBJ, and with just a roundabout reference to her husband, Clinton arrives at Nelson Mandela. She describes Mandela at his inauguration, introducing three prison guards who’d treated him humanely in his many years at Robben Island. She quotes Mandela saying, “If I left prison embittered and full of hate, I would still be in prison. ... You have to give up whatever hate you have. You must learn to forgive.”
This is obviously a lesson with which Clinton still struggles. She can describe how powerfully it affected her that Mandela—in a spirit of bipartisan trust and hope—left the army and police force intact when he assumed power, while she cautions that 40 percent of Americans won't support a Democratic nominee regardless of who wins, presumably because there can be no trust or hope. She can claim to have forged deep personal friendships with individual Republicans—from Lindsey Graham to Sam Brownback—by getting beyond “caricatures” and “stereotypes.” But then she warns that whoever wins the Democratic nomination will surely be swift-boated—“subject to the full force of the Republican machine,” because “that’s what they’re good at.”
And Clinton draws a distinction between herself and Barack Obama when she says, “I have no illusions about bringing the country together in the absence of a fight.” But the implicit distinction between herself and Mandela is there, too. She wants reconciliation, and she wants to forgive, but she can’t get beyond her certainty that what needs forgiving and reconciling is an immovable wall that only she can overcome. Clinton wants to say that she, like Mandela, has not been exiled to some remote emotional prison of bitterness and hate. Yet she just saw to it that a reporter was suspended for saying mean words.
Dan Gross pointed out earlier today that the Clintons have a complicated relationship with forgiveness and redemption. Hillary Clinton wants to believe she’s forgiven what’s been done to her while warning us that she’s the only one tough enough to stand up to the next round of it. As always seems to be the case with the Clintons, the political is personal. The personal is personal, too.
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Here's Hillary on how things are going:
Solis Doyle's departure capped a rough weekend for Clinton after she lost the Louisiana primary and caucuses in Nebraska, Washington state, Maine and the Virgin Islands to Obama. She said she never expected to do well in any of those contests, even though she had been favored to win Maine. Clinton repeated her criticism that the caucus system is undemocratic and caters mostly to party activists. As for Louisiana, "You had a very strong and very proud African-American electorate, which I totally respect and understand," Clinton said.
So she didn't expect to win Nebraska, Washington state, and Maine because ... they're so white? At least, unlike her husband, she didn't mention Jesse Jackson—who also won Louisiana in 1984.
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Wouldn't you love to know the back story on Paul Krugman's column today? Because without knowing that his real beef is that his wife can't stop singing "Yes, we can," or maybe that his idiot nephew won't shut up about how all the cool people are on the O Train, it's all very mysterious: What is he referring to when he says "most of the venom I see is coming from supporters of Mr. Obama, who want their hero or nobody''? That Obama's supporters are not chill like Hillary Clinton's?
That is a fresh take, definitely, but where did he get the impression that "many Obama supporters seem happy with the application of 'Clinton rules'—the term a number of observers use for the way pundits and some news organizations treat any action or statement by the Clintons, no matter how innocuous, as proof of evil intent.'' Then he draws a straight line from there to ... Whitewater? Suggesting what? That if not Obama then those who mindlessly follow him approved of the vast right-wing thing? I'd hate to put this non-sequitur on a par with Krugman's buddy Bush mentioning 9/11 in the same breath with Saddam—but we're all in some danger, aren't we, of mirroring what we loathe?
His least original point, about how "the Obama campaign seems dangerously close to becoming a cult of personality,'' is one I hear all the time from Hillary supporters who claim it is a sign of immaturity to support Obama and that to believe there is any other way of doing business is really to believe in a fairy tale. But thinking that any one group or campaign or party has cornered the market on "most of the venom'' is what seems like kid stuff to me.
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I just figured out why I might have such kinship with the heroin freak. Her father is a cabdriver! Outside the Holy Land, we must be among the very few Jewish women who can make that claim.
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Fascinating post, Dan. It would have been fine if Hillary said the "pimped out" remark was contemptible, Shuster apologized, and everyone moved on. But I agree that it is discomforting when the person who wants to be president demands someone be fired for an offensive comment. And does Hillary really want to be delivering the message that we can expect her administration to respond with thin-skinned victimization to ill-considered remarks? I believe Hillary was genuinely offended, but she is also pushing this so hard because she thinks it will somehow play well. How exhausting. Especially when you compare it to how gracefully Obama has brushed off the racial insinuations in this campaign.
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A guest post from Daniel Gross, who writes Slate's "Moneybox" column:
I'll declare my interest upfront: David Shuster has been one of my closest friends for 26 years, long before we got into journalism. So if you want to dismiss this whole post, a priori, feel free.
No matter how much the term pimp has become mainstreamed, it is was a poor choice of words. But the efforts to paint Shuster as a malicious misogynist are way off-base. He has been a scrupulously honest and fair reporter for 18 years—at CNN, at ABC's Little Rock affiliate, at Fox News Channel, and MSNBC—and he richly does not deserve the storm of criticism and pressure being rained upon him.
Context, of course, is everything. As the Clinton campaign noted, there has been a "pattern of behavior" of on-air hosts at MSNBC and other outlets making derogatory references to women in general, and to Hillary in particular. Critics have charged that Chris Matthews, the anchor of MSNBC, is an offender in this regard. The cable news landscape is filled with men who let their bile-filled ids run rampant. CNN's Glenn Beck is Archie Bunker without the comic timing. Bill. O. Reilly. But these clowns are largely condoned—no, encouraged—by their bosses. And they never apologize. And they're never suspended.
Shuster, who has been suspended by MSNBC, apologized on the air—twice. On Friday, he tried to apologize personally to Hillary and Chelsea—on the phone and via e-mail—but was rebuffed. On Saturday, the Clinton campaign released a letter to NBC head Steve Capus declaring that "no temporary suspension or half-hearted apology is sufficient." In effect, a U.S. senator called for General Electric, a publicly held company with all sorts of interests in front of the government, to fire one of its employees.
The Clintons' refusal to accept an apology is strange given that they are among our era's great forgivers. Hillary has forgiven Bill for the enormously public humiliations he inflicted on her and Chelsea in the late 1990s. All the Clintons have shown an ability gracefully to reconcile with their implacable foes. In recent years, Hillary has buddied up with vast-right-wing-conspiracy progenitor Rupert Murdoch. Bill Clinton broke bread with Richard Mellon Scaife, who devoted a chunk of his fortune to destroying the Clintons in the 1990s—and nearly succeeded. And they've also shown a remarkable ability to grant indulgences to people who make nasty remarks about their only child. Remember John McCain's 1998 joke about Chelsea being so ugly because her father was Janet Reno? McCain apologized for this bit of straight talk, and the two senators have since bonded over shots of vodka in Estonia.
So, why are the Clintons, who have always excelled at burying the hatchet, now trying to bury it between my friend's shoulder blades? Well, it's a lot easier to be a mensch when you're winning than when you're losing. Consider, again, the context. On Tuesday, Clinton and Obama fought to a draw in the primaries. Then came news that while Obama had raised $32 million in January, Hillary had been forced to loan her campaign $5 million, and that senior aides were working for free. (Hillary has since reported a $10 million month.) On Saturday, as the candidate was signing her name to a memo declaring Shuster beyond the pale of forgiveness, Obama was eating Hillary's lunch in Washington, Louisiana, and Kansas, and the Clinton campaign was shaking up its top ranks. Another butt-kicking in Maine followed. In recent weeks, umbrage has joined inevitability and experience as a recurring Clinton motif. And Shuster's misuse of a bit of slang has functioned as a heaping portion of that umbrage.
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Sorry to interrupt the Chelsea thread, but onward, for a moment. Last week, my book group was lucky enough to host Carol Gilligan. Normally our meetings are cozy and humble; this time we were cozy and grand. Carol talked about her new novel, Kyra. I confess I haven't finished the book (the group is also very forgiving). But it was really a thrill to listen to a highly respected researcher talk about hurling herself over the fiction cliff. That is quite a risk, and Carol surely did not need to take it. And yet she did, with gusto, going so far as to take an introductory fiction writing class and to fall in love with her characters to the point that she expected to run into them when she had dinner recently at a Cambridge restaurant they go to in the book.
Inevitably, the conversation turned to the election. Carol, who is a Hillary supporter, made the same observation that you made, Meghan: When Hillary said she found her voice, she really did; in that moment, the timber and resonance or her speech was deeper and richer. Coming from the author of In a Different Voice, that's powerful confirmation.
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It seems patently ridiculous to say Chelsea is being "pimped out." She's 28. She's smart and articulate. She's been quiet a long time. In fact, I would say she hasn't been pimped out enough. Where is there a candidate's child anywhere in America who doesn't shill for their parents? It seems natural, and when they fail to do it, we think something's wrong (Reagan's son, Guiliani's kids). If you want to argue about pimping out, then look at the Edwards kids, campaigning before they were out of diapers.
Shuster was totally wrong, but the more important point is the Clintons' reactions. Apparently, Shuster has offered to apologize to all involved; the NBC president got down on his knees. But they won't have it--they are just too insulted and outraged.
I mean, come on. Hillary's the tough one who knows how to fight the right-wing machine, right? So, why does she take it seriously? Why does she pay any attention to this nonsense? Are we supposed to believe Chelsea just crumpled when she heard the word pimp attached to her name and took to her bed? No. This is just the Clintons, at home and alive again, in their happy role as the Most Aggrieved.
Who needs Chelsea, anyway, when we've got Amy? Amy Winehouse, that is. I've seen that recent paparazzi shot of her wandering the streets in just her bra. I've watched that cell-phone video of her smoking crack in a seedy room. I know she looks like a heroin addict, and she's an embarrassment to Jewish women everywhere. I know that song "Rehab" is an absolute lie--nobody needs rehab more (and she, in fact, DID go to rehab a couple of weeks ago). Accepting her Grammy award, she was barely comprehensible, and she seemed to sign off with something like "Burn Londontown Down."
I usually have no interest in the starlets hellbent on self-destruction. And yet, I can't get enough of her.
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Chelsea Clinton has no trouble talking, as it turns out, though she doesn't seem to enjoy it much. The former First Kid took audience questions for nearly an hour at a small campaign event today at the University of Maryland, where she was articulate, knowledgeable and almost completely without affect.
There's a reason most people have never heard her voice; at a campaign rally in Utah on Jan. 29, Chelsea told the crowd she'd never spoken in public before, and "I'm feeling a little bit intimidated about that.'' She did not seem particularly nervous in front of a couple of hundred people on the campus in College Park, but rarely smiled as she reeled off the details of her mother's campaign proposals in a soft near-monotone.
On a makeshift stage in the student union's lower level food court, she said hello and made just one point about her mom—briefly pitching her as a fiscal conservative—before going straight to the Q & A. Now that she's in the financial sector herself, said Chelsea, who works for a hedge fund, she sees how important it is that Hillary Clinton puts a price tag on all of her policy proposals: "She tells you how she'll pay for everything, and that makes her the most fiscally conservative person on either side of the aisle.''
She began nearly every answer similarly: "I'm really proud that ...'' When asked about her mother's plan to expand insurance coverage, she began, "I'm proud that she stood up for universal health care,'' then went on to suggest that her own health benefits are not what they might be: "If you're like me and you're not happy with your employer-provided health care'' you'd do better under the Clinton plan. To a young man in the Air Force who wondered what would happen to his pay if Clinton were elected, she said, "I'm really proud how she worked with Lindsey Graham'' to push for regular military pay raises. Without altering her even, pleasant tone of voice, she added, "I don't know how many of you know Lindsey Graham, but he is a very conservative senator and someone who prosecuted my father in the '90s.''
Asked about the deficit, she characterized her mother as "even more fiscally conservative than my dad,'' and in speaking about how her mother would push for global action on global climate change, said Hillary would be like "Thatcher banging Reagan and Gorbachev's heads together'' and convincing them they could talk to each other. Restarting the Kyoto process would "be good for the children and grandchildren I hope to have, and be good for our economy.''
Twice, she said enigmatically that it was humbling to be speaking to people younger than she: "Some of you are a lot younger than I am, I say with another dose of humility.'' Her biggest applause line of the day was, predictably, when she said her mom wants to double the amount of Pell grants to low-income college students. If her mother had not had access to student loans, she said, "I quite literally would not be standing here.''
The question she herself most clearly enjoyed was from a young woman who said, "There's so much sexism in this campaign and in the attacks on your mom. I'm wondering, how do you and your mom take the sexism?''
"You should talk to your friends about what you think motivates the coverage and what it implies,'' Chelsea answered, flashing a rare smile. She cracked a grin, too, when Nandini Jammi, a UMD sophomore, read her a limerick she'd prepared for the occasion. "My boyfriend is here and he's never written me a limerick,'' Chelsea responded. The verse went like this:
When I was a girl, I saw Bill
Run for the president with skill
Now Hillary is awesome
As executive, she'll blossom
So for you Chelsea, Capitol Hill?
"No,'' Bill and Hillary's daughter answered quietly. "I do have a very personal political ambition, and that is to help my mom become my president.'' The only question she did not answer was about what she makes of Barack Obama's amazing popularity and whether her mother would consider choosing Obama as her running mate if she got their party's nomination: "I'm really proud of the broad base of support my mom has also inspired,'' Chelsea told the questioner. "I think the fact that my mom has won re-election and won the plurality of the electorate''—even winning support from farmers in upstate New York—"is a major endorsement of her electability.'' As for whether they'll end up as running mates, "That came up in the debate in L.A. and I would urge you to look at that; I don't have anything to add.''
These weren't reporters asking the questions, so nobody inquired about David Shuster, or whether she thinks the MSNBC reporter's head ought to roll for suggesting that her mom had "pimped her out'' by moving her into a speaking role. Or whether her mother, who has demanded that he be fired, was perhaps exaggerating the slight, hoping to capitalize on the grievance ahead of Tuesday's primaries.
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Ann, your daughter is surely right that nobody pressured Chelsea Clinton into making those calls on her mom's behalf—but I'm not even sure that's what David Shuster was saying. "Pimped out" is pretty harsh, and not something anyone would have said about Cate Edwards or the Bush twins or the Kerry girls, but why is that? I think it's because for a young woman who grew up in the White House, Chelsea has enjoyed a pretty impressive zone of privacy—so that when her parents, who've convinced everybody that she's still off-limits, even as an adult and even on the campaign trail, do seem to be bringing her forward for their own reasons, as they did at the height of Monica madness, it's seen as hypocritical. (Everybody wants to have it both ways, but Bill and Hill often actually get to, and not everybody admires their ability to pull that off.)
Calling Shuster's remark "beneath contempt'' is perhaps going a shade too far as well, no? MSNBC has suspended him for saying such a thing. And he's the latest in a long line of people who have regretted ever mentioning Chelsea—from the kid who was fired from the Stanford Daily for writing about her being on campus to SNL's Lorne Michaels for the infamous Wayne's World skit in which she was described as a "future fox'' to ... well, John McCain, whose awful joke about Janet Reno being her daddy will really come back to haunt him now.
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Here's one daughter's-eye view of the daughter now speaking out on the campaign trail: My teenager dismisses the idea that Chelsea suddenly has marching orders. Chelsea never felt she had to speak up or play a political role before, my daughter points out, so it makes sense to assume she's now in the fray because she's decided she wants to be. Perhaps it's worth noting (this is now me, not my daughter) that over in the Obama campaign, kids seem to be calling some key political shots these days. Caroline Kennedy made a point of saluting her teenagers as the galvanizing force behind her endorsement; Sen. Claire McCaskill's 18-year-old daughter pushed her off the fence. I hear similar stuff, again and again: Obama mamas and papas say they've signed up in no small part because he's their teens' candidate and has gotten the kids so excited. Now, I'm not saying Hillary is running because Chelsea urged her to, but with all these young people out there getting credit for being dynamos, I can easily imagine that Chelsea, almost 28 now, decided she'd hung back long enough and wanted in on the action.
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Emily B, I'm with you that I'm left feeling very uneasy about Chelsea's emergence on the campaign trail. She makes me think of Michael Corleone in Godfather III: "Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!" How many times can one person be First Child? She's waved goodbye to her Secret Service agents and the press hordes, grown up, started a career, and now the poor thing has been pulled back in. All these months, as she's stood there silently behind her mother, I've wondered about their dynamic. Did Chelsea say, "Mom, I want to do anything to help you win, but please don't make me speak"? Or did Hillary say, "Baby, I need you out there to prove that I'm a human being. All you have to do is stand there and smile; you don't even have to speak"? Now Chelsea is calling talk-show hosts begging them to vote for her mother and forwarding unhinged rants about sexism. Yes, she's now an adult able to make her own decisions, but I feel sorry for her. What must it have been like to grow up in the Clinton White House?
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The Clinton campaign may have shined the media glare on Chelsea this week by having her call up the hosts of The View, but that doesn't mean they're ready for the harsh lighting. David Shuster of MSNBC's Hardball said on the air that it's a "little bit unseemly to me that Chelsea's out there calling up celebrities" and superdelegates. Then he asked, "Doesn't it seem like Chelsea's sort of being pimped out in some weird sort of way?" (Here's the full exchange with Bill Press.) A Clinton spokesman called Shuster's statements "beneath contempt" and said he can't envision the campaign participating in any more debates on that network.
Is this use of pimped out inherently offensive? Is that, in fact, what the campaign is doing with Chelsea? Are they now taking excessive umbrage so they can generate coverage and sympathy? Sorry to be so cynical, but the question about Chelsea's role seems pretty inevitable, if not the words Shuster used. If they expect her to be treated as the daughter in the bubble, doesn't she have to stay in the bubble? (Or maybe I am having a Friday afternoon moment of heartlessness.)
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Ellen, that is how I felt after I read an interview with The Sopranos' creator David Chase way back when, explaining that every word out of every character's mouth was a lie. (Up until then, I'd spent the whole hour going, "Well, that's not true ... and that's not either.'' So with that off my shoulders, well, I was freed up for whole other levels of viewing enjoyment. Sad, really.) And yes, Rachael, you are our rightful Elisabeth—even if I'm guessing it would take more than a congratulatory note on the birth of your baby to get you to reconsider Hillary Clinton. So now that your guy John McCain has the nomination, he knows he needs to make nice with Republicans well to your right, as he did yesterday at CPAC. But I think I finally get their McCain hatred after hearing an interview with the American Conservative Union's David Keene on Diane Rehm the other day. (And no, it is not the same as Hillary hatred on the left, over policy disappointments, political hedging, and Iraq, Iraq, Iraq.)
Keene was explaining that sure, some of the conservative anger toward McCain is over the issues—campaign finance, for instance, and initially opposing the Bush tax cuts as a ridiculously good deal for rich people. But a lot of it, Keene said, is only personal, because McCain is the kind of guy who can't seem to resist poking his finger in your eye, especially if you're someone he really ought to be sucking up to. (Sort of how Galileo's real sin was not as much his maverick views on Copernicus as his glee in making an ass of his pal Pope Urban in print. There he was, so enjoying his own bon mots, right up until the Inquisition arrived.) Unlike Hillary Clinton, in other words, McCain is the opposite of ingratiating. Suddenly, listening to Keene, I realized why I like this guy with whom I agree on so little. And why folks who do agree with him but have often felt his elbow in their ribs—hey, what was that for?—can go to pieces at the sound of his name. Keene said he personally is working on getting past some of the old slights, and I'm sure the GOP knows it can't wait 300 years to forgive him.
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I must admit, I was getting very frustrated by Lost last season, in the same way I used to be frustrated by The X-Files, namely: They just pose a lot of questions and they never answer them.
That is, until my colleague Juliet let me in on the Lost formula. Here’s how she put it:
I'm hardly the first person to notice, but it's set up like this: In the first few minutes something big happens that advances the thematic, or arc plot elements of the show (survivors vs. others). The next 30 minutes are filled with flashbacks (or not—flash-forwards) and melodramatic romantic tensions, personal crises, etc. The last few minutes returns to big events and introduces a new mystery (Who is that guy? Is he good? Why isn't he dead? ), which is answered slowly in the first five minutes and last five minutes of subsequent shows. That's why it's so addictive …
And voilà! Now I can enjoy Lost again. Case in point, last night’s episode. Our “something big” was four people landing on the island in four different locations. The next 30 minutes are about the four people as they try to find each other (peppered among unhelpful flashbacks of their interest in Oceanic flight 815) and melodramatic romantic tensions (Why did Sawyer leave Kate with Jack? Kate is peeved to see Juliet again!). And finally we return to our big event and introduce a new mystery (Spoiler Alert: Read no further if you have not yet watched the episode): How does Ben know these people and why have they come for him?
I’m a bit embarrassed I didn’t catch on to this before. Normally, I’d be sitting there wondering, “Who are those guys? What do they want?” and actually hoping and expecting to get some answers. Last night I sat back and thought, “Eh, they aren’t going to answer this …” and I relaxed and enjoyed the show … feeling a bit superior, I must admit.
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Melinda,
I thought I was our Elisabeth! Sadly, I'm not so young or blonde, but I am (mostly) conservative. I also missed the View episode in which the ladies mocked Chelsea for calling them in support of her mother, but here's what I'm wondering about. Why would ANYONE seek the endorsement of Sherri Shepherd, who once waffled on whether the Earth was round and another time confused Jesus Christ with Adam and Eve?
I just hope we don't have any Rosies lurking among us!
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Or maybe the Clinton campaign is not so strapped for cash after all: ABC News is reporting that contrary to earlier reports, senior campaign staff is still getting paid as usual. And one Democratic consultant not aligned with any campaign speculates that the whole "we're so broke" narrative might have been a fund-raising stunt for the benefit of potential donors.
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I don't guess I have ever seen The View—even if we are a sort of online homage to their caffeinated trailblazing. (Only, who is our Elisabeth?) But on yesterday's show, Whoopi and Joy and Sherri went where no Washington reporter has ever dared to tread; they made fun of Chelsea Clinton.
On Monday, co-host Joy Behar said on the air that she still hadn't decided on a presidential candidate. So the next day, after casting her ballot, Behar returns home, picks up her ringing phone and hears the breathy voice of Bill and Hillary's 27-year-old daughter, who was belatedly making a pitch on her mom's behalf. "At first, I thought it was a crank,'' Behar said. Because who knew Chelsea made campaign calls? (Or—until Emily B brought it to our attention—fired off campaign e-mails? And btw, the semi-grammatical, loosely informed message from Chelsea does not seem to have been a hoax, as Emily Y hoped.) Turns out, Chelsea also called The View's Whoopi Goldberg and Sherri Shepherd on Tuesday, and they all re-enacted the calls on yesterday's show, cracking up as they imitated her little-girl voice: "I was like, "Talk up! I can't hear you!'' Shepherd said.
Is this why Chelsea is usually silent? Because she sounds like Marilyn Monroe? Her parents have always been ultra-protective of her, to the point that the first year they were in the White House, they didn't even include her in the family Christmas card. Which was understandable when she was 12, but is increasingly odd now that she's grown; remember her father's insistence, just a few months back, that a New York restaurant take down a photo of Chelsea they'd had hanging on the wall alongside shots of other famous folks who had eaten there?
Maybe now, in any case, the Garbo of the political world is cutting loose at last; hard as it is to believe, she apparently addressed a crowd for the first time in her life on Jan. 29, at the University of Utah: "I'm feeling a little bit intimidated about that,'' she told the audience. She also filled in for her mom at the University of Delaware on Monday. And now that she's dialing for votes, who will hear from her next? Katie Couric? Kelly Ripa? Or if we're really lucky, Maureen Dowd? As you know, Miss Clinton, the D.C./Maryland/Virginia primary is next Tuesday, and some of us are on the fence, too! (Uh-oh, I think I just figured out who our Elisabeth is. Operators will not be standing by.)
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Emily Y. makes a great point about the risks involved in sharing a joint tax return with Bill Clinton; I had an off-the-record chat with the charming Kazakh dictator once, and there is zero chance Clinton did not know he was dealing with a complete thug. The guy is like something out of an animated version of The Sopranos.
So, the Clintons keep two houses and two checkbooks—and this $5 million loan to the campaign does come out of her account, according to the campaign, as it would have to, under the law. But their careers and finances seem impossible to divide into his and hers. (Would she have gotten an $8 million advance for her revisionist, group-written memoir, Living History, if her hubby hadn't been president? No. Then again, would he have ever been president if she hadn't been with him? Maybe not. And so on ...) They are absolutely inseparable as a political force—a fact that, more than her gender, her vote to authorize the war in Iraq, or her role in scandals past, has got to be the question facing her campaign.
Which led me into this recent argument with my own other half: I say Al Gore's widely derided decision to sideline Bill in 2000 is looking smarter and smarter in retrospect; he argues that my favorite Nobel-winner would be finishing up his second term if only he hadn't indulged his post-Monica anger toward Bill. Thoughts? (So I can pass on only those in full agreement with me ...)
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Dahlia, maybe the $5 million comes from Hillary's bank account. She did make about $10 million from writing her autobiography. Isn't the real question: Why does she needs the money? In spite of her continuing good showing on election days, Obama is floating in cash, while she's cutting staffers' pay. But the bigger issue you raise is an important point about her entwined life with Bill. This incredible story in the New York Times lays out the dangers of having Bill engage in his philanthropic activities during a Hillary administration. It seems Bill and a major contributor to his charity, Frank Guistra, took a trip to Kazakhstan recently (not to film a sequel to Borat). Bill ended up praising the country's notorious dictator, a man both Hillary and the United States government have denounced. Bill's friend came away from the trip with a lucrative uranium deal. Guistra gave Bill's charity $30 million (for a total contribution of—I'm not making this up—$130 million). And then Bill and Guistra lied to the New York Times about a subsequent meeting with a high Kazakh uranium official at Bill's home in Chappaqua (their memories were refreshed when the Times found others who confirmed the meeting). If you were a Republican, wouldn't you want Hillary to be the nominee?
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Anyone wanna tell me what to make of the Clinton campaign loaning itself $5 million—ostensibly to level the playing field with Obama? We had a rollicking discussion here over the merits of Hillary’s refracted glory last month, and at the time I had no problem defending the fact that her fame was partly (mainly?) attributable to Bill’s. But is there a principled feminist argument to be made defending her spending their (his?) money? Money derived from his ability to command jillions of dollars per speech?
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That is a dandy plan if you don't want any of those bad, evil Republicans to vote for you in the fall. (And sure they still hate her; I think the clinical term is playing possum.)
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An ancient Egyptian charm:
Oh, Isis, deliver me from the hands of all bad, evil, red things!
Maybe Hillary hopes this is what Republicans are chanting at the moment. (See Maureen Dowd's column this morning on Hillary selling herself as the only one who has experience beating back the evil Republican forces, as opposed to "Obambi.")
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Meghan, about your momentum question, I've been thinking about it this way: Does Obama have enough momentum to continue gaining? Since Hillary expected to sew it up on Super Tuesday a political lifetime ago, that seems like a fair framing. The best answer I saw today came from Noam Scheiber at TNR, in a post that David Plotz sent around to us at Slate. The upcoming contests over the next couple of weeks are either caucuses (Nebraska, Washington state, Maine), which have favored Obama, or have demographics that favor Obama (Louisiana, Maryland, D.C., Virginia). Then, in the beginning of March, the race will shift to Ohio and Texas, where Hillary has been ahead. If Obama has indeed won most of the intervening contests, that will be the big mo test.
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Michelle Obama is no Nancy Reagan, either, and I think maybe all of these women are just trying to "pop'' on TV. But—shameless forced transition alert—whatever shade we're in the market for ... doesn't it seem like the phrase "shop until you drop'' is taking on an ominous new meaning? Seriously, we've become so used to this level of violence that it barely registers, but just last Saturday, five women were shot to death in a Lane Bryant store in a Chicago suburb. The very next day, three men were killed in what the AP described as a "dining, shopping and entertainment complex'' in Largo, Md. That follows the December tragedy in which a 19-year-old took down eight others before fatally shooting himself at a mall in Omaha, Neb. Not to be confused with the time earlier in the year when another teenager murdered five people at a mall in Salt Lake City. So my question is, at what point does our patriotic duty to shop run up against our God-given right to pack a semiautomatic? And as long as we're still mulling our presidential options, is any candidate out there ever going to have a single word to say about gun control?
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All this talk about First Ladies wearing red got me thinking about My So Called Life. In one of the first episodes, the dad character says he thinks Hillary Clinton doesn't wear enough red. That was a "thing" during the '90s, wasn't it--I mean people complaining about Hillary's color palatte? As Dana suggests, maybe the red complaint was shorthand for "she's no Nancy Reagan."
So what does it mean that Hillary wears more red now (at the State of the Union, for example) than she ever did as first lady? I buy that Michelle Obama's trying to evoke Nancy, but surely Hillary's going for something else, right? I think it makes her look tough and bold. The color doesn't evoke submission.
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Hanna, I had the same question about whether there was a secret Neiman Marcus store available for political women after watching the State of the Union speech: That night, all the Washington ladies--including Hillary, no aspiring first lady there--were wearing the same shade of fire-engine red. I'm sure part of the point is to help the camera find you. But it looked like the doings of a sly Oscar Wildean fashion consultant, slumming around behind their backs and telling each one of them, "You should really wear more red." (Melinda, how much do you know about your red-counseling astrologer?)
On the speeches last night: I actually thought neither Hillary nor Barack was at their best, but it almost didn't matter, since there was just so much energy in the rooms around them. Meanwhile, since I'm alone out here in Texas, I'm dying to know what my fellow XXFactorites (XXFactorettes? Yikes!) make of the narrative of Obama and "momentum." The conventional wisdom last night on CNN and NPR was that Obama could win in two ways: one, by accumulating enough sheer delegate-count and, more likely, 2) by gaining enough "momentum." Today's conventional wisdom seems to be split on whether last night offered a display of Obama "momentum" or not. Kevin Drum thinks not. I, frankly, can't tell.
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I feel sort of sorry for the Republicans today as they face the end of their interlude of disarray. And I can't share the editorialists' dour view of the bruising fight ahead for the Democrats, whose race is still so unsettled. Here's to continued dithering! Like Meghan yesterday, writing from Texas, and Anne from Poland, what I'm fascinated by, and totally in step with, is the mood of indecision and unpredictability. Lots of people headed into the voting booth not sure which way they'd go: That's what I heard, too, from family and friends in the Northeast. And it's not just mushy Democrats who are still wavering, but evangelicals as well, hardly your waffling type. Take a look at the astonishing Barna Group study Hanna cited yesterday, and what's really striking is that so many evangelicals--the subset of born-again Christians who are really conservative (believe that everything the Bible asserts is true, that God is perfect and all-knowing, etc.)--haven't made up their minds, either: "a whopping 40%," as the study puts it, are still undecided (with 45 percent ready to support the Republican nominee, and 11 percent the Democratic contender). And this from a voting bloc that has until now seemed made of granite: 85 percent of evangelicals voted Republican in 2004. So many ditherers on all sides don't seem to add up to an embattled nation, entrenched in polarized camps. We're baffling the pollsters. Who knows, maybe we can surprise ourselves, too.
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Hanna, you raise an interesting point about Hillary hatred. Now that she's won millions of votes all across the country, is Hillary hatred actually a phantom? Or is it bubbling below the surface, ready to blow in the fall like a wildcat well in There Will Be Blood? All the Republican commentators I saw last night said they fervently hope Hillary, not Obama, is the nominee against McCain. This article lays out the oft-heard argument that Hillary hatred will send moderates and independents rushing to McCain (could it all be Republican disinformation because they know everyone secretly loves Hillary?). When the whole Clinton family gathered onstage before Hillary's speech, I had that feeling I now get whenever I see Bill ("Go away, please, go away!"). Is that what Republicans are hoping will rise up in the fall if Hillary's the nominee? I thought both Hillary and Obama gave pedestrian speeches—which is better for her. Supposedly she gave a rousing address at her college commencement, magic she's been unable to capture ever since. We expect so much uplift from him that when he sounds a little off, it's a letdown.
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Dahlia, you got that right: Putting prospective first ladies in red suits is a none-too-subtle code meant to evoke the administration that's currently back in nostalgic vogue. Nancy Reagan wore the color so often (usually in that same fire-engine shade we saw last night) that it came to be called "Reagan red." Last year, Mrs. Reagan took Laura Bush on a tour of an exhibit of red dresses at the Reagan Library. To wear it is to quote her as unambiguously as McCain evoked the Reagan/Stallone '80s by marching onstage to the Rocky theme for his victory speech. Michelle Obama's donning of the hue is more complex. Obviously, this choice is supposed to recall the general optimism of the morning-in-America days. But is it also meant to reassure us that Michelle, who only last year left her high-powered job as an executive at the University of Chicago hospitals, will remain safely on the Nancy-esque sidelines when her husband becomes president, confining her role to charity work like the cleft-palate foundation whose board Cindy McCain serves on (and through which she adopted their now-16-year-old daughter from Bangladesh)? At any rate, the color-coded association of both women with the ultimate loyal-but-silent political spouse clearly serves to distance them from a certain prospective first husband who doesn't need to wear loud colors to get himself noticed.
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Hanna, Melinda, aren’t all those red power suits just girl-code for Nancy Reagan? As in my-husband-is-just-like-Ronnie-red?
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Well, devil temptress, thy name is Hanna, but I am standing my ground on Cindy McCain; well-exfoliated, yes, but love the upsweep. As for the color red, maybe it's on my mind because I recently had my once-a-decade consult with my friendly neighborhood (purple-haired, feminist) astrologer, whose VW is wearing one of my all-time favorite bumper stickers: "Isis, Isis, Rah, Rah, Rah!'' (The last time I went, in 1995, she correctly predicted what day I was going to conceive twins, so until lately I'd been scared to go back.) And you know what wisdom she had for me this time? "What are you, in the witness relocation program?'' she wanted to know. "You should wear more red.''
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As it happens, Dahlia, I watched all the candidates' speeches early this morning, (thank you, CNN International) and I thought Hillary's performance was notably worse than the others. She was the only one who seemed to be reading from notes, the only one who looked down at the podium more than out at the audience, the only one whose cliches grated. Everyone else seemed to be speaking more or less spontaneously. McCain was relaxed; Huckabee was funny; Romney was grim; Obama was inspirational; only Hillary seemed utterly humorless, completely emotion-free, and not even especially happy. Her rhetoric may sound good on paper, but she is incapable of delivering it in a way that seems convincing. This is not a remotely original observation, but it somehow seemed particularly stark last night.
Maybe this year she's unlucky with her competition: If she was up against notably poor public speakers like George W. Bush (or even George H.W. Bush) it might not matter, but if you listen to her right after hearing Huckabee, as I did—and I do not speak here as a potential Huckabee voter—she just sounds stiff and phony. Doesn't she have advisors who can get on top of this? It seems strange.
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I agree with all but No. 4. Michelle Obama looks good in anything, and Cindy McCain looks scary in everything. Also, is there some rule that says all potential first ladies have to wear red? I don't think I've ever seen a red suit in a store. Is there some special, secret VIP section of Neiman Marcus that sells only red? And now, to be really catty, when did all political women start to get Botoxed?
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Every year for Lent, I give up speaking ill of anyone. It is a long 40 days, and it begins today. (I mention this so that if it seems like I've had my brain removed, no, I haven't, and I will be back to my old critical self before you can say mortification of the flesh.) But in the humble spirit of the season, what did we learn from Super Fat Tuesday?
1) Change is good: The single most unambiguous piece of information to come out of last night is that Democrats see the promise of change as way more important than the value of experience—52 percent to 23 percent said it was the No. 1 thing they were looking for in a candidate. And since in '08 shorthand Obama equals change and Clinton equals experience, this can only be good news for him; the candidate who wins the argument about what the election is over generally wins the election. (Only "generally'' may no longer apply, which leads us to our second lesson.)
2) Polls are caca, and all the rules have been suspended. Even more than has been generally acknowledged, this race is so fluid and voters so volatile that pollsters can't seem to keep up, and known patterns seem not to apply. The good in this is that it challenges some of our laziest assumptions and silliest stereotypes like ...
3) Conservatives are sheep who go bah, bah, bah all the way home. Not true, and I don't think it's so much that conservative talk radio has lost its influence as that it never had the authority to issue edicts in the first place; when Rush and Laura and Sean reflect conservative opinion, they do magnify it, but when they don't, voters seem to have no trouble dissenting.
4) Women across the ideological spectrum look great in red. Nah, scratch that one; Cindy McCain and Michelle Obama look good in anything. And on that positive note, one day down, 39 to go.
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Here's what's confusing me about last night's results. I have been operating under the assumption that vast swaths of red America hate Hillary. But she won in Tennessee and Oklahoma. She won among less-educated white men. She cleaned up with women. That, combined with that Barna study I cited yesterday saying born-agains prefer Hillary to all other candidates. Is Hillary hatred no more?
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After three days of coughing and spitting and quite literally losing her voice everywhere, Hillary Clinton’s speech tonight sidestepped the odd, preteen claim she recently made about having "found her voice" someplace along the campaign trail. Instead she finally paid homage to the other voices she’s been hearing there and in chaneling those voices she came as close as she comes to looking comfortable in her own skin. The speech worked so well because it reached beyond All Things Clinton, and honored “your voice, your values, your dreams.”
This is the rhetorical flourish we’ve come to associate with Barack Obama—that all this is bigger than the candidates. Clinton’s finally figured out that voters are less moved by incantations of “yes she can,” than “yes we can.” And so she deftly honored the working women and the feminist pioneers and the children for whom she was meant to be speaking all along.
She distilled everything shrill and entitled in that wretched Robin Morgan essay into this pitch-perfect formulation: Clinton simply thanked her mother, “born before women could vote, who is watching her daughter on this stage tonight.”
There was a plea to end the war, to guarantee health insurance and to promote stem-cell research, and a promise that she won’t let anyone “swiftboat this country.” There was yet another pledge to hear our voices—not hers, ours. And then a lingering image of another tough New York broad who’s heard it all, but said very little—the State of Liberty, who just wants to be given some tired huddled folks to shelter.
A nice speech, stem to stern, illuminating that sometimes "finding your voice" just requires getting out of its way.
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The story line tonight is a familiar one. Hillary Clinton built her victories in Nevada and New Hampshire on women, older voters, and voters who make less than $50,000 a year (and in Nevada, Latinos). Tonight, she appears to have leads with some or all of those groups in the states she has won: Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, and Tennessee. According to early exit polls—and they're early, so the precise numbers could change—she is up among women in each of these states, and others, by at least 15 points. OK, New York doesn't count, because it's her home state. But in all the states that have been called so far for which there is exit polling, it looks as if women were a hefty majority of voters overall—as much as 57 or 58 percent. Obama may have won by a small margin among men in New Jersey, but not by enough to overcome the Women for Hillary numbers. Clinton also won most of the Latinos in New Jersey and most of the older voters (age 65 and older) in all the early states except Illinois. These categories look like big, fat Clinton leads. The split among people who earn less than $50,000 a year is a bit closer. But Hillary also looks to be far ahead among people who have not gone to college. Meanwhile, Obama is well ahead with independents (with the probable exception of Massachusetts) and hugely with black voters. He is also generally up with people under 30, people who went to college, and the earners of $50,000 or more a year. That's true not just in the states he has won so far—Georgia, Delaware, Alabama, Illinois—but in the others as well.
What to make of this? The voting blocs are holding steady.The majority of each group knows what it likes, and it's not being swayed by the ongoing campaigning. And as women outvote men, they go a long way toward carrying Hillary. If they give her California later tonight, despite the Maria Shriver/Caroline Kennedy/Oprah Winfrey juggernaut, that's, well, a big blow for Obama. We are queenmakers, it seems. Except, of course, for that far less definitive delegate count.
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I remember a conversation I had with a female colleague at the Washington Post. It was right after I'd had my first child and decided to work four days a week instead of five. When my colleague found this out, she looked upon me with utter horror, pity, and disgust. Then she lectured me. The older generation of women—Mary McGrory's—broke the glass ceiling with great pain. They could make it to the top jobs but only after giving up the notion of any kind of domestic life at all. No husband, no kids, just work. The middle generation—Hillary's and this colleague's—were allowed to have a job AND a family only if they pretended the latter didn't exist. Sick child? Too bad. I'm on deadline. The nanny knows the way to the doctor's.
Now here I was, little Miss Mommy, ruining all they had sacrificed to build with my four day a week nonsense. How dare I?
So there's the feminist generation gap.
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To return to a previous point: Meghan, at least you're in North America! To watch this particular primary race from Europe has been a distinctly odd experience. On the one hand, it's fantasically frustrating, almost homesick-making, to be so far away when American politics (finally!) have produced an election as gripping as this one. On the other hand, it's nice to be so popular: Suddenly, Americans are the most envied nationality in the room. After all, we have real politics! We have unpredictable voters! We have black candidates, female candidates, war heroes, evangelicals, Mormons! Everyone wants to know who will win, and nobody believes us when we say we have absolutely no idea. If you hold an American passport, you must have inside information.
Above all, it's the unexpectedness, the defiance of the opinion polls that Europeans seem to admire, almost to the point of jealousy. Which makes me wonder whether the traditional criticism of U.S. electoral coverage—too much horse race, not enough substance—isn't somewhat off. People love following a horse race, as long as it's a real horse race, and not a jumped-up and essentially boring contest between two equally flawed candidates (i.e., 2004). People love watching candidates actually trying hard to win.
Clearly, a primary like this one, staged every four years, would do a lot more for "democracy promotion" and American public diplomacy than a thousand earmarks' worth of Congressional funding. You want to make democracy appealing to the Russians or the Iranians? Remind them that a good election is a lot of fun! I'm beginning to wonder if it isn't really that simple.
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Emily, Emily, and Hanna: I’ll say this for the Robin Morgan letter. It certainly does crystallize the battle lines. I wonder if she’s mobilized half as many women as she antagonized with this effort.
Her argument features the same limp syllogism Rich Ford wrote about last month: Some people oppose Hillary because she’s a woman; therefore everyone who opposes Hillary necessarily hates women. Sure, you can find some wisp of sexism under every attack on Hillary Clinton if you want to, and some of our sisters in the blogosphere have thus smoked out Josh Marshall and Andrew Sullivan as deranged woman-haters, no better than Chris Matthews and Bill Kristol.
There are a lot of creepy cretins out there who hate women, and by all means let’s shame them right back into their caves. But the suggestion that nobody can oppose Hillary without also hating women is just as sexist, and the notion that women must vote for her simply because sexism is gross is even worse.
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Welcome, Hanna (and for anyone who is wondering, Hanna is a contributing editor at The Atlantic and the author of the new book God's Harvard, and we are v. glad she has joined us here). You captured my feelings about the Morgan essay—a mix of guilt and chagrin and dismay. In this I think we are very much reflecting our generation. For me, Morgan's ourage is entirely too shrill. I can agree on some of the subtance, but the style makes me want to run. The tone and the worldview are so far from mine that I can't get past that. But here's the thing: For the older women whom I've discussed this essay with, who are Hillary supporters, Morgan's take is the one that's missing. They see her essay as a crucial reminder of the past and its continuing relevance. This comes across poignantly toward the essay's end, when Morgan says, "We are the women who brought this country ..." and then lists about two dozen advances that most of us are probably extremely grateful for. Amen and thank you to her generation. Now they are trying to be the women who bring us our first woman president—a good president, they feel certain—and we are hestitating, hedging, resisting, as Meghan puts it. I can understand how infuriating that must feel. Even if, like Dahlia, I reject the premise.
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I admit, this Robin Morgan letter got me a little bit. Particularly her asking if we can't get behind Hillary because she isn't as "likeable" as we want her to be. My lack of affection for Hillary always surprises me: Am I so deeply in the post-feminist generation that the first plausible female candidate leaves me totally cold?
But then pretty quickly, Morgan lost me. Obama is "papering over real suffering" in the promise of a "feel good campaign"? Is she serious? Has she read all the e-mails about Obama the Muslim? Did she hear Bill Clinton compare him to Jesse Jackson, with no correction from his wife? Does she honestly doubt that millions of Americans would never vote for Obama just because he's black?
And then there's that annoying second-wave notion that only certain women are real women, i.e., Condi Rice and Elizabeth Dole don't count, Golda Meir was really a man, and you're a traitor to your gender if you think otherwise.
By the end of the letter, I came closer to understanding why I have so much trouble rallying for Hillary. She doesn't identify anymore with the part of herself that's a pathbreaker, a radical, a free spirit. Instead she is much more attuned to the side of herself that, as Morgan sourly puts it, feels she's being constantly "silenced" by the big boys.
Obama could do that too. But he doesn't.
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If heretofore silent Chelsea really forwarded this semi-demented rant from Robin Morgan, then her mother's campaign should cut her Internet connection. The campaign probably doesn't want to have to explain it, doesn't endorse sentiments in Morgan's essay such as: "Personally, I’m unimpressed with Caroline’s longing for the Return of the Fathers ... I still recall Marilyn Monroe’s suicide, and a dead girl named Mary Jo Kopechne in Chappaquiddick." And if Chelsea really wrote: "I confess that I didn't entirely get 'it' until not only guys stood up and shouted 'iron my shirts' but the media reacted with amusement, not outrage ... " then she needs a better Internet connection. The "Iron my shirts" business was a prank by a couple of stupid radio guys. But let's say it hadn't been—I would still hope Chelsea would have seen it as a moment of meaningless idiocy and not as the voice of patriarchy trying to keep her mother from the presidency. But I hope that this letter from Chelsea itself turns out to be a prank.
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Somewhat lost in the presidential horse race this week, the Senate again takes up the question of retroactive immunity for the phone companies that helped the Bush administration in its illegal eavesdropping program. The rationale for granting telecom immunity is that they were innocently misled by the Bush administration’s doomsday rationale for breaking the laws and need to be free to be misled by the same rationale again in the future.
I point this out to make the simple observation that the folks inclined to sneer about Barack Obama’s hands-across-America yes-we-can fairy tales would do well to remember that we haven’t exactly been residing in gritty, cold reality these past eight years.
As Fred Kaplan points out in his new book, Daydream Believers, excerpted today in Slate, the politics of the Bush era has largely rested on near-daily screenings of a horror movie cobbled together up by a handful of fantasists unmoored from history, science, technology, or fact. And it was a movie they were screening privately long before 9/11.
After eight years of enduring the “daydreams” of “dangerous men [who] act their dream with open eyes," Obama’s daydreams about change and hope sound almost hardheaded and pragmatic to me.
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I've been radio-silent for the past few weeks because I've been on leave from Slate: The Lannan Foundation has kindly put me up in a house in Marfa, a tiny town in far West Texas distinguished by the happy co-existence of transplanted artists and older Texan families. Marfa is so stimulating in a quiet way that today is the first day I've missed NYC at all. But boy, is it tough to be in a state that's sitting on the sidelines as Super Tuesday moves into high gear. It's all the more so because votes in New York and Connecticut (where most of my friends and family live) actually seem to matter for Democrats this year. What's more, so many family friends and family members seem to be going into today's primary genuinely undecided—which is weirdly exciting. Some seem, well, shy about revealing who they're voting for, and for reasons they can't entirely name: women who feel a strange, subterranean pull when they imagine pulling the lever with Hillary Clinton's name on it for presidential nominee, even though they are, on a conscious level, Obama supporters. And men who say the same. (Over on Salon, Rebecca Traister wrote an interesting piece about being undecided.) All of which does underscore one thing worth remembering whatever happens: Somewhere beneath all the overinflated rhetoric about "change," some real changes have taken place. And there they are, alone on the ballot sheet: a female presidential nominee, and an African-American one. The kindergartner in me who asked why there had never been a female president is, well, foolishly excited, even if the adult in me is able to hesitate, hedge, and resist.
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There's an e-mail making the rounds this week that looks like it originates with Nicole Davison, a friend of Chelsea Clinton's, with the subject line "A must read...send to every woman you know..." In the version I got, it looks as if Chelsea forwarded it along. (I called the Clinton campaign to check on this. Waiting to hear back.) The essay is by Robin Morgan, of 1960s and '70s radical feminist fame. In those days, she wrote the movement manifesto "Goodbye To All That." The new essay is here and it's called (fittingly) "Goodbye To All That (#2)." Its hellbent in its support of Hillary. You really have to read it to get the full effect, but it's like the roar of second-wave feminism roasting everything in its wake--women who aren't avid Hillary supporters ("goodbye to some women letting history pass by while wringing their hands"); Barack Obama ("how dare anyone unilaterally decide when to turn the page on history, papering over real inquities and suffering constitutiences in the promise of a feel-good campaign?"); and, of course, sexist men guilty of "sociopathic woman-hating."
In the version I got, it looks as if Chelsea forwarded Davison's email with Morgan's essay, and added this note: "I echo Nickie though would also add to please forward this to all the men you know too--voting in the election tomorrow, voting next week, already voted. I don't agree with all the points Robin Morgan makes but I do believe her thesis is important for us all to confront--I confess that I didn't entirely get 'it' until not only guys stood up and shouted 'iron my shirts' but the media reacted with amusement, not outrage..."
Which is extremely interesting, if only because it's more than I think I've ever heard straight from Chelsea. If this is her writing, she seems pretty astute. So, is she right? Even if we don't agree with all of what Morgan has to say, either because we just don't or because we're not of her generation, should the reception to Hillary's candidacy radicalize us? Or is this just all too unhinged? The group of women on my e-mail list were split.
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Barna Group, which regularly surveys the political mood of conservative Christians, just released one strange set of findings. According to thier latest poll: If the election were held today, most born-again voters would choose the Democratic nominee for president. Barna's research indicates that "born-again" voters are most likely to vote for Sen. Hillary Clinton (20 percent), followed by Sen. Barack Obama (18 percent), and Mike Huckabee (12 percent). Yes, you read that correctly—SEN. HILLARY CLINTON.
In its shock and dismay, the Family Research Council points out that to be sure, a born-again ain't what it used to be. The category only includes "people who make a personal commitment to Jesus Christ as their Savior and believe they will go to heaven when they die." A true "evangelical," by contrast, also believes in the accuracy of the Bible, God as the earth's creator, and a few other conditions.
Still, pretty weird. This is like, back to born again, circa 1950. Maybe it's time for the first female Pat Robertson.
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I hope none of the rest of you has ever cried at work, but I have—three times in 24 years—and though in theory it's no big deal, in reality it's humiliating. (That tally includes the day a friend's husband and only child were hit by a bus while crossing the street in New York, an occasion on which, though I think it would be accurate to say I was bawling after getting the call, nobody in the newsroom even looked up. The woman who sat next to me told me later she would have cut her phone interview short if she hadn't put it together that it wasn't my family that had been killed.) So first, if Hillary Clinton is getting tears in her eyes even semi-on purpose, then there really is no limit to what she is willing to endure to win this thing. I guess the glass-half-full view of this would be, wow, that is one committed candidate. But please, somebody tell me we are not sitting here wondering whether watery eyes are or are not a winning strategy for a woman in a presidential race. And this is a victory for our power base?
Of course, it could be sheer coincidence that Hillary Clinton showed a rare glimpse of emotion on the day before the New Hampshire primary and again on the day before Super Tuesday. Just as John Edwards could be waiting to endorse until he's decided for sure which of his former rivals would be the better president. And maybe Clinton and Barack Obama will join forces and form that Dream Team. Yet though I consider myself a sappier-than-average person, none of these scenarios strikes me as even remotely possible.
The first time Clinton got misty, I fell for it, but this time around, it's hard to see her as anything other than a woman who sticks with whatever has worked for her in the past—sometimes to the point of diminishing returns. (Yes, Bubba, I am lookin' at you.) So, if she does well on Super Tuesday, I'll lay down money that she will be similarly overwhelmed on Feb. 8, 9, and 11.
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Personally, I find that nowadays I cry in ludicrously sentimental movies which I don't even like, while actual tragedies, both personal and world-historical, leave me dry-eyed and grim. Since when did tears signify anything truly important? Anyway, for those still paying attention to this fast-fading story, here is a link that offers tips on "how to cry on the spot" when you really need to.
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Sadly, the Clintons have a well-deserved reputation for crying on command. (Remember Bill Clinton at Ron Brown's funeral.)
The great irony of that moment at the Yale Child Study Center is, the days when she was a "bell-bottom-wearing hippie chick" are probably the last days when she was her true, authentic, cry-when-I-need-to-let-it-out self. Staffers who know and love Hillary and insist she is funny, real, etc. in private are always nostalgic for her coke-bottle-glasses days, instead of the current public persona who robotically repeats lines about the "future of America's children."
To be fair, later reports have said she was not really crying, but just tired.
To be unfair, I mention the question raised at a dinner party this weekend: Is Hillary's stark public/private split the result of being married to a cheater? Going out into the world every day knowing that everyone knows requires you to develop some pretty hard armor.
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If Plaxico Burress can sob on national television and no one questions either his toughness or sincerity, let's let Hillary wipe away a tear without going all meta on her.
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At a campaign event in New Haven, Conn., today, Hillary Clinton may have teared up a little as she was being introduced. Clinton fans raced to say she is exhausted and vulnerable. Clinton-haters interpret it as a cynical effort to gin up another rush of sympathy like the one that put her over the top last month in New Hampshire.
Clinton has famously called herself a Rorschach test, and already at Fox News they’re jawing on about how she was faking it. Interestingly enough, the real outrage seems not to be that candidate Clinton got misty, but that she somehow lacks the originality to show her human side in new ways. To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, to lose one's composure in New Hampshire may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose it again in Connecticut starts to look like hysteria.
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FunnyorDie.com, the online video site from Will Ferrell that brought us “The Landlord” last year, has posted a two-minute video called “Porn Star Politics” (see it here). It opens with porn stars at a convention awkwardly reading a script explaining the importance of Super Tuesday—line delivery is not these women’s specialty—and includes the adult entertainers’ own picks for the presidency. A woman in a bikini top is very eager to vote for Hillary Clinton: “She was actually the one running the country how many years ago? So, it’s like, she did it then, she can do it now,” she notes. Mary Carey, porn star, Celebrity Rehab patient, and former candidate for California governor, also makes a quick cameo.
The video seems to aim to get us to laugh at the ditzy porn stars’ limited political knowledge. A giggly woman enthusiastically says that she’s going to vote “liberal.” “I don’t even know who’s up for election,” another says in a flat voice before making some rather strange comments about Barack Obama. The shots of heavily made-up and scantily-clad women are juxtaposed with iconic American images. On paper, it sounds sort of funny—let’s laugh at the dumb porn stars. But somehow, it just feels like a cheap shot. Perhaps I’d be more inclined to enjoy it if it featured some male performers, too. But the only guy to make an appearance is wearing a leather mask and threatening to spank Hillary Clinton. Come on, Will Ferrell. I want to laugh at dumb male porn stars, too.
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We have a guest post from Sally Quinn, who is moderator, with Jon Meacham of Newsweek, of OnFaith, an online conversation about religion. (Slate and Newsweek are owned by the Washington Post Co.)
The shrinks must be having a field day with this one. Hillary Clinton has a real chance to be the first female president, but the perception since New Hampshire has been that she is running as the first female stand-in for her husband's third term.
The first female president should be elected on her own merits—because she is the most qualified candidate. Just as she should not be held to a different standard because she is a woman, she should not be treated differently because her husband is out there campaigning with her.
Yet it now appears now that the Clintons are running as a couple—a team, not a candidate and a spouse. In fact, after Obama's big South Carolina win, Clinton said: "We went there and asked the people to vote for us. They voted for him."
It is also becoming clearer each day that Bill Clinton has more than just the good of the country at heart. He has his own administration, his own reputation to vindicate. The minute Hillary "found her voice" in New Hampshire, Bill went out on the hustings—face red, eyes narrowed, finger wagging—and pushed her out of the way.
Of course it would be exciting to have a female president (as it would be to have an African-American president). What we also want, though, is someone who has earned it on her own, whose power is not derivative.
It's true, as Chris Matthews recently dared to suggest (and was unfairly slammed by feminists for doing so), that part of the reason Hillary was elected senator in 2000 was because voters felt sympathy for her after the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Others suggested that she got the sympathy vote last month in New Hampshire.
There's nothing wrong with that. People vote for candidates for myriad reasons. It was charming in a debate when she said, "That hurt my feelings" after it was implied that the voters didn't find her "likeable." It was moving when she teared up in a diner talking about the hard campaign.
At last, we thought, there's a real person behind the superwoman façade. "I found my own voice," she said, and the quote was splashed on the cover of Newsweek.
But has she? Since then, her voice has been almost drowned out by her husband's.
After Hillary's triumph in New Hampshire came Obama's big win in South Carolina. Still, even amid speculation that Bill's meltdowns may have contributed to her loss, reports were that Hillary staffers had decided not to muzzle the former president. The plan was just to let Bill be Bill.
But Bill Clinton has gone way off the reservation these past few weeks, and he has hurt his wife badly. We've seen this movie before, and it's not pretty. Hillary needs to get the hook, get him off the stage, and win or lose on her own. "Fair and square," as he likes to say.
Do we really want our first female president elected out of sympathy because her husband humiliated her again? If I've heard one person say it I've heard it from 100 in the past few weeks: "If she can't control her husband, how can she control the government?"
There's really only one person who is responsible for getting him off center stage effectively, and that's Hillary Clinton herself. Harry Truman had a famous line about the presidency that could well apply to her now: The buck stops here. For Hillary, Bill's campaign should stop now.
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Oprah Winfrey declares victory for the cause: "Now look at this campaign: The two front-runners are a black man and a woman," she said at a California rally she headlined with Michelle Obama, Maria Shriver, and Caroline Kennedy. "What that says to me is we have won the struggle and we have the right to compete." The New York Times continues: "[I]nstead of seeing a painful choice, voters, Ms. Winfrey urged, should see a moment when they 'are free from the constraints of gender and race.' "
Meanwhile, in an essay loaded with great-looking data, Linda Hirshman points out that "if men are Republican enough, the Republicans need not care whether the women are less enthusiastic about them than men are." Which helps to explain the question I asked the other night. In discussing the effects of the question you were discussing, Dahlia and Rachael, about why women consume less political news, Hirshman points out that single women tend to be the least checked in—and so the most up for grabs.
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It's become a commonplace assumption that Barack Obama would fare better than Hillary Clinton in a general election—that he's the more "electable" candidate. But a new poll shows no discernible difference between the two. Either candidate would trounce Romney by about 15 points. Both would be within one point of John McCain.
When you factor in that Clinton's a known quantity (everyone knows her weaknesses), whereas Obama's relatively untested when it comes to mudslinging, I think this poll may actually suggest that Clinton's more electable, after all.
Another interesting thing about the poll is how differently voters from each party see the electability issue. Here's how it breaks down:
Independents
Obama: 48 percent
Clinton: 28 percent
Republicans
Obama: 43 percent
Clinton: 18 percent
Democrats
Obama: 37 percent
Clinton: 49 percent
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Ann Coulter is not so much a partisan as she is a performance artist, and her medium is the lie. So, normally, when she takes the stage and does her thing, there is nothing to conclude, beyond the fact that just as Gene Kelly had to dance and Karen Finley worked with chocolate, she is making it up because that is what she does. Well, that and to keep her skills up. So while it might be a pity she didn't hang in there with the tap lessons, we shouldn't take it to heart.
Today, however, in remarks about how she'll campaign for Hillary Clinton over John McCain if he is her party's presidential nominee, Coulter has shown new range by betraying something closer than usual to the truth. No, not that she'd ever actually support Clinton; even if she is all show, she is nothing if not a canny entrepreneur, and she knows her customer.
Yet even more than actual conservatives, those who only play them on TV would be beyond disappointed to see Barack Obama take the nomination away from the right's favorite chew toy. Not only because Republicans consider Clinton the weaker candidate in the general. (And if they don't, then why did George W. Bush come so close to endorsing her?) But also because these professionals have their careers to think of and would hate to even contemplate letting all those '90s-scandal recyclables go to waste. Can you imagine the years of preparation wasted, the patience unrewarded, and Billary best sellers left unwritten? Which is why I suspect Ann Coulter of seeing in Hillary Clinton a candidate who—ready or not for the actual job—would be distracted from Day One. And this time only, she could be right.
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It’s hard not to contrast the New Niceness pervading last night’s Democratic debate with the intramural slashing and burning of John McCain. No doubt there’s a lot happening under the surface here, but it’s hard to dispute that Clinton had to rein it in after South Carolina’s nastyfest because women get called “shrill” the moment they step over some invisible Maginot Line of niceness.
Truth? I don’t much care what animated yesterday’s warm fuzzies—I loved it. I’ll always prefer a respectful policy exchange to a mud fight, particularly when we’re talking about war and the economy and health care—issues so rarely illuminated by sequential head-slapping. One of the reasons Obama’s always been an inspiring candidate to me is that he is authentically trying to back away from the ugliness of partisan discourse. That doesn’t always serve him well, and it leads people I respect enormously to dismiss him as a lightweight, but I think it’s also persuaded at least some women with Fox-fatigue that there’s another way to talk to each other; that allowing your enemy to actually finish his sentences has worked fairly well for humanity for the last few millenniums for a reason.
This brings me round to your post, Rachael, about what women may want from their A Sections, which may well be a model for what they want in their political discourse. Not necessarily “anecdotal” or “personal” news as you (sarcastically?) suggest. But perhaps, as Deborah Tannen has argued, something more than the “attack-dog” editorial page we’ve adopted.
I know many tough-as-nails women bloggers and opinion writers who have no problem with attack journalism or attack politics, but I know a lot more women, and young moms, who are truly grateful that Obama’s tried to light the way to something else.
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Last week, we posted a message from frequent Slate contributor Walter Dellinger about a recent controversy over New York Times reporter Linda Greenhouse. In an e-mail to Ed Whelan at the National Review Online, Dellinger retracted the last sentence of that post, in which he wrote that the Times was "wrong to dignify these attacks as if they were honest complaints that deserved an answer." Dellinger clarifies that he never intended to impugn Whelan's honesty and apologizes for the implication.
Emily and I couldn't agree more with Dellinger that disagreements on the merits needn't turn into accusations about the honesty of the folks on the other side.
To read more on this, click here. Our thanks to Patterico for bringing this to our attention last night.
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Sexism, racism: Last night's cordial Democratic debate stayed miles away from those toxic topics. But with the race down to two, ageism may now take its turn in the spotlight. Of course, a generational drama has been playing out all along, and Obama has been its beneficiary, especially this past week; with the Kennedys' endorsement, the glow of youthful vigor—that JFK word—has never been more dazzling. During an evening in which most differences blurred, and with the curiously ageless Edwards out of the picture, the contrast between young man and older woman again stood out—but this time it played, it seemed to me, very much to Clinton's advantage. Until now, I'd cringed whenever she invoked a career that began "35 years ago": Why make herself seem so old, an earnest do-gooder long before so many Obama enthusiasts were even a gleam in their parents' eyes? It is tough enough to be the past-her-prime woman, slathered in make-up under the unforgiving TV lights, up against men whose faces the cameras love and cares have barely lined. Yet last night—commanding, gracious, relaxed, confident, funny—Clinton had the je ne sais quoi that can give the older woman the seasoned allure Americans aren't known for appreciating, but may recognize from French movies. It's a glow with the potential power to make a younger man, however compelling, charismatic, and gallant, seem like someone with growing up still to do.