Spectacular Peggy Noonan column today, comparing Hillary Clinton to Indira Gandhi, Golda Meir and Margaret Thatcher. Not so good for Mrs. Clinton, who keeps bitching that she's losing in part because of sexism. Excerpt:
It is insulting, because it asserts that those who supported someone else this year were driven by low prejudice and mindless bias.It is manipulative, because it asserts that if you want to be understood, both within the community and in the larger brotherhood of man, to be wholly without bias and prejudice, you must support Mrs. Clinton.
It is not true. Tough hill-country men voted for her, men so backward they'd give the lady a chair in the union hall. Tough Catholic men in the outer suburbs voted for her, men so backward they'd call a woman a lady. And all of them so naturally courteous that they'd realize, in offering the chair or addressing the lady, that they might have given offense, and awkwardly joke at themselves to take away the sting. These are great men. And Hillary got her share, more than her share, of their votes. She should be a guy and say thanks.
It is prissy. Mrs. Clinton's supporters are now complaining about the Hillary nutcrackers sold at every airport shop. Boo hoo. If Golda Meir, a woman of not only proclaimed but actual toughness, heard about Golda nutcrackers, she would have bought them by the case and given them away as party favors.
It is sissy. It is blame-gaming, whining, a way of not taking responsibility, of not seeing your flaws and addressing them. You want to say "Girl, butch up, you are playing in the leagues, they get bruised in the leagues, they break each other's bones, they like to hit you low and hear the crack, it's like that for the boys and for the girls."
Yow!
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Astorian @ 12:42 P.M.
"Apparently, no matter who wins, the American voter gets condemned for being insufficiently progressive."
Precisely.
Your servant,
Lord Karth
Astorian and Lord Karth: No, you are acting as a sexist or racist if you vote for a candidate because of their race or sex. I don't believe HRC even believes it. I think she's doing it for political reasons. I also don't see Obama claiming it. It is naive to think there is not racism or sexism in the way some people vote...in fact, if you believe the exit polls, 20% of the people in recent primaries voted on the basis of race and 80% of those said they voted for HRC. That, according to the exit polls, is what people said.
This is Noonan at her blinding best, so brilliant and scintillating that all the light coming off that column will probably induce migraines and seizures. The line that was fall-off-the-seat funny: "One wants to be sympathetic to Mrs. Clinton at this point, if for no other reason than to show one's range." Delicious stuff.
Marian, I think you misunderstood the poster who mentioned McCain--it was a supporter who supposedly used the b*** line, not McCain himself. Besides, b**** is quite unlike n****, at least to me: the one denigrates an entire race of people, but the other is usually quite specific; in other words, that a man (or even a woman) calls a particular woman a b*** doesn't mean he thinks *all* women are, just that one.
I think you have to look pretty hard to find actual misogyny directed at HRC, as opposed to specific dislike of her--and I don't buy for a minute that disliking Hillary is somehow proof of the disliker's general hatred of women. She's a remarkably unlikable person, something that her supporters may have failed to realize until much too late in the game; but saying that isn't an indication of misogyny, is it?
Real misogyny would be to exempt Hillary from the usual rough and tumble of campaign life and rhetoric on the grounds that a woman can't handle such stuff. Oddly, Hillary's complaints seem almost to be suggesting as much--that she's somehow been the target of much more vitriol just because she's a woman, unlike her opponent....but you can't go very far with that line of thinking, can you? One would think that Obama would have more reason to complain of discrimination and prejudice than Hillary, who, after all, is a former First Lady who came into this campaign with a great deal of name recognition and a lot of willing supporters. Frankly, this race was hers to lose from the beginning.
Wow, I am so impressed with the little spill. Kinda like wearing stranglers instead of wranglers......
Hillary is a brilliant woman and sorry people no guts no glory....my hats off to her!!!! She grew some balls most men don't have.
But, what was it I heard today...Obama is taking another vacation....haha!!!
"Who on earth believes anything Ms Noonan says?"
Posted by: recovering ex-Pentecostal | May 23, 2008 11:19 AM
"I'd hate to have seen what recovering ex-pentecostal was like before he got better. …"
Posted by: Hunk Hondo | May 23, 2008 12:10 PM
Hunk, that's positively Noonanesque of you, and ever so much better than the reply I was was forming to recovering ex-Pentecostal.
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