Reflections in a Jaded Eye
Like Paul Newman in Hud, I have a somewhat lenient approach to certain matters--sometimes I lean a little this way, sometimes I lean a little that. That's how I am in the Hillary-Obama contest. Muddle it over as I might, I'm still not sure who I'm going to vote for in the NY primary. Some days I lean toward Hillary, other days toward Obama; sometimes I'm for Obama in the morning, tilt toward Hillary around midday, and bend like a pussywillow back toward Obama after evening meditation. But one thing I refuse to be, even if I don't vote for her, is a Hillary-hater. I'm not even a Hillary-disliker. What's baffling about the negativity towards Hillary is how personal it is, and yet how nebulous, especially when it emanates from other women. Some of the most articulate women end up resorting to pidgin English sign language trying to explain why they don't like her, pulling vague reasons out of thin air. Even writers who've had a bit more time to think about it can't quite ratchet into focus, reverting to the high school hallway Heatherisms that are Maureen Dowd's signature move whenever the subject is Hillary.
In a must-read piece, Susan Faludi, reviewing the new anthology Thirty Ways of Looking at Hillary: Reflections by Women Writers (edited by Susan Morrison of The New Yorker) in the latest New York Observer, zooms in on this phenomenon, clearing away the standard-issue narcissism of the contemporary essayist ("Many of the writers in Thirty Ways are busy reviewing their own lives and taking their own temperatures, some with notable self-regard") to get at the pathology of educated women on the petty attack* against one of their own:
The very premise of Thirty Ways invites us to disparage Hillary Clinton as a political candidate and induct her instead into a reality show pageant. More often than not, the contributors take the bait, passing judgment on Clinton’s femininity ("unnatural” and "contrived"), looks ("passably attractive") and sensuality ("it is difficult for me to imagine her in an embrace, motherly or otherwise," Susanna Moore writes). Reading through these pages, I wished for a companion volume, Thirty Ways of Looking at Women Looking at Hillary, which answered this question: Why do so many of these women writers--who have shown themselves to be graceful essayists and well-reasoned analysts in other contexts--resort to unfactual and illogical thinking and, in many cases, downright 13-year-old cattiness when the topic is Hillary?
After I'd finished Thirty Ways, I picked up a New Yorker article by one of the contributors, Lauren Collins, about a Missouri teenager driven to suicide by the taunts of mean girls on MySpace. I felt as though I were still reading Thirty Ways: The essayists' reasons for their rancor at Hillary are as immaturely nonspecific as those of that poor girl's adolescent tormentors. "I have yet to meet a woman who likes Hillary Clinton," Ms. Roiphe sniffs. "We just don't like her," she says, channeling the women she has met. "We like her husband, but we don’t like her."Nyah, nyah!
If none of the women Katie Roiphe knows "likes" Hillary, maybe the problem isn't Hillary's "likeability" but an inane notion of niceness that's helped hold women back in so many other fields under the guise of not being feminine enough. Under the cosmetic surface of complaints and snarks about chilly smiles and steely gazes is a deeper discomfort with motherhood on the political stage that's only obliquely addressed in Thirty Ways as writer after writer gets tangled up in her own ingrown subjective verdicts. "In that regard, what's objectionable about Thirty Ways is not what’s contained between its covers, which is at times canny and thoughtful, even if at other times it's juvenile and mean," Faludi writes. "The very nature of the project is prejudicial. Underlying the summons to female writers to share their "feelings" about Hillary is a sly invitation--to demonstrate that when it comes to America’s consideration of a female candidate, the political is only personal." Hillary's job is to defeat the Republican nominee, not massage everyone's feelings, especially the feelings of writers who'd rather to hang out in the hallway with MoDo, preferring her cool menthol taste two to one over other brands.
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