Steinem cuts to the quick
AD's matriarch sounds off on domestic politics...
Wed, January 09, 2008
Gloria Steinem has cut to the quick on the gender question and has enlightened an issue that we will be talking about for the next 300 or so days. Steinem wrote this opinion piece for the New York Times before Hillary Clinton astonished her own campaign, Barak Obama’s, the pollsters and the media by winning New Hampshire.
I read it before listening for several hours to mostly guy pundits discuss “what’s happening here?” as the New Hampshire returns flowed in, consistently showing Clinton ahead. They were mystified. ”Maybe it’s ‘cause she teared up and women related to that?” “Maybe it’s because the boys beat up on her in the last debate and women related to that?”
It was left to a member of Clinton’s own campaign to say, “Maybe the voters looked at the candidate and decided she was the most qualified.”
I disagree with Steinem on one point: In both Iowa and New Hampshire younger women broke for Obama while older women voted for Clinton. Steinem says it proves that women get more radical with age. I believe it’s because we remember. Younger women should know that their lack of concern over gender derives directly from the fact that for decades the Gloria Steinems and Hillary Clintons have had the courage to be who they are and do what they think it is imperative to do.
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I went to see Barack on Saturday and Hillary on Sunday in Nashua - same place, almost the same time but different days. And Hillary was just better; I left thinking she had it. Yeah, he had the bigger crowd, yes, he is a great presence (I loved getting to shake his hand) - but there is no way he could have answered questions for over an hour the way she did.
So, yes, its a better story that she teared up than she was just more thorough and professional and knowledgeable but I think that is just a story, not what people voted for.
Patty
Ever consider it has nothing to do with gender, and everything to do with charisma (of which Hillary has none)?
Steinem is an anachronism—not to dismiss the value of her work, but the US just isn’t as sexist as it was during during her heydey. Voters who dismiss Hillary don’t do so because of her gender. We want fireworks and passion from politicians - not bureaucratic milquetoast. See Grey Davis v. Arnold Schwarzenegger in California, a predominantly liberal state.
The irony is that people really want to like Hillary… she’s just such a hard sell. No sexist conspiracy here. Too bad Ann Richards is dead…
Turning the tables on the Hillary and Bill conundrum, would we really vote for a man whose WIFE had been president and who cuckolded him during her administration? Wouldn’t we dismiss him as a hopeless and pathetic wimp who failed to defend his own integrity?
As feminists, we’re grateful for a female presidential candidate, but there is a tiny nagging voice about sexual betrayal (by Bill) and shameless, obsequious compromise (by Hillary) that we that we can never really divorce from the Hillary candidacy. No pun on “divorce.”
For the record, I’m a young voter (25), but I’m still keenly aware of the achievements by great women like Gloria Steinem for our benefit. That being said, the general feminist paradigm has shifted considerably since the early 70’s.
You know I used to think, when I was young, that sexual betrayal was the worst thing but it just isn’t. The fact that he lies, that bothers me. The fact that he is such a buffoon, now that bothers me. I am much more concerned with Hillary and Bill Clinton’s arrogance, their connections with big business and Hillary’s refusal to talk about it. I am not sure I want another president for whom ambition is more important than the truth. She talks so much about all of her experience but she has not been in congress that long and the universal health campaign was so badly run that I can not believe she wants to claim it. If she owned up to her mistakes. If she got rellay specific then I would change my mind but I was never crazy about Bill and his White House years were way to friendly to the good old boys. I see Hillary as just another good old boy. And that’s the truth.