See Hillary’s ad:
Read Camille Paglia’s take:
Would I want Hillary answering the red phone in the middle of the night? No, bloody not. The White House first responder should be a person of steady, consistent character and mood — which describes Obama more than Hillary. And that scare ad was produced with amazing ineptitude. If it’s 3 a.m., why is the male-seeming mother fully dressed as she comes in to check on her sleeping children? Is she a bar crawler or insomniac? An obsessive-compulsive housecleaner, like Joan Crawford in “Mommie Dearest”? And why is Hillary sitting at her desk in full drag and jewelry at that ungodly hour? A president should not be a monomaniac incapable of rest and perched on guard all night like Poe’s baleful raven. People at the top need a relaxed perspective, which gives judgment and balance. Workaholism is an introspection-killing disease, the anxious disability of tunnel-vision middle managers.
As incisive as this take on things is, Paglia’s comments on the feminist angle of the Clinton campaign are even better:
The cloud of feminist cant about Hillary’s struggling candidacy has been noxious. “Media misogyny has reached an all-time high,” screeched the National Organization for Women in a press release titled “Ignorance and Venom: The Media’s Deeply Ingrained Sexism.” Groan. If women are going to play in the geopolitical big league, they’d better toughen up and learn how to deal with all the curveballs. Never has the soppy emotionalism of old-guard feminist reasoning been on such open and embarrassing display. How has Hillary, who rode her husband’s coattails to the top and who trashed every woman he seduced or assaulted, become such a feminist heroine? What has she ever achieved on her own — aside from the fiasco of healthcare reform?
But the feminist old guard are surely on board, as recent, ludicrous remarks by former VP candidate Geraldine Ferraro indicate:
If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept.
The amazing thing to me is that neither Hillary nor Ferraro can even see how offensively racist this statement is (or, perhaps they’re choosing to ignore it).
Hillary “expressed disagreement” but point-blank refused to reject or denounce Ferraro saying,
It’s regrettable that any of our supporters — on both sides, because we both have this experience — say things that kind of veer off into the personal.
UPDATE:Clinton repudiated Ferraro’s comments this morning. One might wish for a more immediate (and potentially less calculated response), but it’s welcome nonetheless.
For her part, Ferraro stands by her comments.
Still, as she quit her post with the Clinton campaign, she did so amidst the media firestorm with the same grace, class, and sincerity that Obama advisor Samantha Power did when her off-the-record remarks criticizing Clinton were reported.
Just kidding. Instead, Ferraro said this in her resignation letter to Hillary and released the same to the media:
Dear Hillary, I am stepping down from your finance committee so I can speak for myself and you can continue to speak for yourself about what’s at stake in this campaign. The Obama campaign is attacking me to hurt you. I won’t let that happen. Thank you for everything you’ve done and continue to do to make this a better world for my children and grandchildren. You have my deep admiration and respect, Gerry.
That may illicit high-fives from the rest of the aging sisterhood victims club, but I dare say that in most of America it provokes a very different response. Like it or not, the younger generations were raised to be tolerant and fair-minded. They look at things like race and gender (and I might add sexual orientation) and can’t figure out what the big deal is. Obama has never emphasized his race in his campaign for the presidency; Clinton never stops harping about her sex (or his race).
The argument that younger generations don’t appreciate the battles that have been fought to get us to the point equality may in fact be correct, but that also means they don’t carry the baggage of the war. For them, it’s a world that’s relatively colorblind and gender-neutral, which is why Hillary Clinton’s “I am woman hear me roar” campaign has gained almost no traction with youth. (Indeed there’s a fair amount of anecdotal evidence that younger women are embarrassed by it.) As far as the Gen X and Gen Y set are concerned, 3 AM is another example of an age of feminism whose sun has set. To the extent Hillary Clinton and Geraldino Ferraro represent that strain of feminism, it’s not a moment too soon.