Blond Ambition
Mary Dmitrieva
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POLLITT: Blond Ambition
By Katha Pollitt, The Nation
June 17, 2003
Hillary Clinton's autobiography comes out barely a week after Martha Stewart is
indicted for obstruction of justice
and fraud related to alleged insider trading, and you still don't believe in
God? Two blond middle-aged icons of female
pre-eminence, each virtually unique in the testosterone-drenched worlds of
politics and business, are ruling the
headlines and obsessing the talk shows at exactly the same moment - how likely
is that? Obviously this is some kind of
harmonic convergence intended to induce mass heart attacks at Fox News. It's
not just the sheer excitement - "Hil:
Wanted to Wring His Neck"! "Martha's Mug Shots"! - that's raising pulses. It's
the fact that despite everything,
millions of women insist on adoring them anyway.
I've written many a column criticizing Hillary Clinton for the rightward tilt
of her politics - her support for
welfare reform, capital punishment, "family values" and so on. I even made a
catty remark about her hairband back in
1992, for which I'm truly sorry. Truth, moreover, compels me to admit that
"Living History," her mega-hyped memoir, has
that unfortunate, processed-cheese, as-told-to taste. It's the verbal
equivalent of her Barbara Walters appearance: one
long fixed, glazed smile under the pink lights. But none of that matters.
People aren't lining up by the thousands to
purchase signed copies because they want to get the real scoop on tax policy or
even Travelgate. They want to know if
she really believed Bill when he told her there was nothing to the Monica
story, how she felt when she finally learned
it was true and why she stays with him. The answers to be found in her book are
yes; she was really upset; and thanks
to prayer and marriage counseling she was eventually able to move on.
Whether this is the whole truth is impossible for a stranger to know. Like Joe
Klein, I tend to believe she really
loved him - she writes in the book about her first impression of him as a
"Viking" and lyrically describes his hands,
his boundless energy, his fascinating conversation. I was ready to date him
myself! She certainly wouldn't be the first
smart, straitlaced woman who fell for a sexy charmer and ended up, as the joke
goes, believing what he told her instead
of what she saw. Nor, on the other hand, would she be the first wife who
decided to live with what she couldn't change
rather than throw away a relationship that was also a way of life. Or the first
First Lady who put up a good front in
public while quietly seething at home. I doubt the right-wingers going after
Hillary for staying with Bill would have
cheered if evidence of George Bush Sr.'s rumored infidelities had come to light
and Barbara had abandoned him in his
hour of need. Hillary must be the only woman the family-values crowd has ever
castigated for sticking with her
marriage. Just you try suggesting, though, that Pat Nixon was maybe not the
most fulfilled woman in America, or that
Laura Bush sometimes looks a little subdued, a little out of focus, and see how
fast you get accused of being an East
Coast elitist, slut and traitor.
For the right, Hillary's book comes just in time. In the third year of the Bush
Administration, it was beginning to
look like conservatives might finally have to acknowledge that Bill Clinton is
not President anymore. Now they can sink
into a nostalgic delirium - ah, for the days of Whitewater, Morgan Guaranty,
Gennifer Flowers, Paula Jones, Vince
Foster and all the other horrors from which the Supreme Court rescued us in
December 2000. Hillary's book is handy,
too, in helping Bill Kristol and his fellow talking heads brush aside pesky
questions about the shifting rationales for
invading Iraq, and those missing WMDs. Could Bush have been shading the truth?
No, it was Bill Clinton who "lied to the
American people." Right, and about something so very important, too! In
right-wing mythology, if Hillary knew about
Bill's women she is an ambitious schemer; if she didn't, writes Jonathan Alter
in Newsweek, she's not fit for higher
office: "Blinders are understandable in a wife, but could be a concern in a
future president." According to Alter, when
Bush claimed an "imminent threat" from Iraq or said the "average" tax cut is
$1,000 a year, "he is deceiving us, not
himself," a pettier crime. So if there's one thing worse than lying to the
American people, it's believing your husband
is telling the truth.
One hears so much from people who hate Hillary, one forgets that millions think
she's great, a self-made working wife
and mother who actually managed to turn the routine subordinations - and, in
her case, profound humiliations - of
political wifehood into real power: from First Lady to senator! Martha Stewart
offers the same contradictory blend of
traditional femininity and modern feminism: She is a brilliant businesswoman,
but she sells retro domesticity. Her fans
seem to have no trouble integrating these two rather different visions of
womanhood or believing that she's been
singled out for prosecution as a woman while Ken Lay walks free.
Marthatalks.com, a website she set up to mobilize
support, has received 7 million hits and features fervent e-mails thanking her
for introducing graciousness and beauty
into harried and humdrum lives. And why not? Martha never tells women they
should quit their jobs in order to make
apple pie from their very own organic orchard. She doesn't say they're ruining
their kids and ought to work harder at
sex. She just tells them a lot of neat stuff about, oh, slipper chairs and how
to take the thorns off roses.
Martha's reputation as a first-class bitch (on full view in Cybill Shepherd's
portrayal in a recent NBC movie) hasn't
put a dent in her cult, and that's only fair. This is a nation that reveres
Donald Trump, for heaven's sake, who
famously trashed his wife and has devoted his entire life to profiting off
gambling and hideous buildings. Donald
Trump, icon of manly capitalism, destroyed the beautiful Art Deco frieze on the
Bonwit Teller building after promising
to preserve it. That's a lot worse than $45,000 worth of insider trading, in my
view. True, Trump is a man, and
successful men have always been allowed to be mean and worse than mean; only
women have to be sweet, kind, gentle,
modest, sexually circumspect and scrupulously honest 24/7 no matter what - even
in the nasty worlds of politics and
business.
Or they did until Hillary and Martha came along.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=16186
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Forever blue without you, Mary Christmas [TeamIScream] [BG^3] [ГКЖЯHС?!]