Posted by
Bullfrog on Saturday, April 14, 2007 3:48:19 PM
I read
a fascinating NY Times article in which the women of Wellesley, class of '69, bask vicariously in Hillary's extended glow.
“We were very proud of her: she was a feminist; she was outspoken,”
said Jane Moss, a classmate who now teaches French at Colby College.
“Hillary was speaking for all of us, for a generation that felt we
weren’t being heard.”
It seems to me that the front end of the baby boom generation was far
from unheard. This was the Woodstock generation. What I remember 1969
for is the Newark race riots. That was the beginning of "white flight"
to the suburbs. Not everything the Woodstock generation accomplished,
intended or otherwise, was positive. Yet, you'd never know it to
listen to these Wellesley women.
"They have winced at her struggles over how to be a modern first lady
and her marital humiliations, rejoiced with her election to the Senate,
puzzled over how her guarded and cool political persona is so different
from the warm, funny and outspoken woman they know.They still see her
as the thoughtful friend who called every week after a husband died, or
wrote a charming note about the birth of a grandson."
I'm wondering whether the warm fuzzy side of Hillary is just part of
her steely calculations to attain her lofty ambitions. It's good for
P.R., especially if these classmates pump her up the way they're doing
in this article.
“When Hillary had the class reunion at the White House, there were 325
of us there,” said Catherine S. Gidlow, a lawyer in St. Louis. “I
turned to someone and said, ‘I think there are 324 of us here who feel
like failures,’ and she said, ‘No, I think there are 325 of us who feel
like failures.’ ”
Anyone who thinks Hillary's White House ambition is a new one should
rethink their position. I certainly remember their slogan back in
1992: "Two for the price of one." She was a "failure," because Bill
was president, not her.
“We always felt a little special, because we were the ones who were
there when all the rules changed,” said Susan Doull, who has lived in
Europe for the last 20 years, running hotels. “We were the last class
before Wellesley was diluted by men’s colleges like Yale going coed, and Wellesley was where we began to focus on the idea that we would have careers.”
I've got news for you Ms. Doull: in 1969, I was being raised with the
expectation that I would have a career and not attend college to get my
MRS. It was unthinkable that I would work for a couple of years out of
college until I got married and had kids. And I was still in grade
school at the time. But you're entitled to feel special if you wish.
“I went to work for Citibank for two years after college,” Ms. Doull
said, “and I was supposed to take a business trip with the officer I
reported to, but his wife wouldn’t let him go with me, or he was afraid
to tell her. I don’t think our daughters really grasp how different
things were.”
What was I saying about going to work for a "few years?" Running
hotels for the past 20 years sounds like a second career to me that
came about after the kid(s) were raised. I've been on business trips
both alone, and accompanied by male colleagues. So what? It's not as
if we're booked into the same hotel room. Sometimes, we're not even
booked on the same flight.
“The French department had never had a woman in a tenure-track position
when I got to Colby,” Professor Moss said, “and when I got pregnant
before tenure, they literally didn’t know what to do. When I came up
for tenure, my male colleagues voted against me and I got tenure, but
you can imagine my feelings at department meetings for the next few
years.”
You got tenure, so I really don't see the problem. You're not entitled
to have your feelings unhurt by the vote. You won. Enough.
“I hear these anti-Hillary attacks by men, especially right-wing men,
and I feel like it’s just as much an attack on me,” said Cheryl Lynn
Brierton, an in-house lawyer for the California courts. “It’s an effect
of intelligence that you come across as intense, that you have strong
views. I’ve always felt that the way she is singled out and attacked is
very indicative of how society reacts to smart women.”
Ms. Brierton, you have it all wrong. Society doesn't single her out
for ridicule because she's intelligent. It singles her out because
she's shrill, and she instinctually goes into attack mode herself when
someone opposes her viewpoint. Intelligent people are called
"intelligent," whether male or female. Obnoxious people are called on
it whether male or female. Think Nancy Pelosi, Al Sharpton, Jerry
Falwell, etc.
If you wish to see how society acts toward a smart woman who accomplished much during her career, look no further than
Millicent Fenwick.
She was elected to congress at age 64 in 1974, and served for many
years. She previously worked as an editor at Vogue, and became
involved in politics during the 1950s, when Hillary was still in
diapers. Though a Republican, she was adored by the press, even by
Gabe Pressman, who is a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat. Any woman who can pull off that sort of lifetime achievement, and smoke a pipe, is far more of a pioneer than Hillary.
“She goes to a women’s college, gives that gangbuster graduation
speech, then goes to Arkansas, continues her career in the stellar way,
makes more money than her husband, has only one child,” Ms. Parke said.
“Then she becomes the first lady, makes the cookies remark, tries
health-care reform, but when it doesn’t work, she has to become the
housewife of the White House, because that’s the required persona. Now
that her husband’s out, though, she can go back to pursuing her own
career.”
I question whether Hillary ever left her career behind while in the
White House. Travelgate? Filegate? Whitewater? The Rose Law Firm,
and all those "lost" (presumably incriminating) documents? She was
doing her thing behind the scenes all along, laying the groundwork for
the next phase of her life. Does anyone think she wasn't a
carpet-bagger when the Clintons decided to move to NY, so she could run
for Senate? Neither she nor Bill had ever lived in NY prior to that
Senate seat being up for grabs. It was highly opportunistic, like
everything she does.
Professor Colony and others sound rueful,
too, about what they see as Mrs. Clinton’s political compromises. “She
reaffirms for me the fact that as soon as you get into politics you
have to compromise on your goals, if not your ideals,” the professor
said. “It’s incredibly upsetting, but I think it’s a fact of life.”
I don't think Hillary's compromising her goals at all. She's running
for president. The fact that she has opposition merely reinforces that
we live in a democratic republic, not a banana republic.