The Fight Stuff: Hillary Clinton's Metamorphosis

[DeepModem Mom]

NYT: Op-Ed Contributor
The Fight Stuff
By SUSAN FALUDI
Published: May 9, 2008


(Kim Bost)

San Francisco

....Pundits have been quick to attribute the erosion in Barack Obama’s white male support to a newfound racism. What they have failed to consider is the degree to which white male voters witnessing Senator Clinton’s metamorphosis are being forced to rethink precepts they’ve long held about women in American politics. For years, the prevailing theory has been that white men are often uneasy with female politicians because they can’t abide strong women. But if that’s so, why haven’t they deserted Senator Clinton? More particularly, why haven’t they deserted her as she has become ever more pugnacious in her campaign?

Maybe the white male electorate just can’t abide strong women whom they suspect of being of a certain sort. To adopt a particularly lamentable white male construct, the sports metaphor, political strength comes in two varieties: the power of the umpire, who controls the game by application of the rules but who never gets hit; and the power of the participant, who has no rules except to hit hard, not complain, bounce back and endeavor to prevail in the end.

For virtually all of American political history, the strong female contestant has been cast not as the player but the rules keeper, the purse-lipped killjoy who passes strait-laced judgment on feral boy fun....

***

In the final stretch of the primary season, (Senator Clinton) seems to have stepped across an unstated gender divide, transforming herself from referee to contender....

It’s the unforeseen precedent of an unprecedented candidacy: our first major female presidential candidate isn’t doing what men always accuse women of doing. She’s not summoning the rules committee over every infraction. (Her attempt to rewrite the rules for Michigan and Florida are less a timeout than rough play.) Not once has she demanded that the umpire stop the fight. Indeed, she’s asking for more unregulated action, proposing a debate with no press-corps intermediaries....

...(W)hile the commentators have been tut-tutting, Senator Clinton has been converting white males, assuring them that she’s come into their tavern not to smash the bottles, but to join the brawl.

Deep in the American grain, particularly in the grain of white male working-class voters, that is the more trusted archetype. Whether Senator Clinton’s pugilism has elevated the current race for the nomination is debatable. But the strategy has certainly remade the political world for future female politicians, who may now cast off the assumption that when the going gets tough, the tough girl will resort to unilateral rectitude. When a woman does ascend through the glass ceiling into the White House, it will be, in part, because of the race of 2008, when Hillary Clinton broke through the glass floor and got down with the boys.

(Susan Faludi is the author of “Backlash,” “Stiffed” and “The Terror Dream: Fear and Fantasy in Post-9/11 America.”)

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/09/opinion/09faludi.html

[Jamastiene]

1. Kicked and Recommended.

That has to be the one quality above all the others that I admire in Senator Hillary Clinton; her ability to prove we don't need "A League of Our Own." We can fight the boys on their own turf and give them a damn good run for their money. Great read.

[Beregond2]

2. This may be

the single most sexist thing I have ever read in my life. But no one will object, because all the sexist assumptions are aimed at men.

[comradebillyboy]

3. then you have led an incredibly sheltered life