It's amusing watching feminist blogs rant against Maureen Dowd. Certainly no friend of conservatives, Dowd still manages to pull feminsts' chain and pinch their cheeks time after time. Take the absurdity at Echidne's site over a recent Dowd column.
I'm not sure if I could write an anti-feminist piece as well, and that would be the comparable assignment for me. Though naturally Maureen has some help from the fact that the point of her column isn't that different from all the earlier "I Hate Hitlery" columns she has penned. It's not to get Hillary elected to anything because she is a horrible monster. Only this time Maureen explains carefully why agreeing with Hillary's monstrosity will not make you a bad feminist at all.
Which, in fact, as usual, isn't at all what the column says.
As a possible first Madame President, Hillary is a flawed science experiment because you can’t take Bill out of the equation. Her story is wrapped up in her marriage, and her marriage is wrapped up in a series of unappetizing compromises, arrangements and dependencies.
Instead of carving out a separate identity for herself, she has become more entwined with Bill. She is running bolstered by his record and his muscle. She touts her experience as first lady, even though her judgment during those years on issue after issue was poor. She says she’s learned from her mistakes, but that’s not a compelling pitch.
As a senator, she was not a leading voice on important issues, and her Iraq vote was about her political viability.
Echidne fails to remake Dowd's column into an anti-feminism screed because Dowd's criticism of Hillary Clinton is true. Dissecting why Hillary Clinton has been eclipsed by Barak Obama is not simply about discussing her womanhood. Hillary's problems with the populace are in large part because we have watched both Clintons work for the better part of 15 years. After all, Bill's presidency wasn't merely his own (remember the 2-for-one comment?). Hillary has tried to parlay eight years as First Lady into "experience," even as it is obvious that her greatest accomplishment was losing--er, finding her billing records from the Rose Law Firm.
As Dick Morris has pointed out, Hillary Clinton's campaign is crashing and burning because she misread the electorate, thinking "experience" would be the quality they want, as opposed to "change." But Echidne and her readers don't get that. No, any criticism of Hillary is a criticism of women in general. Some samples from her comments:
"There is no woman who could please Maureen Dowd because she believes in herself that women are the competition. Somewhere her psyche is twisted."
"The perfect female candidate would be somebody who didn't make Maureen Dowd jealous and insecure about her own choices."
"I've been saying for years that MoDo had a serious crush on Bill Clinton back in 92-93-94: she loved his politics, his wonkishness, and his skills as a politician. And she was always jealous of Hillary. When bimbroglio broke out, MoDo wrote as if Bill had been unfaithful to her, not to Hillary. It's as if MoDo believed she was the only woman worthy of Bill. And she's been trying to write poison pen letters to Hillary since then."
Notice how most of the criticism is aimed at Dowd personally, rather than anything she has said. That's because, for the brainwashed and braindead, criticism of Hillary Clinton--any criticism--is tinged with misogyny. Disliking the way Hillary has used and misused her own femaleness for gain--for example, complaining that she gets picked on 'cause she's a girl in debates or acting oh, so shocked when Rick Lazio approached her about her ethical violations--isn't merely the flipside of those patronizing boys who "Ain't you the cutest thing"'d you to death as a young woman. In other words, these people can't see that critiquing Hillary as a candidate--likable, believable, honest, nasty, lying, hiding, etc.--isn't simply a "hate on women" campaign. It's actually taking her candidacy seriously as an individual. In the same way most people don't look at Barak Obama's candidacy as a litmus test for the competency of black people as presidential candidates, so too, most Americans don't view liking or disliking Hillary Clinton as a litmus test for misogyny. She's just not a good candidate.
But don't tell Echidne that. She might ban you.
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