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November 07, 2007 Ladies FirstBy Clarice FeldmanCan Hillary Clinton succeed in evading hard questions by raising the issue of unfairness to women? Aggressive and unprincipled women have never hesitated to use similar gambits. Shel Silverstein wrote a funny children's poem, titled "Ladies First", about an imperious little girl who insisted on the privileges of her sex while grabbing the best stuff for herself and shoving her way to the front of the line. She met her comeuppance when she and her friends were surrounded by tigers.
I thought of that when I read of Hillary's campaign overheated response to the first real questioning of her at the last debate.
Until that night it appeared that she was going to repeat in a national campaign her New York "listening tour", where she traveled about listening to complaints from voters-often in the terminally economic disaster zones of her state-made vague promises to remedy everything and, surrounded by Secret Service men and hard blocking by her staff, avoided any inconvenient questions . And played the gender card when Lazio approached her in the debate.There were plenty of questions that begged to be asked of her then then And there are now, as Jonah Goldberg notes, plenty of legitimate questions she is not being asked and should be. Since when is it unfair to concentrate on the views of the frontrunner in a debate? Since when are opponents to be silenced because they are running against a woman-especially one who consistently attacks everyone else with impunity? We are talking, after all, about a woman with more contradictions than it's possible to catalogue, not the least of which is that she postures as a tough leader independent of her husband at the same time she would never be running were she not his wife. She poses as a wronged woman when she played a significant role in covering up his misdeeds with other women. Look. She's been extremely dishonest and evasive throughout this campaign in an effort to appeal to the party's base for the primaries while not offending those she needs to attract in the general election, and unless her opponents are willing to pin her down they are just wasting their supporters' money and the time of those watching the debates. Watch what she wears to the next debate-if it's a black pantsuit, she's trying to project that she's powerful and masculine. If she's garbed in orange or pink, it's Ladies First time again. (At the last debate she wore brown. A major departure which will probably never be repeated.) Clarcie Feldman is an attorney in Washington, DC. |
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