Posted on 06/19/2003 3:56:55 PM PDT by NYC GOP Chick
URING her big book party at the Four Seasons on Monday, Hillary Rodham Clinton was asked if she found it painful to relive her rough marital days. "It was difficult," she said. "It, you know, they were very difficult times; they should have remained personal and private matters. But they were pulled into the public so I felt I had to, you know, write about what was part of the public history."
She got that right. She did have to. Those are the rules, unwritten but unyielding. New York's junior senator lives in the public eye, and a prominent woman must conduct herself in certain ways. Among them: if humiliated, air the subject fully, be magnanimous and admit that yes, you were hurt, but rose above it all.
This is not to suggest that Mrs. Clinton didn't know what she was getting into when she decided to write her book. She is no naïf. To justify her $8 million advance, she would have to confront the embarrassing aspects of her marriage in the book and on the inevitable promotional tour. That's how the game is played, and perhaps the senator is even enjoying aspects of it. She is in control now, telling her story her way, often to members of the news media who once besieged her and her husband.
But what a price to pay, even for $8 million. The question that keeps occurring to Matters — whose author remembers the days when women had to (or chose to) challenge their assigned roles — is whether a man with the same political and financial ambitions as Hillary Rodham Clinton would have to accept the same rules.
Granted, the question requires quite a stretch: to imagine an American woman as famous and powerful as President Bill Clinton. We hear some are imagining just that, but for the future. For now, let's pretend.
So, if a famous, powerful woman had cheated on her husband, would he have to write a tell-most book to cleanse himself, to make himself acceptable to the public? Would he, in prospective preparation for seeking higher office, have to offer himself up to every celebrity-interviewer in the country, smiling through inquisitions about how it felt to be deceived, why he stayed with his wife, whether he had always been faithful to her?
The fundamental question is whether women have to play one game and men another — whether that infamous playing field is level yet, a most appropriate point since Senator Clinton is certainly a player.
Well, let us see. Mrs. Clinton's popularity grew when she was a victim. She stood by her wayward man (well, near him), and her poll ratings soared. Even as the intern scandal grew, culminating in Mr. Clinton's public admission in August 1998 that he had an intimate relationship with a young White House employee, Mrs. Clinton drew sympathy and support throughout the country. She was even embraced by older Americans and Republican women who had been uncomfortable with her policy-making role, The New York Times reported; and when she went on a Democratic fund-raising tour in the fall, she was warmly hailed as a celebrity.
THERE were some women who called her a bad role model for their daughters, then and later when she ran for the Senate. Otherwise, the first lady who had been excoriated for everything from her headbands to her failed effort to reform health care had become a rock star. "Finally her poll numbers are up because she's standing by her man," the playwright Wendy Wasserstein said in 1998. "That's all right because it involves the good kind of strength and dignity. But it kind of scares me. What are we telling the next generation of women?"
Good question. To be realistic? To be pragmatic? To recognize that to succeed in public life demands accepting the public's often rigid standards? The story of Mrs. Clinton so far suggests that women who stray from their traditional roles have to redeem themselves one way or another. Her husband's emotional abuse gave the future senator her way.
It's the updated version of those movies from the late 1950's and early 60's, the ones in which the uptight "career woman" was always lonely and frustrated, the "fallen woman" was always punished and Doris Day always prevailed because she preserved her virtue.
The current version: The serious policy expert who disparaged cookie-baking was as unpopular as the girl who was always chosen last for the softball team in the schoolyard. When she became a victim who suffered in public but remained loyal, she won forgiveness and emerged victorious. She became an independent heroine in her own right. A United States senator. With great hair.
There is a movie in this. Or maybe a play by Wendy Wasserstein.
She stayed with him because he was the source of her power. As a divorcee, she was nothing.
She stays with him now because his charisma is what she needs if she is going to campaign for the presidency.
There, was that hard?
Not in this life. Not on this planet. Only in the words of the Times.
Congressman Billybob
I suppose the "pigs" book will "verify" her feelings. Ain't they something?? He couldn't tell the truth in court, why would he now?? There are 9 million reasons.
For the leftists, the answer is HELL YES!
I find it incredibly ironic that the ONLY reason that the icon of the feminutties is in the position that she's in is because of who she married -- and from whom she accepted repeated humiliations.
True feminists , like Camille Paglia, also despise the:
To paraphrase Belle Starr (as played by Pamela Reed):
PS: love your tag line!
And what WILL she say the "next time," because as sure as you and I are breathing, you know there WILL be another time.
ROTFL! Oh yeah, the media was so hard on poor Hillary!
The broad is disgusting. (Both of them). All of them!!
And The National Enquirer, and The Globe, and the rest of us!
Or maybe a Lifetime for Women Movie. Quid Pro Blow: Anything for Power, The Hillary Clinton Story
Book sales were the least of the reasons this book was written for. This book is for "political innoculation" or "strategic campaign innoculation".
In other words, in several years, when she runs for president, and people ask her questions, like Monica, or whitewater or whatever, she can say or more accuratley she gets to say "I've already addressed that", or "I talked about it in my book", "its old news", "thats already been discussed at lenght".
This is actually pretty standard for both political parties and is done in a variety of ways. Her writing a book is probably one of the better strategy moves.
This book was never about money, it was about her testing the waters for the future, and getting a future campaign distraction out of the way, so as to make anyone who brings up her past sound like they are "beating a dead horse". The media will happily say that over and over again.
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