I’m betting the editors of the recently released collection of essays called Thirty Ways of Looking at Hillary were assuming the presidential political landscape would look a bit different today, at least from a marketing point of view.
If the primary race was over and Hillary had become the Democratic nominee after Super Tuesday, as many expected would happen, they probably sensed that this baby would be a best-seller.
Even with things still TBD for the Democrats, I’m sure there are many who would love to have a chance to read this little volume to help inform either the vote they have yet to cast or to decide if Hillary really is being treated unfairly by the media, or just to get a better sense of who this woman really is.
But actually, there isn’t a lot that’s particularly revealing about her in Thirty Ways of Looking at Hillary. It’s more a volume of essays about how the various authors feel about her and view her in ways (usually) not covered by the main stream media.
I was a little surprised at the critical and sometimes flip tone of some of the authors. Some of the essays ponder who is the real HRC? Is she a dog person or a cat person? Is she better or worse than Lady Macbeth? What did she like to snack on in the White House?
(Can you imagine the outcry if someone had written a similar volume about any of the men candidates?)
While entertaining and well-written, I’d like to look at Hillary in a 31st way.
What would her candidacy have looked like if she hadn’t married Bill?
What if she had married someone else, kept her name and was still Hillary Rodham? If we take the Bill Clinton lens off the glasses through which we scrutinize Hillary, what would an objective look at her candidacy be? I have a feeling it would be much more charitable in terms of her experience, her personality and her judgment.
To be sure, there are plenty of more serious essays in the Thirty Ways of Looking at Hillary, but I was saddened that the publisher was more concerned about having people write about Hillary’s hobbies, or lack thereof, than taking a real look at this woman and what has propelled her to this place in life.
No, it wasn’t meant to be a biography, but when we write about women candidates in this way, do we continue to diminish them, as well as ourselves?
April 3rd, 2008 at 10:16 am
Love your thoughts on how we would all be viewing Hillary if we weren’t looking through the Bill lense. Most people who view her negatively seem to refer to things that happened during her husband’s term in office. Can we really blame her for the faults of her husband’s administration? Is his philandering somehow evidence of her failings? It seems that many people think so.
While I am not so naive as to think that Hillary is perfect – nobody is- I do think that she is getting a raw deal and that she has a lot more going for her than people seem to realize.
I recently posted on this in “Coming Together for Change” at http://www.betweenusgirls.info. Let me know what you think.
April 3rd, 2008 at 10:30 am
I agree with you on this one. There was a time when I thought being married to Bill Clinton wasn’t a political liability. Now I’m not so sure.
April 3rd, 2008 at 7:01 pm
I do wonder. She’s such a polarizing figure, but I wonder if she’d come across as angry if she had not married him–had pursued a political career earlier, on her own terms.
It is disappointing the way the media feels entitled to look at and judge women’s lives by a different measure.
Then again, they did ask Bill about boxers v. briefs. (just joking)
April 3rd, 2008 at 8:57 pm
Go read Woman in Charge by Carl Bernstein. It deinfinitely changes your views of her.
April 4th, 2008 at 9:35 am
But the real, depressing, kicker to this is…if she were not married to Bill or some other equally powerful male – would she ever have gotten as far as she has? Makes. Me. Crazy.