As for accusing Clinton

of playing the woman-as-victim card,

can this be the same Dowd who said that men

don't ask her out because she's too smart

and successful and will never see 35 again?

How's that for painting yourself

as a victim of sexism?

Male politicians have used the 'western' myth,

where helpless women were saved from danger by men

With Hillary Clinton, women are granted

authority to rescue themselves

The distinction is essential to

an evaluation of current American politics

American Men Fear of Strong Women Like Hillary Clinton

No sooner had Hillary Clinton proceeded from the Democratic presidential debate to a speech at Wellesley College last week than the wailing began.

Barack Obama hit the Today show accusing her of playing the "don't pick on me" woman and a chorus line of media pundits denounced her for having hurt the cause of feminism by acting like the injured girl and dealing the "gender card."

New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd contended that Clinton was trying to show "she can break, just like a little girl.... If she could become a senator by playing the victim after Monica, surely she can become president by playing the victim now."

Fox News' Mort Kondracke preached: "I think it is very unattractive for a general election candidate, who wants to be the Commander in Chief of the free world, to be saying

'They're ganging up on me!' I mean, this is the NFL. This is not Wellesley versus Smith in field hockey."

These indictments were conjured from the slimmest of evidence. Even the New York Times, while "piling on," had to do contortions to pin the victim label on Clinton's comments.

As a November 5 Times article put it: "Mrs. Clinton denies playing the gender card -- at least in the traditional sense of saying that as a woman she should be exempt from the traditional rough-and-tumble of campaigns -- and her remarks on the subject have certainly been oblique."

For oblique, read frustratingly nonexistent.

What she did say -- at her alma mater before a whooping and roaring crowd of more than 1,000 young women -- was: "In so many ways, this all-women's college prepared me to compete in the all-boys' club of presidential politics....

"Fear is always with us, but we just don't have time for it, not now. So let's roll up our sleeves and get to work together. We're ready to shatter that highest glass ceiling."

What about that was so girl-with-her-finger-in-her-mouth frail? The indignation of Clinton's opponents may have a motive more genuine than their desire to defend feminism. They are mad because they feel robbed.

Clinton, in fact, didn't play the victim card. The gender card she played was the one every successful recent male presidential candidate has played -- the rescuer card. More

Is Maureen Dowd Obsessed with

Hillary Clinton or What? [Original]

Two weeks ago, she complained that Hillary spoke "girlfriend to girlfriend" to women voters while refusing to share the pain of being married to a sexually exploitative monster who had made her violate all her beliefs and principles, as Caitlin Flanagan opined in the Atlantic.

Last week, Dowd accused Hillary of "playing the woman-as-victim card" because her campaign put out a humorous video portraying the last debate as a masculine pile-on (never mind that Hillary herself said she was the focus of tough questioning because she was the front-runner):

"If the gender game worked when Rick Lazio muscled into her space, why shouldn't it work when Obama and Edwards muster some mettle? If she could become a senator by playing the victim after Monica, surely she can become president by playing the victim now."

As far as I'm concerned, anyone who quotes Caitlin Flanagan approvingly has lost their bona fides on gender issues.

Flanagan, after all, is the woman who calls herself a homemaker while acknowledging that she's never changed her own sheets, who insists that children don't love working mothers as much as they do stayhomes, and who says women have a duty to have sex with their husbands at least twice a week.

As for playing the woman-as-victim card, can this be the same Maureen Dowd who wrote in her last book, Are Men Necessary?, that men don't ask her out because she's too smart and successful and will never see 35 again? How's that for painting yourself as a victim of sexism-- which, I hasten to add, Dowd probably is!

You don't need to be Simone de Beauvoir to recognize that lots of middle-aged men would find Dowd too challenging and too old -- i.e., their own age.

For applying this rather obvious sociological observation to herself--for permitting herself one unguarded moment and writing what women say to each other all the time--she was publicly taken to task all over the media.

Unlike Hillary, Dowd backed down. I turned on the TV late one night and there was Dowd, all sultry red hair and fishnet stockings, gaily insisting to some male interviewer that her social life was terrific, no problems in that department at all.

The more people insist that sexism plays no part in the primary campaign or its media coverage, the more likely I am to vote for Hillary Clinton and I'll bet I'm not the only one. Her poll numbers with women are rising, after all.

I think a lot of women are just fed up to here with the sexism they see around them every day at their own workplaces and that their male colleagues just don't notice as they ride the testosterone escalator upwards.

Six male politicians salivating to score points, two super-self-satisfied male journalists asking the questions (and what questions!), one woman who has got to know the world is just waiting for her to set a foot wrong--it makes a picture.

If you've ever been the only woman at the meeting, on the panel, with your job, at your level, you see that picture all the time, and it's a self-portrait.

While on the subject of Dowd, let me add that I am sick of Hillary being tagged with the adventures of Bill's genitals.

What's it to Dowd or Flanagan that Hillary ran for the Senate instead of filing for divorce?

At least Hillary isn't a sad doormat like Wendy Vitter and countless other political wives.

As long as we are looking at candidates' spouses, what about Michelle Obama and Elizabeth Edwards, smart lawyers who quit work to promote their husbands' ambitions?

Nobody criticizes those choices, or says nasty things about those relationships. In fact, we are constantly being told how warm and wonderful these marriages are.

Fact is, none of us knows a thing about what really goes on with the Obamas, the Edwardses, or any of the other candidates and their wives. And if it weren't for Kenneth Starr, we wouldn't know about the Clintons, either.