The XX Factor: Slate women blog about politics, etc...

re:Our early reviews, and the Sarkozys

Personally, I try to follow the example of a very famous woman in politics, Margaret Thatcher, who never read what newspapers wrote about her, ever, in principle. Which was just as well, because it was usually nasty. My only objection in the early reviews was the word "feminist." I don't see it anywhere in the tag "slate women blog about politics, etc". While I'm happy to use the word about myself some of the time, I'm not at all happy with much of the baggage that comes with it. And I don't see why a bunch of women talking to one another is necessarily a "feminist" project. I had assumed it would be more like the all-women dinner parties I started giving a few years ago, when I realized how much fun they were.

Now, on to what everybody in my neck of the woods is talking about: the Sarkozy divorce. Cecelia Sarkozy has shown so little enthusiasm for being the wife of the president of France that it warms my heart: Asked by one interviewer what she saw herself doing in ten years, she replied "I see myself ... jogging in Central Park." Implying, of course, that she doesn't even fancy living in Paris, let alone being French First Lady. It's hard to tell whether the lack of enthusiasm was for the job or for the husband - both she and he have had very public affairs, he with a well-known journalist (unthinkable in most countries, no?). But even if they are no longer married, I still like the precedent being set here. At last, the wife of a very senior Western politician who chose to play no public role whatsoever: no tree-planting, no campaigning, no hostessing, no health-care-policy-writing! The only comparable spouse is the husband of Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, who gets on with his job in molecular chemistry and doesn't appear on TV. That's what I call a truly independent, liberated spouse.