The XX Factor: What women really think.



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    What Are You Laughing At?

    Posted Wednesday, November 14, 2007 3:47 PM | By Melinda Henneberger
    I'm with Emily. Despite my irrational and - until now, at least -- enduring soft spot for John McCain, laughing one's senatorial socks off when a colleague is called the B word is no less objectionable than if he had indulged a (theoretical) Obama hater in using the N word. This was not so much a gaffe as a window into the candidate's character, just as Hillary Clinton's planted question was. Which is why these off-script (or on-, in her case) moments can be so instructive. Don't we all wish we had paid more attention to Bush's cocky asides in 2000, and less to his moderate stump speeches?

     

    The fact that our current president's cowboy ways have been so thoroughly discredited is still another reason I can't see Clinton's biggest obstacle as her womanly lack of a little more snap in the old towel. Wouldn't the stereotypically female virtue of prudence, and maybe even a little well-placed aversion to risk, be a welcome relief right about now? Even in full riled-up feminist mode, I can't see that when she has her first bad week of the campaign, it's because some would-be supporters just woke up and smelled the Black Orchid. Bill Clinton and George W. Bush made plenty of people crazy with hatred, too. And I guess the bottom line for me is the many women I meet who genuinely seem to feel guilty about not liking Hillary better; does sisterhood require that we support the woman in the race? Or put another way, are those who say they'd like a woman - just not this woman -- necessarily bitchy phonies?

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