The XX Factor: What women really think.

One Hand Slapping ...

It’s hard not to contrast the New Niceness pervading last night’s Democratic debate with the intramural slashing and burning of John McCain. No doubt there’s a lot happening under the surface here, but it’s hard to dispute that Clinton had to rein it in after South Carolina’s nastyfest because women get called “shrill” the moment they step over some invisible Maginot Line of niceness.

Truth? I don’t much care what animated yesterday’s warm fuzzies—I loved it. I’ll always prefer a respectful policy exchange to a mud fight, particularly when we’re talking about war and the economy and health care—issues so rarely illuminated by sequential head-slapping. One of the reasons Obama’s always been an inspiring candidate to me is that he is authentically trying to back away from the ugliness of partisan discourse. That doesn’t always serve him well, and it leads people I respect enormously to dismiss him as a lightweight, but I think it’s also persuaded at least some women with Fox-fatigue that there’s another way to talk to each other; that allowing your enemy to actually finish his sentences has worked fairly well for humanity for the last few millenniums for a reason.

This brings me round to your post, Rachael, about what women may want from their A Sections, which may well be a model for what they want in their political discourse. Not necessarily “anecdotal” or “personal” news as you (sarcastically?) suggest. But perhaps, as Deborah Tannen has argued, something more than the “attack-dog” editorial page we’ve adopted.

I know many tough-as-nails women bloggers and opinion writers who have no problem with attack journalism or attack politics, but I know a lot more women, and young moms, who are truly grateful that Obama’s tried to light the way to something else.