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

The Audacity of Hopelessness

Emily and Hanna, I’m with Melinda on this one. Pity is the least interesting political impulse around and the faster we banish it the better.

Last night I had dinner with my former Fairy Slate-mother, Margo Howard—a second-wave feminist in feather mules. She captured what it is in the Hillary campaign that can really misfire with all the mass scolding and the guiltings. She said her problem with the Gloria Steinem/Robin Morgan story line was that she just doesn’t recognize her own life in it. Sure, there is and has been sexism, and it sucks and it should engender outrage. But her life just hasn’t been defined by those slights and obstacles. Mine hasn’t, either, and I don’t much like to be slapped around the room and accused of treason for feeling like my story isn’t one of pervasive gender suffering. Maybe if I were a Hooters girl, that would be my story. But I just can’t imagine a more disrespectful message to the generation of women who smashed through glass ceilings than, “Everything you did was for nothing. Life is as miserable for women today as it ever was.”

I’d been wondering how John McCain was going to inspire his followers with a rousing message of powerless victimhood, and yesterday I saw him do it: Dismissing Obama’s promises of hope as “only rhetoric” and “platitudes," McCain insisted that the events of 9/11 defined the scope of American hopes and freedom forever. This country can no longer afford hope! We’ve been hurt too badly! It’s all just fear and worry from here on out! Our enemies feed on our hope!  The decision to see yourself as the sum of the worst things that have ever been done to you by your enemies used to be the sole province of liberals. I say that if McCain wants to reimagine the GOP as the pity party for the new millennium, he’s welcome to it.