The XX Factor: What women really think.

Iran, Recounting

Tracy Flick Never Rests

The joyful, saccharine, karaoke-inspring Glee, which premiered last night on Fox, got me wondering: What did we do before Tracy Flick? She first appeared, embodied by Reese Witherspoon, in 1999's Election, a previously unidentified personality type, the driven, ruthless, terrifyingly ambitious striver who micromanages her inevitable rise to power in relentlessly cheerful tones. In the decade since Election, Flick has been transformed from a fresh, new character into an archetype, found frequently in... (To read the rest of this post, visit our new website at DoubleX.com!)

The Enduring Attraction of Sarah Palin

The Fairfield Weekly has an interesting piece on the public's enduring fascination with Sarah Palin: "The Porn Identity." It opens in a strip club where adult film star Lisa Ann, who played Palin in Hustler's XXX-homage to the once aspiring VP, "Who's Nailin' Paylin: Adventures of a Hockey MILF," takes the stage dressed as Palin to perform a striptease. Acccording to Hustler Video, "Who's Nailin' Paylin" is one of their all-time best-sellers, proving so popular they're producing a follow-up this spring, "Hollywood's Nailin' Paylin," which "will parody Palin's imagined new career as book author and talk-show host and, of course, put her in bed with a bunch of spoofed celebrities." Hustler says there's just something about Sarah:

"There aren't many franchises in the adult world. It's a one-trick pony," [Hustler Director of Operations Jeff] Thill says. "It's really different with her. She's not really in the news right now and yet we can't keep the title in stock. Assuming the second one goes well, we'll continue on forever if we can get away with it."

In an interview, the Weekly asked her impersonator about Palin's sexual mystique. The woman who's walked a mile in stripper shoes as Palin responded: "It's a distraction from politics. I hope people wouldn't be swayed either way by sex appeal. People vote for all the wrong reasons anyway, but if we throw sex appeal into the mix we'll have [a disaster]." But is she right? Months after Palin's disastrous run, we're still intrigued. She's the anti-Hillary who won't go away, and judging by her stickiness, I can't help but wonder if Palin has some strange hope in her rumored possible run for the presidency in 2012. Maybe Palin's sublimated-yet-paraded brand of sexuality is the key to her success—and the farthest thing from a disaster.

Let's Go Home

Forgive me, but I can't be bothered with Palin anymore. I want to linger with the victor. As I've thought about Obama's speech on election night, and his demeanor since, the word that has stayed with me most isn't the names of the groups he said he hoped to unite (blacks, whites, gays, straights, etc.) or the particular policy proposals he reiterated. Rather, it's the name of one of the temptations he hopes we'll avoid as a nation going forward: "immaturity." 

It's a striking word for a politician to use (along with the more customary "partisanship" and "pettiness" ). Reading the Newsweek series about the campaign, I was less interested in the latest revelations about Palin's wardrobe than those about the sheer childishness of the Hillary and McCain camps: the toddlerlike tantrums, the puerile infighting, the impulsiveness, the adolescent refusal to accept responsibility for anything that went wrong. Many commentators, of course, have noted Obama's self-containment, his self-discipline, his unflappability. His campaign's motto was No-Drama Obama (i.e., no teenage theatrics). But isn't this just another way of saying that Obama is that rare thing in recent American politics: a grown-up as opposed to a mere adult?

By contrast, Bush, McCain and Hillary remain, quite literally, children. One or both of their parents are remarkably still alive. Indeed, what struck me most about Obama on election night was how alone he was on that stage, except for his own wife and children. (Even an aged Biden could hold his mother's hand.) And I wonder if, even more than race, this unusual parentlessness for a man Obama's age hasn’t contributed to what I regard as his singular strength and virtue in our youth-obsessed culture: his maturity. Yes, McCain was older and more experienced, but in this election, he actually came across as less mature. The youth vote went for the grown-up.

Obama's election may have finally closed the chapter on the 1960s, by which most people mean the debates over Vietnam. But born as he was at the tail end of the baby boomers, Obama, I think, may have also turned the page on the extended adolescence of his generation. In many ways, the last eight years have felt like one of those teenage parties where the grown-ups are absent and things have spiraled dangerously out of control. Countries, like kids, need and want limits. So, while I've been overjoyed this last week as I've watched a confident and competent Obama begin to assume power, what I've felt most, I've suddenly realized, is sheer relief: A responsible adult has finally showed up to shepherd everyone home.

Only Nicolle Knows for Sure ...

Do you mean, Maureen, that women in politics may have to be nine times nuttier and more narcissistic than even your average hey-look-at-me male of the species, just to get elected? Not sure I'm with you on that, having known some really menschy women officeholders. (And I know you're not saying there aren't any.) But maybe I would be with you if I'd had the job you had and seen all you have, right? What your post did make me think: We have no idea whether these stories about Sarah Palin throwing fits and clueless about whole continents are true; we weren't there. I've had two batshit bananas bosses in my life, one a he and one a she, and I almost never talk about either one of them—not because I am so nice, but because it's such crazyola stuff I don't think anyone would believe it. (Plus, even I don't want to hear it.) So maybe that's what Palin's aide Nicolle Wallace, or whoever the source was for this stuff, is learning, too: Sometimes, even the truth can splash back quite nastily. But if that were the case, it would certainly be an ironic coda to a deeply dishonest campaign.

Update: Sarah speaks, denies divadom. "I never asked for anything more than maybe a Diet Dr Pepper once in a while," she told reporters. She also disputed tales that she didn't know Africa was a continent and couldn't name the signatories of NAFTA: "That's cruel. It's mean-spirited. It's immature. It's unprofessional and those guys are jerks if they came away with it, taking things out of context [from debate prep], and then tried to spread something on national news. It's not fair and it's not right."

Post-Palin America

I Lost My Head in San Francisco

Have You No Decency ...

I'm sure you all have seen this clip by now, of Barbara West, anchor at WFTV, Orlando, Fla., interviewing Joe Biden late last week.  The whole interview is contentious but at 2:36 min she presents Biden with Karl Marx:

WEST: You may recognize this famous quote: "From each according to his abilities to each according to his needs." That's from Karl Marx. How is Senator Obama not being a Marxist if he intends to spread the wealth around?

BIDEN: Are you joking? Is this a joke?

West goes on to ask Biden if Obama wants to turn America into a Socialist country "like Sweden." 

Is it just me? Beyond the fact that we could learn a few things from Sweden (including but not limited to their unbelievably enviable relationship to family and child policies), have we lost all sense of history? This trope, pushed by Palin (if she mentions socialism one more time ...) among others, seems to be treading dangerously close to calling for a House Un-American Activities Committee. I've even had interactions with Republicans lately along the same lines. How will this country heal after the elections from these efforts to inject a 1950s-style distrust among Americans?

No, No, A Million-Billion-Gazillion Times No!

What's up with Democrats who say, "If Obama [or Hillary] doesn't win the Democratic nomination, I'll be voting for John McCain in November"?

This is making me crazy. I argued, today, that Clinton has become so fixated on tearing down Obama—despite her negligible chances of winning the nomination herself—that she's just increasing the chances that McCain becomes president. (I urge Hillary to drop out of the race before she becomes the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy's best weapon!) Well ... in response, I got a ton of e-mails from people saying things like, "You're right, Hillary's attacks on Obama come right out of the Republican playbook. I'm so mad at Hillary that if she becomes the Democratic nominee, I'm voting for John McCain."

I don't get it. How can someone be mad at Hillary for attacking Obama in the same way Republicans might/will attack Obama but threaten to retaliate against Hillary, should her attacks on Obama prove successful, by voting for ... the Republican candidate?

This strikes me as nuts. I've never been crazy about Hillary—I think she's the Celine Dion of Democratic politics—and I'm a big Obama fan. But should Hillary, through some miracle, end up at the top of the Democratic ticket, of course I'll vote for her, and if she loses to McCain, I'll be very, very disappointed. Because, contra Ralph Nader, there is a pretty big difference between the two parties—a far greater difference than there is between Clinton and Obama.

Right? Right?

The Texas Two-Step

It's a cool, bright morning here in West Texas. Folks in Marfa, Texas, where I've paused en route to El Paso, are out voting and preparing to caucus. Most of the people I've talked to have already voted—Texas offers early voting. Most are planning to caucus later tonight. The Texas primary—as everyone's been saying—is unusual in that voters can both vote and caucus if they show up at the evening caucuses with a voter-registration slip. Effectively, your vote can be counted twice. This has come to be known as the "Texas two-step." Some people here are worried about another form of two-stepping, you might say: As Politico flagged earlier this week, the Dallas Morning News apparently got a peek at Clinton's "training materials," which apparently tell volunteers, "DO NOT allow the supporter of another candidate to serve in leadership roles."

I've been a Hillary defender on this blog in the past—and I'm the first to be frustrated by the latent sexism that has permeated so much of the election coverage. But I find it strange that the sexism meme is hitting a high now—and that CNN spent so much time this morning analyzing their so-called "fairness" to Hillary. Over the past few weeks, Hillary has trotted out all sorts of hardball tactics—the "Shame on You" moment; the satirical imitation of Obama; these reported caucus shenanigans; and, last but not least, the gender card, which she has used without shame, most notably (and ineffectively) in the Ohio debate, where she whined that she "always" got the first question. The problem with playing the victim and crying gender as frequently as she's been doing of late is that it degrades the power of that claim for the rest of us. She wants to be a leader. She can't worry every time a knock comes that it's a sexist one. I wish I could say I felt that she's just calling it where she sees it—which I'd be the first to defend. But watching the vagaries of the campaign these last few days, I've had the uneasy sense that she's stressing the hardships of being a woman as a cheap campaign strategy. I hope I'm wrong.

Emotion and Party Affiliation

Over on his blog at Psychology Today, frequent Slate contributor Peter D. Kramer (author of, among other things, Listening to Prozac) notes what plenty are rushing to note: that Clinton, having accused Obama of Xeroxing, went ahead and echoed other people's lines herself last night. But Kramer—astute psychiatrist that he is—probes a little further and notices that she cribs when she's reaching to express emotion, when she's trying to be heartfelt. And then he pushes a bit more, beyond the usual gender point that it's ironic to find the female failing to convey empathy persuasively. Instead, Kramer focuses on the partisan implications: Democratic candidates, he proposes, "only prevail if they have substantial social skills." Republicans can get away with being stiffer, less sincere. Think of the losers Kerry, Gore, Dukakis: wooden, not "whole people" on the stump. And think of Nixon, a winner. If you buy Kramer's formula, the best Democratic choice this time around is obvious. Does the insight, I wonder, also suggest McCain wouldn't be wrong to bet he could get away with less than his usual straight talk?

The Audacity of Hopelessness, Part 2

Dahlia, your post about McCain's powerful message of hopelessness cracked me up and reminded me of this great spoof of Obama's "Yes We Can" video: You might call it McCain's "No, We Can't." Check out the actors' expressions toward the end.

That said, I have a grain of admiration for McCain's willingness to take a politically unpopular position during the season of high political posturing. I cringe when McCain argues that we could be in Iraq for 10,000 years, and should be, if that's what it takes. But then I also cringe after watching the Oscar-nominated Iraq documentary No End in Sight, as I did last night, and realize that an early withdrawal from Iraq could leave not only America but Iraq much worse off in terms of security. I'd love to believe in the message of hope but it needs to be anchored by some pragmatic foreign policy, and sometimes I wonder just how pragmatic these pull-out-of-Iraq plans are. We don't want to bolster America's terrible (i.e., nonexistent) postwar strategy with a terrible withdrawal strategy.

Meanwhile, anyone who hasn't seen it yet should check out No End in Sight. It's not exactly a Valentine's Day treat, though.

Super Tuesday From Texas

Cancer Hurts, but Barack Hurt More

Did Elizabeth Edwards damage her husband's chances in the election he's dropping out of today? She did not hurt her husband, no; she'd literally rather die than do so, I swear, and still did him more good than harm.

But while people love Elizabeth, they do not love her ?&%! cancer, and the disease did limit her ability to help him. Not because either her illness or its treatment kept her from campaigning—she was out there anyway, forcefully questioning Hillary Clinton's effectiveness as an advocate for women and warning that conservative hatred of the Clintons would energize the Republican base if Hillary were the Democratic nominee. But uncertainty about her health and her future did neutralize her positives to some degree.

A friend of mine, Lynn Hunter, who lives in Ames, Iowa—and has had breast cancer, too, as I have, said, "Even I was stunned when the word that he was staying in the race anyway first came out,'' after the couple announced that Elizabeth's cancer had returned last spring. "At first, it seemed to indicate a level of ambition I wasn't comfortable with. It took a few days for me to figure out that it's like a bad country song or that bucket movie''—if your time is limited, then all the more reason to spend it well.

But men in particular seemed unable to come to grips with Edwards' decision, she thought: "My brother and I were talking about the candidates and the first thing he said about Edwards was he didn't understand how anybody whose wife was sick with cancer would make that decision. I'm in a faith-sharing group and it came up more than once in the group, too. And the men, interestingly, were always the ones saying they didn't get it.'' Lynn, who is a therapist, sees the fact that it was breast cancer as adding another layer of discomfort: "Psychologically, that's part of it. It's like my husband went to Borders and got two books on the husband's role in my recovery from breast cancer. Would he have done that if I'd had leukemia? No, there's a sexual overlay to this; he wanted to be the best breast cancer husband he could be.''

Yet the real deal-killer, of course, was not Elizabeth or John or even his $400 haircuts, but the newer, more inspiring alternative to Clinton, Barack Obama. Because Obama so completely embodies the change that this election is about, no amount of spousal support or sunny uplift would have been sufficient. As Elizabeth herself said of her husband months ago, "We can't make him black, we can't make him a woman.'' Just this once, it wasn't the white guy who best matched the message, or the moment.

Forget the Evangelicals in '08. What About the Jews?

It seems like much longer than three years ago that Howard Dean was hailed as the great hope for Web political organizing. Now, Ron Paul has replaced him as the no-chance-in-hell candidate to best harness the misdirected money and idealism of the Internet masses. 

But apparently Dean’s feeling nostalgic for the Internet, because he recently talked about one thing sure to stir up bloggers: who gets to go to heaven. During a speech Sunday to Jewish leaders, according to the Politico, Dean said that “there are no bars to heaven for anybody.” (The article headline—“Dean says Jews can go to heaven”—is a little odd: It seems to suggest that Dean granted Jews access to heaven.) 

That assertion surely won’t sit well with conservative evangelical Christians who think that there actually is a bar to heaven, and a rather high one at that. But though the Democrats have apparently been trying to woo evangelical voters suspicious of potential GOP nominees Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney, it’s not likely to happen. Could Dean instead be trying to stop the trend of Jewish Republicans? There have been periodic trend reports this year about Jews in ‘08, including some wondering if Jews might be more inclined to vote for Giuliani than they were to vote for Bush and how they might respond to Obama. Exit polling from the 2006 midterm elections found that young Jews (and Orthodox Jews) were more likely to vote for the GOP than their older counterparts. Is this actually something Dean and the Democrats need to worry about? Or was he just trying to please the audience in the crowd that day?

The B Word: Now Yer Talkin'

Thank you, Madam; the potty-mouth McCain supporter (or was she another plant?) who called Hillary the B word just handed Clinton five points minimum -- and the kind of gender-based martyrdom she so benefited from when Rick Lazio looked like he was zooming in to throttle her during their 2000 senatorial race. Brava! Even I don't like it, and I think the Senator can more than take care of herself.

I'm still not convinced, though, Dahlia and Emily, that the complaint that she's a phony has much to do with her gender; have we forgotten the Slick Willy years? Bill Clinton is just a more talented politician than his wife - and every other living practitioner.

Hillary Clinton: Tough, Stoic, or Scary?

If we need any reminder that it's not easy to be the first popular female candidate for the American presidency, it arrived Monday in the form of an announcement by the AP that Hillary Clinton was leading in yet another poll. This one? The candidate likely to make the "scariest" Halloween costume. Some 37% of the respondents to the survey chose Hillary as their front-runner. (Giuliani was second, with 14%. More key details here.)

The fright-mask news arrives roughly a month after it was announced that Clinton had led in a Pew poll asking respondents about the relative "toughness" of the various candidates: In it, some 67% of Democratic-leaning voters said that Hillary was the first candidate who came to mind when they heard the word "tough." By comparison, only 39% of Republican-leaning voters thought of Giuliani when they heard the word "tough." (Yet he was considered the "toughest" Republican candidate.) All this might seem to be good news for Clinton: after all, over the past year, she has labored hard to burnish her "tough" persona, so as to stave off the perception that a woman--and a Democrat, to boot!--would prove soft on matters of foreign policy. It'd be easy to think that it had finally paid off.

But I've been wondering all this time whether a "tough" backlash was on its way (maybe just because I've been reading Susan Faludi's flawed but sometimes piercingly insightful The Terror Dream). And just last Friday a crucial American institution paved the way for said backlash. In a segment entitled, "Is it OK for women to cry" -- pegged to Ellen DeGeneres' on-air breakdown--the Today Show broadcast images of Clinton giving a speech and shaking hands and confidently pronounced that many people think "that she is too stoic, that she doesn't reveal enough of herself"--on its way to elaborating on the communicative benefits of crying in public. If media coverage of the last election was filled with accusations about girlie-men, will this one be full of talk about manly-girls? Let's hope not. In the meantime, here's an article that briefly discusses the latter group (scroll down); apparently we see them as "pretenders." Sound like a familiar critique of Clinton?