Posted by: davd w pennington
Comment: #1
Thu Jul 24, 2008 3:49 PM
Here's an alternate take on the reaction many of us had to Sen. Clinton's so-called "masculine" behavior. The problem was not that tough, assertive, or authoritative behavior might be inappropriate coming from a woman--consider Margaret Thatcher, as PM of England, or Golda Meir, as PM of Israel--but that it was disengenuous coming from her. Sen. Clinton was acting out a script--who wrote it does not matter--and the script called for "masculine response". What we got from her was her theatric interpretation of masculine behavior, something we never got from PM Thatcher or PM Meir. For a woman to do that well requires two things: 1) an understanding of masculinity, 2) good acting ability. I submit that both are lacking in Sen. Clinton. As a consequence, her behavior was not truly masculine; it was a caricature of masculine behavior. It was no different with just about anything else we've seen her do or say: it's all scripted; it's all her dramatic interpretation; it's all counterfeit. <> A well-known woman (I've misplaced the citation) once wrote: "When a woman wants to be more like a man, why can't she be like a nice man?" Watching Sen. Clinton over the past 16 years has led me to the conclusion that she is like a number of women I've met, in that when she considers what it means to be a man, or how a man would handle a situation, her thoughts are both far from reality and unflattering.
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