She's back!!!

After a "two month" (three month, but who's counting) book leave, my very favorite NY Times columnist Judith Warner is back. So glad to have her. Yes, the rest of them do in a pinch (I've grown quite fond of reading Gail Collins, in fact), but I really like Warner because she is frank about her feminist lens and she tends to connect the larger movements of politics to everyday life, which I find compelling and refreshing. Politics metasticises when examined in its own hermetically sealed world.

I was particularly impressed with her opening salvo--a connection between the Sex and the City movie and the misogyny directed in Hillary's direction during the campaign. (Yes, I use misogyny rather than sexism--sexism, in my view, is gender-based discrimination ; misogyny is gender-based vitrol--accusations leveled at a person as a representative of the female sex). Warner, who has been on the sidelines and not writing during much of the primary season, points this out:

In a culture that’s reached such a level of ostensible enlightenment as ours, calling a powerful woman “castrating” – however you choose to put it – ought to be seen as just as offensive as rubbing your fingers together to convey a love of gold coinage when you talk about a Jew. It’s nothing other than an expression of woman-hate — and the degree to which such expressions have flourished, in the mainstream media and in the loonier reaches of cyberspace this year, has added up to be a real national shame.

It is not simply that the pundits, the creators of such novelty items as Nutcracking Hillary figurines don't think that Hillary would be a good president. It's that they use her as a effigy for women. As Warner points out, Clinton has been portrayed in the media as the nagging wife, the betrayed wife, the ball-buster... These I particular sweeping characterizations of women are as old as Cicero. And until we acknowledge that there is a problem in a calm rational voice, it's not going to go away any time soon. Melinda Henneberger and Dahlia Lithwick on the XX Factor (Slate.com's blog featuring women journalists from various newspapers) pointed this out when Obama made his race speech.

At some point, it will be less of a big deal that a woman runs, that a person of color runs. For now, a woman still wears pants-suits, and not just a suit) and a man of color is exceptional if he is "articulate." (For the record, I would be far more exceptional if I were articulate too).

Until then, I'm glad that Judith Warner is back to add her voice to pointing all of this out.