I Am Woman, Hear Me Snore

Whatever. Isn't the question: is she any good? Or, how will she lead the country? No one in this collection seriously analyzes her position on Iraq, her shift in health-care policy, her record as a senator, her promise of change, the likelihood that she can get elected or whether she has the right credentials. It is jarring—and worrying.

Many of the essays are clever, entertaining, provocative and elegantly written. But as you read one after the other, a certain self-loathing is evident: do we dislike Clinton, they ask, because she is like us—or not like us? If she is the Rorschach test so many claim her to be, that inkblot here is an unhappy woman. In a thoughtful piece, Dahlia Lithwick asks if women don't trust her because her suffering has been done in private: "We like to see all the crying and the dieting because we are still crying and dieting ourselves." Roiphe argues that what she calls Clinton's "phoniness" "may be so irritating, so unforgivable, to so many smart, driven women in part because it is our own." Some even complain she reminds them of their mothers—in a bad way.

The narcissism is overwhelming. And the standards she is held to are irrational. Jane Kramer admits she wants to know if Barack Obama has enough courage, ability and vision to be president. At the same time, she asks of Clinton: "Why do you want the job? What kind of woman does that make you?" "I take Hillary personally," she confesses, unnecessarily.

As Clinton's victory in the New Hampshire primary demonstrates, what unites women is not Hillary Clinton—it is attacks on Hillary Clinton. So when Rush Limbaugh says Americans don't want to watch a woman grow older in the White House, when Christopher Hitchens calls her an "aging and resentful female" or when John Edwards implies she is too emotional to be president, you can count on women hurdling into the Clinton camp. Katha Pollitt, for example, says that although she prefers Edwards and Obama on policy grounds, when she comes across "one of these sulfurous emanations from the national collective unconscious … I want to sit down and write Hillary's campaign a check immediately."

The problem is that many of the authors seem unaware of how much support Hillary actually has among women. Roiphe declares, "I have yet to meet a woman who likes Hillary Clinton." How, then, to explain that polling has consistently shown blue-collar women have rallied to Clinton's campaign, along with older women? A recent Pew Research Center study found 49 percent of female Democratic supporters back Clinton—only 28 percent chose Obama.

So not all women think the same way. It's just that some voices are a lot louder than others.

© 2008