Attention Must Be Paid

Congrats, Senator Obama, from one of those middle-aged white women who voted for Hillary Clinton in the primaries. Everyone is suggesting you'd better pay close attention to us, especially since we're used to being chronically overlooked, and we're more than a little steamed about that fact. I agree completely, although not for the reasons you're hearing elsewhere.

You've run some race. The coalition of young voters and black Americans has been powerful and inspirational. The turnout among Democrats has put paid to the notion that no one cares about politics. And the estrogen alert that now says female Clinton supporters are going over en masse to John McCain out of pique, spite or rage is way overblown.

The idea that we will illustrate our disappointment by voting Republican is just another insulting suggestion that we're all emotional nut bars. Ever since the GOP sold out to the right wing, which sees women as a service industry for men, it has been no friend to us. This is the party that brought us Clarence Thomas even after Anita Hill testified; tried to neuter the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission; held up approval of over-the-counter emergency contraception, and even put a guy on a commission for reproductive health who believes prayer is the way to deal with PMS. (Please, God, deliver him from the reach of my strong right hook.) Senator McCain himself opposes legal abortion and acknowledging the role of women in combat; progressive women's groups have long tagged him as weak on workplace bias and equal-pay guarantees. His likely Supreme Court appointees would mirror all that.

It would be silly for us to blame you for the cable blah-blahgers who were so negative about Senator Clinton. If she'd invented fire, they would have accused her of pyromania. You, by contrast, have been gracious in acknowledging her contributions as she bowed out. But you did have your moments. Along with your giving up cigarettes, may I suggest that you never again refer to a grown female reporter as "sweetie"?

After all, you know what it's like to be stereotyped. When you were accused during this campaign of being elitist—because good old egalitarian America isn't nearly as happy as one might hope when a black man gets a chance to go Ivy League—you could have responded, "Funny, that's not what cabdrivers who won't pick me up at night seem to think." You didn't do that, just as Senator Clinton didn't make much of the pitfalls of gender assumptions. Both of you understood the power-structure rules for the formerly disenfranchised. Push, and you're pushy. Demand, and you're demanding. No complaining allowed.

But here's the great thing about your position now: since you're obviously not female, you can openly complain on our behalf. You can channel your grandmothers, who had no opportunities, and your mother, who had few, and your wife, who because of the newest wave of feminism suddenly had many. You could even acknowledge the anger and frustration that women of a certain age, who have sat in the assistant's seat watching younger men promoted over them, felt when they saw what seemed to be the same thing happening to Senator Clinton.