January 27, 2016

Camille Paglia psychoanalyzes Hillary Clinton and it's not very pretty.

This new Salon essay is getting attention for calling Hillary's feminism "blame-men-first feminism," but the core of the piece is psychoanalyzing Hillary, attributing her personality to the force of her dominating and abusive father. It makes her sound like not much of a feminist at all, but a throwback "embracing and reaffirming the painful decisions made by her own mother."
Childhood photos of Bill Clinton show his gregarious, fun-loving charm already fully formed. The young Hillary Rodham, in contrast, looks armored, with a sharp gaze and a tense, over-bright smile. Like many first-born daughters, she became her father’s favorite son, marginalizing her less self-assured and accomplished brothers.

The “enabling” with which Hillary has been charged in her conflicted marriage may actually have been the pitying indulgence and half-scornful toleration that she first directed toward her brothers. She demoted her husband to a fraternal role—the shiftless “bad boy” in chronic need of scolding and spanking....
Paglia rhapsodizes about Gennifer Flowers — what a woman:
I had the opportunity to see Flowers perform (and briefly speak to her) at her New Orleans nightclub in 2004. Then in her mid-50s, she still radiated a stunning charisma. She had the silky, soothing manner and warm hospitality of the classic Southern woman—far from the “trailer park” realm to which Democratic consultant James Carville viciously consigned Mr. Clinton’s accusers.
No tense, over-bright smile there.
Gennifer Flowers is no historical footnote but rather a ghostly twin, a lingering admonishment to Hillary of everything that second-wave feminism resentfully tried and failed to change in sexual relations. 
Poor Hillary: Gennifer is the other you, the you that you couldn't be, as Paglia has it.
Perhaps it may be impossible for hard-driving career women, schooled in the curt, abrasive Northern style, to give an inch and show that they actually like men as they are. 
Oh, this is the old Southern girls propaganda! So much warmer. They really know how to love their men. Following that is a tacked-on political kicker:
But a top-tier politician like Hillary Clinton is narrowing her presidential chances when she privileges elite professional women at men’s expense.
What does that even mean and how is it supported by the psychoanalysis of the rest of the article? It's somewhat interesting, but rather banal, to say that a smart girl with a dominant father became acareer achiever and never cultivated an air of silky, soothing, warm hospitality.

But how does that establish that she "privileges elite professional women at men’s expense"? Yes, I know that Paglia inserted some boilerplate about the difference between Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem at the beginning of the essay. Even assuming that Steinem eclipsed Friedan and that Steinem's feminism is "blame men first," I don't see how that's saying much about Hillary Clinton.

81 comments:

Once written, twice... said...

Boring

AlbertAnonymous said...

From the Department of Redundancy Department: Blame Men First Feminism

Henry said...

I think Paglia needs to hang out more with Scott Adams so they can shine a light on stuff.

David Begley said...

She "Privileges?"

Is that even a word? Turning a noun into a verb.

Is it in the OED?

Laslo Spatula said...

So it comes to Daddy Issues.

With women it always comes down to Daddy Issues.

I am Laslo.

damikesc said...

Perhaps it may be impossible for hard-driving career women, schooled in the curt, abrasive Northern style, to give an inch and show that they actually like men as they are. Oh, this is the old Southern girls propaganda! So much warmer. They really know how to love their men.

Her point is solid.

Sorry, but women expect men to keep their traditional roles and treat them with chivalrous behavior while ignoring their role in the equation. You treat ladies like ladies...but what to do with women who aren't ladies?

Is it shocking that men will stray from an emasculating shrew? What women wouldn't stray from a misogynist asshole? Act like a bitch and what man in the world would stay?

But how does that establish that she "privileges elite professional women at men’s expense"?

Outside of her treatment of Bill, is there any doubt to this?

3rd wave feminists deeply dislike men. They blame ALL of women's shortcomings on men, which is insanely silly (to be blunt, women tended to raise those men they blame all of their problems on). Men know that and that's why women like Lena Dunham cannot find anyone who will tolerate her long term. It's why Hillary and Huma have to "settle" for dudes who will try and fuck anything with a pule instead of them. It's why so few young women identify as feminist.

Because feminism is ridiculously anti-male.

tim in vermont said...

She's right about one thing Glow Stick was hot and men will look at hot women and watch their lips move. I don't blame hot women for forming a low opinion of men any more than I blame hot men for forming a low opinion of women. Hotness is a burden as well as a gift.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

"Hillary’s decision to move to Arkansas to be with Bill, whom she had met in law school, followed her shocking failure of the District of Columbia bar exam."

Wait... what?

She failed the DC bar exam? If she were an (R) -- this would be big news.

Fernandinande said...

That should read: "attributing her personality to the force of her dominating and abusive father's genes."

Bill, Republic of Texas said...

Yawn.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

"Hillary has unfortunately adopted the Steinem brand of blame-men-first feminism, which defines women as perpetual victims requiring government protections.

Sadly, that's not just a left-wing feminist stance. It is a wholly adopted leftwing platform. You are a victim, and you need a bureaucrat to save you.

Henry said...

Paglia and Adams just need one more intellectual crank for their flawed grandmugwump routine. Too bad Gore Vidal is dead.

grimson said...

". . . Hillary Clinton has consistently drawn greater support from women than men. Is this gender lag due to retrograde misogyny, or does Hillary project an uneasiness or ambivalence about men that complicates her appeal to a broader electorate?"

Or after her father, husband, and brothers, does she actually dislike men and/or think them inferior? She appears to be unable to interact with men very well in any non-structured setting. There were also the rumors that she treated her Secret Service detail badly. And, she always seems to be interacting with women.

Gordon Scott said...

She failed the DC bar exam AND was fired from the House Judiciary committee for violating ethical standards. Of course she needed to slink away to lick her wounds.

The first line of the song "Only Prettier:" "Well I've been saved by the grace of southern charm." Hillary, never known to be socially adept, must have felt like she was terribly disadvantaged compared to a gal like Gennifer

PB said...

Hillary is just a criminal, starting with the $100,000 bribe laundered through cattle futures, continuing through many nasty matters all down-played by the media and democrat faithful. It emboldened her but may have finally caught up with her.

tim in vermont said...

Gloria Steinem = Gennefer Flowers ; Camille Paglia = Hillary Clinton; The source of this well of insights becomes clear.

tim in vermont said...

It is too bad that Gore Vidal is dead.

kjbe said...

Camille Paglia, armchair shrink. Woohoo.

Brando said...

I'm rooting for a Bernie Sanders nomination if only so we can stop hearing about these Clintons. At least until the lickspittles start trying to promote Chelsea as a candidate. Though she seems to have picked up the people skills of her mother rather than her father, so I doubt it'd go very far.

I don't know whether Hillary "hates men" or if her awkwardness around people is equal opportunity. I don't get the idea she is really close with women either--her best friends seem to be the die-hard loyalists like Huma Abedin and Sid Blumenthal who are willing to indulge her fantasy as a genius leader.

Ann Althouse said...

"Paglia and Adams just need one more intellectual crank for their flawed grandmugwump routine."

If they had a TV show, I would love to watch!

Ann Althouse said...

When did people start talking about Gloria Steinem in terms of her good looks? I don't remember that as being a standard comment or belief in the early 1970s. It's a much more recent meme. There were many good looking young women with a hippie/mod style back then and she had some of the attributes of the style -- long hair parted in the middle, aviator glasses. I don't remember that she was considered a particularly striking exemplar of the feminine beauty of the time. But looking back, people portray it that way. It's become standard to accuse her of getting where she did because of her looks and to characterize her predominance over Betty Friedan as a beauty contest that Betty was doomed to lose, but it didn't look like that at the time. When I went to college in 1969, before the emergence of Ms. Magazine, no one was talking about Betty Friedan. She was our mother's generation. We were excited about Kate Millett and Germaine Greer. We read and talked about their books. Friedan seemed to be a woman of an earlier time, not talking to us. And we hadn't heard of Steinem yet. When Ms. Magazine came out, I thought it was for older women of the type who read women's magazines, not the new generation. Camille Paglia is a bit older than I am, so Friedan means more to her. But I am not buying the Steinem vs. Friedan cultural moment. It doesn't fit the time line I lived through.

buwaya said...

Agree its a very poor effort by Paglia.

Gusty Winds said...

When men enter the voting booth, privately, they will not pull the lever for Hillary. And that disdain for her will cross party and racial identities.

Men can accept women as leaders. But not women like her.

Laura said...

At what point are feminists considered adults and responsible for their own behavior?

If the absence of domineering fathers is all it takes, the sons of single mothers should be exemplary.

Bruce Hayden said...

Sammy Finkelstein (however you spell his name) pointed out here, or at Legal Insurrection, that she wasn't really fired by the Watergate committee. Rather, as I understand it, the committee was winding down, and some of the other attorneys (ok, law school graduates, since she apparently hadn't passed the DC Bar yet) were offered other jobs around Congress, and she wasn't. Someone blamed it on her ethics, but it is probably more likely her personality.

Still, it is hard to believe that a Yale Law grad couldn't pass the DC Bar. As I pointed out on a previous blog post, by the time I sat for the Bar, you only had to do marginally well, and I could have joined the DC Bar based entirely on my multistate results - and the DC requirements were maybe 30 or so points lower than the CO requirements at the time. It was, literally, the easiest bar to join in the country at the time (unless you graduated from a school like Wisconsin, where you automatically get admitted to the state bar).

Brando said...

"Still, it is hard to believe that a Yale Law grad couldn't pass the DC Bar. As I pointed out on a previous blog post, by the time I sat for the Bar, you only had to do marginally well, and I could have joined the DC Bar based entirely on my multistate results - and the DC requirements were maybe 30 or so points lower than the CO requirements at the time. It was, literally, the easiest bar to join in the country at the time (unless you graduated from a school like Wisconsin, where you automatically get admitted to the state bar)."

Was that the case in the '70s? When I graduated no one took the DC bar because it was the one bar that granted reciprocity to anyone who was admitted to another state, so everyone just took the other state's bar and waived in. As for passing, I think it's more a function of whether you put the time in and studied--I and everyone I knew took bar review courses (like BarBRI) to condense the material, cover courses we may not have taken in law school (like criminal law) and the state-specific portions. If you studied, it wasn't hard to pass the first time, but I've heard of people who simply did not put the time in.

Not sure what was going on with Hillary, but I'd guess maybe she was already planning to go to Arkansas so didn't take the DC bar seriously. I don't think she's a genius, but figure if she could get through Yale Law and get an appointment to the Watergate committee, she had at least the ability to pass the bar, if not the will to do so.

dreams said...

"When did people start talking about Gloria Steinem in terms of her good looks?"

I remember her as being very good looking.

MacMacConnell said...

Professor, we are the same age, how could you not know who Gloria Steinem was in 1969? She had published all through the decade of the 60s, Esquire, Playboy and Cosmopolitan. Admittedly, being males, we noticed Gloria had won the beauty pageant. By hippy standards she was hot.

Hillary on the other hand is not, never has been. Hillary is just a plastic unaffectionate grifter.

tim in vermont said...

Yeah, I doubt I could quote a single thing she said past the bicycle quote, which was apparently her. But I remember her image quite clearly from the '70s. She looked great on television. Maybe that is just too reductive for someone deeply involved in the issues of the time, but as for wider appeal beyond the initiated, she had a huge advantage.

Henry said...

If they had a TV show, I would love to watch!

You really need someone willing to build grand theories of everything in a highly idiosyncratic way. Vidal would have been good. I don't know who is out there now. Most everyone on TV just spews out half-digested chunks of received wisdom.

SeanF said...

David Begley: She "Privileges?"

Is that even a word? Turning a noun into a verb.

Is it in the OED?


Are you serious? Privilege has been a verb for hundreds of years!

dreams: "When did people start talking about Gloria Steinem in terms of her good looks?"

I remember her as being very good looking.


She did get hired as a Playboy bunny, after all, and they weren't known for hiring unattractive or even plain-looking women.

Curious George said...

"Hillary Clinton not very pretty" returns 143 million google hits. Huh. I thought it would be more.

tim in vermont said...

Her beauty was the power that dare not speak its name among feminists of the time, I suppose.

Fernandinande said...

Curious George said...
"Hillary Clinton not very pretty" returns 143 million google hits. Huh. I thought it would be more.


As you wrote it, in quotes, one hit.

["Hillary Clinton" "not" "very" "pretty"] returns 290 hits, almost entirely with "pretty" referring to something else: "pretty far to the left", etc.

tim in vermont said...

Hey Glow Stick! Bring me a sammich!

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Known Unknown said...

Not one of Paglia's better endeavors. While her pieces can be all over the place there's usually a decent amount of narrative glue. This feels like the heavy hand of an editor was at work.

Ann Althouse said...

"I remember her as being very good looking."

What time point are you talking about? I'm saying I don't remember that in the early 70s, when she emerged as significant. Also, I'm talking about whether it was something that was discussed openly at the time. I think that's something much more recent and it's a somewhat scurrilous attack: She succeeded and dominated over other women because of her superior looks. I'm suspicious of that version of the story.

It's true that she'd done undercover reporting as a Playboy Club waitress and that connected her to something about feminine beauty but that wasn't the persona she presented when she became visible as a feminist magazine editor.

Theranter said...

Interesting, the top two comments on Salon are similar to the feelings of many women I know. I don't think Hillary has this in the bag (absent insider fraud and/or extortion):

Top Comment: "It's amazing. BILLIONS of women across this world wake up to a world where they can stoned for being raped, sold into marriage at six, trafficked like subhuman chattel into the sex slave trade, stripped of every human right by "righteous" followers of Allah, murdered by father, brothers, and uncles for crimes against "honor", sexually mutilated in "female circumcision", and suffer an outrageous daily litany of other indignities and abuse.

But here in the U.S.?? Well, fifty years of "women's liberation" has wrought this. Hillary Clinton her her brand of "poor me" feminism. I call them "Princess Buttercup" feminists; women stuck in perpetual victimhood, endlessly whining about EVERY perceived slight, real or imagined, casting blame on everyone but themselves, conjuring up vast conspiracies aligned against them to explain away their own inadequacies, and generally expecting everyone to join them in a never-ending pity party because (sniffle sniffle) their little corner of the world is......well it's..........(gasp) UNCOMFORTABLE!

Enough already. Suck it up, cupcakes. You are an affront and an embarrassment to the millions of women in this country who don't have time to spend endless hours gazing at their own navels. And you betray the billions of women in the world who TRULY suffer.
Hillary, I am one of the millions of women in who actually get up every day, put on our big girl pants, and deal with it. Try it. You will find it very LIBERATING!"

Response is the 2nd highest comment: "@Christene ,women stuck in perpetual victimhood, This is not just an outcrop of feminism. It is the result of left wing politics in general sold by politicians manipulating people for votes by convincing them they are victims. Obama has been a master at this, and the country feels more divided than at anytime in my life as a result..."

Anonymous said...

More Paglia garbage.

tim in vermont said...

More Paglia garbage

Garbage in, garbage out.

tim in vermont said...

t that wasn't the persona she presented when she became visible as a feminist magazine editor

Really? How could she help it?

Ann Althouse said...

"Professor, we are the same age, how could you not know who Gloria Steinem was in 1969? She had published all through the decade of the 60s, Esquire, Playboy and Cosmopolitan. Admittedly, being males, we noticed Gloria had won the beauty pageant. By hippy standards she was hot."

To the extent that I read those magazines when I was a teenager, I wouldn't have cared about various bylines of reporters. The main magazine there that I read was Playboy (which my father always had, openly displayed, in the house). I think you are wrong about her writing for Playboy, though. She wrote ABOUT the Playboy Club in some other magazine.

The expression "By hippy standards she was hot" just doesn't register with me. First of all, I'd spell it "hippie," so you're on a different vibration. I don't remember the term "hot" being applied to women within that milieu. I can't remember what term was used to single a woman out as attractive. I remember everyone getting called "beautiful." I think it really wasn't the thing to do to judge people by their looks. You would relate to the whole individual.

In 1969, Steinem was a 35-year-old magazine writer. Hippies... that is people from maybe 17 years old to 25 years old, would not have cared about her, let alone enthused about her sexual attractiveness. She would have been seen as someone from the older generation and completely uncool.

Bushman of the Kohlrabi said...

It's somewhat interesting, but rather banal...

Wait, what?

Ann Althouse said...

The feminists I consorted with circa 1990 — and I was at ground zero for the Critical Feminist Theory movement in law school throughout I went to "Femcrits" meetings in Cambridge in the fall 1989 semester — had no interest in Gloria Steinem and her sort of feminism. That was a completely different milieu and Steinem belonged to mainstream magazines and reaching a wide audience.

Ann Althouse said...

"'It's true that she'd done undercover reporting as a Playboy Club waitress and that connected her to something about feminine beauty but that wasn't the persona she presented when she became visible as a feminist magazine editor.' Really? How could she help it?"

How could she help looking like a Playboy Club waitress? 1. Don't wear that skimpy outfit with the ludicrous pushup bra architecture. 2. Take off the ears and the cottontail and the fishnet (or whatever) stockings and the high heels. 3. Don't use the waitress demeanor, sucking up to men, and "dipping." 4. Don't doll up with makeup.

How naturally good looking did a woman need to be to come across as sexually attractive in the Playboy Club waitress persona?

As a Ms. Magazine editor, she adopted a sort of dowdy feminist look, with parted hair, no (or little) makeup, and glasses. She spoke in a clenched-teeth, severe monotone that signaled seriousness. The message was not one of availability for sexual hijinks, which was the Playboy Club waitress illusion, not that Playboy Club waitresses were allowed to consort with the customers.

tim in vermont said...

. I remember everyone getting called "beautiful." I think it really wasn't the thing to do to judge people by their looks.

I think you left out a verb there somewhere, "admit."

I wish I didn't judge people by their looks, I try not to, but it is a difficult thing to suppress. It may be true that looks have become much more important. Could Aretha Franklin make it today? IDK. She's not ugly, but she is no Rhianna.

dreams said...

"What time point are you talking about? I'm saying I don't remember that in the early 70s, when she emerged as significant."

Probably the 70s, she was just an attractive woman who I was aware of but I didn't follow her or the feminist movement.

traditionalguy said...

A Playboy Club waitress was also called a Bunny. The men married to a Bunny in the 1960s were considered very lucky men. And the idea that women wanted to have everything that men had seemed strange to us then.

But it has turned out well for most smart women.

tim in vermont said...

She spoke in a clenched-teeth, severe monotone that signaled seriousness.

It's cute the things that girls believe.

Martha said...

Paglia did nail the remarkable transformation of Hillary from a seventies dowdy frumpy ungroomed (hair unshaven in armpits, legs, everywhere) feminist look to a Gennifer Flowers blonde bimbo look.

I knew Hillary at Wellesley and when she and Bill first burst onto the national scene I remember saying to my husband that I knew a Hillary Rodham at Wellesley but this Hillary Rodham Clinton did not look anything like her. But it was Hillary —transformed.

Rosalyn C. said...

I think there probably is some connection between Hillary's relationship with her father, apparently stressful and difficult, and her neutral gender appearance. Her relationship with him was more of a business arrangement than deeply emotionally supportive. As far as I can recall Hillary has never presented herself publicly with any awareness of her sexual attractiveness or feminine beauty. She did glamorize her appearance as a first lady for state dinners and got into changing hair styles. But all that was part of the job of being the President's wife.

Steinem was/is a feminist icon but she always presented herself as a stylish and very attractive woman. Althouse does the same.

I think any woman can be sexy but she has to want to be attractive to men and I don't see Hillary having that impulse -- and that puts men off as being unlikeable.

Melissa said...

Has anyone ever subjected Camille Paglia to who her own judgmental type of psychoanalysis?

n.n said...

From one real and perceived extreme to something on a whole new level. Paglia is a well known critic of female chauvinism that progressed under the cover of feminism.

Brando said...

"The expression "By hippy standards she was hot" just doesn't register with me. First of all, I'd spell it "hippie," so you're on a different vibration. I don't remember the term "hot" being applied to women within that milieu. I can't remember what term was used to single a woman out as attractive. I remember everyone getting called "beautiful." I think it really wasn't the thing to do to judge people by their looks. You would relate to the whole individual."

I don't think Steinem really had so much a "hippie" look as a "mod" look--sort of chic in late '60s standards, with the long straight hair, miniskirts, etc. From the photos of the time she was conventionally attractive, and I believe the term the kids would have used was "groovy" and maybe "far out".

damikesc said...

I don't know whether Hillary "hates men" or if her awkwardness around people is equal opportunity. I don't get the idea she is really close with women either--her best friends seem to be the die-hard loyalists like Huma Abedin and Sid Blumenthal who are willing to indulge her fantasy as a genius leader.

Hillary, even moreso than Bill, LOVES sycophants. Can you see Hillary being friendly with somebody she ran against in a campaign?

I don't remember the term "hot" being applied to women within that milieu

There are excellent reasons for that. Gloria was attractive for a hippie. Just like Carson Palmer played well this past Sunday for a guy who can't stop throwing interceptions.

It's not high praise.

Levi Starks said...

I'm going to have to question whether or not Althouse has sufficient standing to question someone so highly esteemed as Paglia.

Nichevo said...

Melissa said...
Has anyone ever subjected Ann Althouse to who her own judgmental type of psychoanalysis?
1/27/16, 12:41 PM

FTFY

Darrell said...

"When did people start talking about Gloria Steinem in terms of her good looks?"

Ah, but you're not a lesbian, are you? Camille had quite different thoughts whenever Steinem entered her dreams.

Skeptical Voter said...

Ah well Ms. Althouse I don't mind it when I see someone kicking the Hildebeest when she is down. Karma is a bear, and the sort of stuff that Hillary put down will eventually come around--and with Ms. Paglia, it now has arrived.

And for Camille Paglia to look at Hillary Clinton and say, "I knew Gennifer Flowers. She was a great Southern woman who really knew how to attract a man, and she was a friend of mine. And Hillary--you're no Gennifer Flowers."

Well ouch! That has to hurt. And Camille--well you go girl!

Skeptical Voter said...

Finished reading the comments, and I have to make two additional observations. Ms. Althouse suggests that a 17 to 25 year old male in the late 1960's couldn't possibly be attracted to a 35 year old woman. I beg to differ. I was 25 in 1968--but had just turned 13 in the fall of 1956 and the hottest woman I ever saw was a teacher in my junior high school class who was maybe 23--married to another one of the teachers and built like the proverbial two hole outhouse. This was all pre silicon and plastic surgery days and what was there was real. I would have been just as attracted to her in 1968 when I was 25 and she was 34 (my wife permitting of course since I was married by then).

As for a Yale law graduate flunking the notoriously easy D.C. bar? It would be interesting to know the rate of Yale law graduates passing the DC bar in the year that Hillary took it. I took the California Bar in August of 1968 and the pass rate for Boalt/Harvard/Stanford/Yale grads on the first try was 90 plus percent for each school. That bar exam was difficult--most of us took bar review courses, but I have to confess I was more interested in practicing than studying for the bar, and finally finished reading the review outlines for the first time the night before the three day exam started. Not smart to blow off reading the review materials until so late, but I passed so there was that.

I'd venture to say that the pass rate for the DC Bar for Yale grads the year Hillary took it was the old Dial soap figure 99.44%. Ms. Hillary was the 0.56% who brought the pass rate down. I'll say that even very smart people may have a bad exam day and blow an easy exam, but that happens about as often as unicorns appear in Central Park.

AlbertAnonymous said...

Skeptical. This article

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2008/feb/15/chain-email/she-failed-then-followed-bill/

Says the following:

In his biography of Hillary Clinton, former Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein notes that in the summer of 1973, 817 people took the Washington, D.C., bar exam; 551 of them passed. Hillary Rodham was not one of them.

That's like a 67% passage rate, which is relatively high compared to say California which hovers just around 50% every year. So overall Hillary was in the bottom third.

But left unanswered is how many of those who failed were Harvard/Yale/Stanford Law Grads. After all she graduated Yale Law. One would expect more out of her than say those who graduated from "DC Night Time School of Law and Typewriter Maintenance"

Roughcoat said...

Late to the party, but ...

I'm 65 and I do remember thinking, back in the day, that Steinem was reasonably good-looking--a solid 6.5, maybe even a 7. Not bad for a feminist ideologue, was the general consensus.

As for Paglia: she's grown tiresome in my view. Am I the only one who finds her Freudian methodology outdated?

Roughcoat said...

I should add (re my preceding comment) that I generally agree with Paglia. Even so, I'm finding her tiresome.

Fritz said...

Roughcoat said...
Late to the party, but ...

I'm 65 and I do remember thinking, back in the day, that Steinem was reasonably good-looking--a solid 6.5, maybe even a 7. Not bad for a feminist ideologue, was the general consensus.


I believe she did a short stint as an undercover Playboy Bunny, in fact.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/may/26/gloria-steinem-bunny-tale-still-relevant-today

Bay Area Guy said...

I'm not a big fan of Hillary - but I'm also not a big fan of psycho-babble. Hillary has lead a very public life - lets judge her on her words and deeds.

Seeing Red said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Seeing Red said...

Third-wave feminazis sound like Obama, they r so disappointed we didn't take advantage of what they r fighting for. We just can't rise to their perceived greatness; we just disappoint them so.

tcrosse said...

Hillary is a bit of a scold, and reminds too many men of their first wife.
I suspect that the Koch Brothers are bankrolling Hillary's TV commercials here in Nevada. It has been demonstrated that the more people see of her, the less they like her. So what better way to scupper her candidacy than to overexpose her on tV ? QED.

Leora said...

I think a lot of Gloria Steinem's impact was due to her television appearances. If you weren't watching television in the late 60's, early 70's you would have missed her since she didn't write much worth reading. I remember reading the Playboy article but I can't remember if it was in Wsquire or New York magazine.

Leora said...

Esquire, not Wsquire.

M. Bouffant said...

Really? Paglia's a psychiatrist? And licensed to diagnose over long distances?

Sean said...

I read that as saying Hillary is not helping herself by pandering to professional women at the expense of any/all men. Which is probably true - no?

james conrad said...

Ann Althouse said...
When did people start talking about Gloria Steinem in terms of her good looks? I don't remember that as being a standard comment or belief in the early 1970s

Come on, Gloria was a babe from the get go, you don't get hired as a playboy bunny if you are not attractive. I remember seeing Gloria on talk shows all the time, Phil Donahue comes to mind.
I think Ann has a problem with Paglia, i am not sure what it is but, there could be some jealousy here. I don't think I've ever read an AA post about Paglia that was positive.

Ann Althouse said...

"A Playboy Club waitress was also called a Bunny. The men married to a Bunny in the 1960s were considered very lucky men. And the idea that women wanted to have everything that men had seemed strange to us then...."

I thought the waitresses were required to be single.

Anyway... I went to the Playboy Club in the 1960s! With my parents. My father was a member. (Also a member of the Gaslight Club, a similar sexy waitress club.)

I had a Coke. I remember the price: $2. So outlandish!

Ann Althouse said...

"I think Ann has a problem with Paglia, i am not sure what it is but, there could be some jealousy here. I don't think I've ever read an AA post about Paglia that was positive."

Click the tag.

Or Google "My Dinner with Camille."

Ann Althouse said...

But also: Don't you notice that most of what I blog, I criticize?

Unlike some bloggers, I'm not here to point to stuff with favor. Oh, here's somebody else who's right, who's saying what I think too...

That is so not this blog.

Ann Althouse said...

"I think a lot of Gloria Steinem's impact was due to her television appearances. If you weren't watching television in the late 60's, early 70's you would have missed her since she didn't write much worth reading. I remember reading the Playboy article but I can't remember if it was in Wsquire or New York magazine."

I've got to say, I did not watch television when I was in college or in the next few years after that. I didn't have a TV or easy access to TV.

I didn't even watch the moon landing!

Ann Althouse said...

"I don't think Steinem really had so much a "hippie" look as a "mod" look--sort of chic in late '60s standards, with the long straight hair, miniskirts, etc. From the photos of the time she was conventionally attractive, and I believe the term the kids would have used was "groovy" and maybe "far out"..."

The word "groovy" went almost immediately from slang you might use — check the date of the songs "Feelin' Groovy" and "Groovy Kind of Love" — to a word that you'd be embarrassed to use. On TV, comedians playing hippies might say "groovy" a lot, but it never really lived in real-world culture. Even so, "groovy" and "far out" wouldn't have been a way to refer to exterior beauty. The idea was the whole person.

A media pundit in her mid 30s just wouldn't have been interesting to the youth culture of the time. Steinem was interfacing with an older crowd, regular women who were having trouble within traditional relationships. They needed basic "consciousness raising."

Younger people, those my age, from my point of view anyway, thought that was the sad vestige of a former time. We had become truly liberated and were not going to need that kind of advice any more than we needed to read "Can this marriage be saved?" in the Ladies Home Journal.

james conrad said...

And there we have it, Ann got stiffed on having dinner with Paglia!

Darrell said...

(Also a member of the Gaslight Club, a similar sexy waitress club.)

I loved the Gaslight Club in Chicago. I stopped in during the mid-1980s hen they were on their last legs. All the waitress were beautiful mid-30s brunettes, and my date and I were treated like royalty because we were the only customers there.