Who Let the Dogs In?

by Molly Ivins

  Women receive so many conflicting messages these days about how to behave and what is expected of us—sugar and spice, ruffles and lace, white gloves and gentility, stand by your man and good old mom (as long as she’s not on welfare) get all mixed up with independence, holding a job, respect, achievement, and having a brain as well as a figure. Ellen Chesler’s new biography of Margaret Sanger, the birth control advocate and early exemplar of emancipated womanhood, reminds us of how long we’ve all been struggling with these same contradictions. Frankly, if women didn’t have a strong sense of humor, I think we’d all be nuts by now.

  What interests me about the mass media’s treatment of the recurrent conflicts caused by this mad mix of messages is their practically prurient interest in seeing women fight. “Catfight,” “hair pulling,” and “mud wrestling” are the beloved clichés of those who like to promote events where “the girls go at it.” Setting women up to attack one another and then reporting on the ensuing festivities is a favorite media ploy and has been ever since the press tried to make nonexistent bra-burnings the equivalent of feminism in the 1960s.

  Meanwhile, the convention’s social scene is roaring along but may not again match the awesome display of New York power and glitter that turned out to meet Ann Richards at the Russian Tea Room Tuesday night. Richards, like most people in politics, is used to the politically prominent and long past being thrilled at meeting someone with a political title. But the crowd invited by gossip columnist and New York Texan Liz Smith (of Fort Worth, of course) was a mix of creative talent and media clout that left the press agape. Jane Pauley of television and her husband, Garry Trudeau, who does the “Doonesbury” strip, Vanity Fair editor Tina Brown and her husband, Harry Evans, of Random House, lyricist Adolph Greene, New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger, writers Peter Maas and Norman Mailer, Roone Arledge of ABC, on and on it went. Ann Richards may be governor of Texas, but she’s still from Waco: She said later, “Can you believe they came to meet ME? I looked around that room and I felt like a stump.”

  Trudeau, by the way, is a fan of Texas comptroller John Sharp, who picked up on a Trudeau strip urging people who want to escape paying state income taxes to become titular Texans, à la George Bush. Sharp issued honorary Texan certificates to the thousands of “Doonesbury” fans and tax-dodgers who responded to the joke—and made money for the state doing it.

  July 1992

  The Voters Speak

  A LITTLE-KNOWN FACT about political writers, especially this one, is that if it weren’t for the readers, we would go insane.

  At this stage of a campaign, when we’re wading around in b.s. up to our hips, trying desperately to cut through the bull so our readers can get some reasonably accurate picture of what’s being proposed and what it will mean, it is, oddly enough, the readers who pull us through.

  My election-year mail is a constant source of wonder and delight, not to mention an ongoing tribute to the common sense, variety, and creativity of the citizenry. Paul Tully, one of the great students and lovers of American politics, died last week, and I regret his death for many reasons, not least of which is that I never got a chance to show him the letter from the guy who figured out the thing about N.

  It’s about presidents whose last names end in N: Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Truman. It’s staggering, the number of last-name-ending-in-N presidents we’ve elected. My correspondent not only noticed this, he went on to figure out the ratio of final N’s compared to final anything-elses, and I’m here to tell you, the guy is onto something.

  What, I have no idea. But his work confirms my long-held belief that we live in a great nation.

  Three of my correspondents actually sat down and figured out their own plans for closing the budget deficit, which is three more than have done so in Washington, D.C. I shall forward their oeuvres to the next occupant of the White House. One bright fellow proposed a progressive income tax, table enclosed.

  My least favorite writers are those who are on the government teat and also demanding that the government do less for everyone else and more for them. I regret to report that many on Social Security fall into this category. No, you did not pay in every nickel you are getting from Social Security. No, you did not earn the payments you are getting. You are, however, correct about the inadequacy of Medicare and the need for a long-term-care bill.

  Instead of demanding more for yourselves, why not support national health insurance?

  No sooner do I make a wish like that than, lo, I find the people are ahead of me again. The American Association of Retired People, a mighty lobby, is now concentrating some of its firepower not just on helping old folks, but on helping children as well, setting up programs for seniors to help kids and supporting the agenda of children’s rights organizations. Bravo!

  One modest suggestion I have to help people get a grip on how all this works is that the government begin printing Social Security checks in red after the brief period in which each recipient is in fact drawing out only what he or she has paid in, plus interest. Shouldn’t be difficult to design a computer program for this purpose.

  Now those moved to poetry by our electoral follies are a hardy breed. To make song out of madness requires much intestinal fortitude, but still the poets persist. I have received sonnets, lyrics, and limericks and heard from one poet “lariat,” who writes in cowboy meter:

  Bush or Clinton, Clinton, Bush

  Now it’s come from Shove to Push

  Mud is flying high and low

  How much lower can they go?

  That’s nothing: I once received a poem rhyming Attorney General John Mitchell with “Twitchell, Twitchell.”

  Parody is another favorite election-year form: “George Bush is my president; I shall know want. He maketh me to stand in unemployment lines; He leadeth me beside polluted waters. He restoreth my taxes, etc.”

  Several correspondents have reinforced another long-held conviction, which is that people who get their economic knowledge by reading the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal would be better off if they had remained in blissful ignorance, rather than coming to believe so much tripe and piffle.

  Religion is a topic that touches off strong passions, pro and con. The wisdom of the founders (“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”) is constantly demonstrated anew.

  The family values correspondents fall into three categories, one of which I did not expect. Those who buy into the Republican presentation of family values are furiously angry. Those who think it’s all a crock are given to giddy hilarity and rather rude suggestions about Dan Quayle and Murphy Brown. There are also a largish number of quite thoughtful letters on this topic, so thoughtful that I wish someone other than Quayle had introduced the subject for other than political reasons.

  All in all, the mail reminds me of something that occurs to me quadrennially as we go through the electoral festivities: This is a pretty wonderful country, and there sure are a lot of people in it who care about what happens to it. That they seldom agree with one another, or me, is beside the larger point. Good on you all, and keep coming up with those amazing ideas and observations. Thank you.

  October 1992

  Hillary Clinton I

  BOSTON, MASS. — Seems to be de rigueur to be in a tizz about Hillary Clinton these days. Everyone has an opinion about what she’s doing, what she should be doing, and what she should not be doing.

  Hillary Clinton has become the functional equivalent of a national Rorschach test of our attitudes toward the changing role of women. All the doubt, guilt, anxiety, and confusion we feel are being projected onto Mrs. Clinton, who is being made to stand for everything from a role model for working mothers to some fang-dripping militant feminist.

  From my own brief acquaintance with Hillary Clinton, I’d say she’s not only exceptionally bright, but also a kinder, funnier, and nicer person than is generally perceived. As we all get to know her, I suspect much
of the controversy will die away.

  For the nonce, however, she is in a bit of a pickle. She has heretofore been a person in her own right, not just a “wife of.” But there is no practical way Hillary Clinton can continue to practice her profession in Washington—the potential for conflict of interest is just too great. Likewise, she cannot be appointed by her husband to any paying post in government—it’s against the law. So Hillary Clinton, like Barbara Bush, Nancy Reagan, Rosalynn Carter, and Betty Ford before her, will become an unpaid, but clearly Very Important Counselor to the president.

  Better Hillary Clinton than Joan Quigley. Joan Who? you say. Ah, how quickly they forget. Joan Quigley was Nancy Reagan’s astrologer, the woman who cast the horoscopes that determined the precise minute at which President Reagan’s plane would take off for summit meetings and other diplomatic trips. I’d rather have Hillary Clinton’s brains and experience weighing in on the national fate than the alignment of Jupiter and Mars.

  Hillary Clinton has two areas of special expertise—children’s issues and the law. Seems to me Bill Clinton would be a fool not to listen to her on both. Hillary Clinton is an outstanding lawyer. If Bill Clinton were married to an outstanding physicist, I’d expect him to consult her about a good national science adviser and such topics as whether we’d be better off funding big science or a greater variety of research. Why ignore free expertise available right there in the home?

  I also expect Mrs. Clinton to function as an extra pair of eyes and ears for her husband, as did Eleanor Roosevelt. Mrs. Roosevelt, who was better able to get out and around than her husband, brought matters to Roosevelt’s attention he might otherwise have missed. Seems to me that’s a good deal for Bill Clinton and the country.

  As a long-standing Barbara Bush fan, I think Hillary Clinton should take a page out of her book. One reason Barbara Bush is such a comfortable first lady is because she’s always just herself, not trying to be somebody else—she’s not slim, she’s not gorgeous, and she’s not a great intellectual. So what? Likewise, I don’t think Hillary Clinton needs to try to fit anyone else’s idea of how a first lady should behave. She’s a nice person, and we’ll get used to the idea of a first lady who occasionally wears blue jeans and who can be mordantly funny.

  As for the rest of us, perhaps we should stop with all the shoulds and shouldn’ts and let Hillary Clinton be herself. And we might also examine how our own prejudices and predilections are affecting our views of Mrs. Clinton.

  I’m still startled when I think of the uproar during the campaign over the fact that Mrs. Clinton once put marriage in the same sentence with Indian reservations and slavery as an example of a legal dependency situation. Do you know anything about the legal history of marriage? Wives, until relatively recently, had no civil rights, no legal rights, and no property rights. Marriage in the nineteenth century was a classic example of a dependency relationship. And yet people carried on as though this simple statement of historical fact were some evil, anti-family view. And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?

  November 1992

  Hillary Clinton II

  ONCE UPON A midnight dreary, as I staggered weak and weary, out from under twenty-seven pounds of analysis of Bill Clinton’s first one hundred days, it occurred to me that I actually had read something new in there.

  I raced back to Time magazine’s exegesis of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s first one hundred days—when I get The Weekly Reader dissection of Chelsea’s first one hundred days, I’ll plow through that, too—Lord, why do I abuse myself like this?—and sure enough, there it was:

  A Republican consultant told a network newscaster that his job was to make sure Hillary Clinton is discredited before the 1996 campaign. Each day, anti-Hillary talking points go out to talk-show hosts. The rumor machine is cranking out bogus stories about her face (lifted), her sex life (either nonexistent or all too active) and her marriage (a sham). Many of the stories are attributed to the Secret Service in an attempt to give the tales credibility.

  Excuse me, but when did this become common practice? I don’t think I’m naïve—I’ve covered several Jim Mattox races—but this is a new one on me. Did the Democrats have someone assigned to discredit Barbara Bush? Did the seventies Republicans assign someone to go after Amy Carter?

  Maybe it’s because Hillary Clinton has an openly acknowledged policy-making role? Do the R’s have someone assigned to discredit Robert Reich? Lloyd Bentsen?

  I am especially interested because several journalistic colleagues passed along to me the phony “genuine, bona fide, straight from the Secret Service” tale about Hillary Clinton having heaved a lamp at her husband. Actually, that story was originally told about another political wife. When I inquired as to how they knew, I was assured “everybody in Washington is talking about it.” Maybe they need to come to Texas to take a refresher course in political rumor-mongering.

  The hundred-day thumb-suckers (as “think pieces” are known in our trade) fall roughly into four categories: (1) Clinton’s full of energy and ideas and, despite some setbacks, has had a lot of success; (2) Clinton is a disaster; (3) In the long view of history, taking all this from the judicious, balanced point of view for which I-the-Writer am so noted, Clinton’s glass is half-empty; and (4) One hundred days is a ridiculous standard on which to judge any president.

  I especially like No. 4. When in doubt, wee-wee on the premise. That’s my motto, too. All in all, the twenty-seven pounds of analysis is a study in the premise that there-is-no-such-thing-as-objectivity.

  I am charmed by the extent to which we all seize upon those facts and events that conform to our point of view. The Wall Street Journal, which I for one consider a veritable Bible on the topic of political humor, chose to object to the president’s sense of humor.

  Specifically, its writers didn’t care for his joshing at the White House Correspondents’ annual dinner. (I believe it is a matter of historical fact that no one has actually been funny at the White House Correspondents’ dinner since the Kennedy administration.)

  It seems, among other errors noted by the Journal, the president hurt Rush Limbaugh’s feelings with a remark that could be construed to imply that not only is Limbaugh a sexist, which he is, but also a racist, which he is not. This is the same Rush Limbaugh, a delicate flower of refined sensibilities, who refers to feminists as femi-Nazis, such a cute and appealing word play it could never offend anyone.

  I’m awfully sorry Limbaugh’s feelings were hurt. Especially since he would never take a cheap shot himself at either Bill or Hillary Clinton.

  The blizzard of insider wisdom dumped on our heads by the hundred-day mark leaves me with an uneasy feeling. Clinton is either being faulted for being the opposite of George Bush (Clinton tries to do too much, whereas Bush never tried to do a damn thing about domestic problems) or for the same things for which Bush was faulted as though they were brand-new (Clinton still hasn’t named all his appointees; it took Bush more than six months).

  I am left with the impression the media are not being quite . . . fair.

  I suppose I should be proud of my colleagues, in a way. Conservatives whined so long that the media were unfair to Reagan and Bush that at least now we can claim equal-opportunity, bipartisan unfairness.

  But the media’s collective treatment of Hillary Clinton still amazes me. There is, for example, nothing exceptional about the article inside Time about Clinton, but the cover shows her with her head at what we assume is a combative tilt, and the headline is “Ascent of a Woman: Hillary Rodham Clinton is the most powerful first lady in history. Does anybody have a problem with that?”

  It’s certainly an in-your-face question. But nothing in the ensuing article indicates that she is aggressive or abrasive or shrill or any of those other words so beloved of journalists writing about strong women.

  Let’s see, when was the last time we saw a Time cover so at variance with the story it was supposed to
illustrate?

  Oh, yeah, I remember, that doozie of a photo of Gloria Steinem and Susan Faludi wearing black leather in what appeared to be a shabby men’s room, with the headline, “Whither feminism?”

  Oh, well, what’s journalism without stereotypes?

  May 1993

  Ol’ One-Vote Bill

  NEW YORK — Sometimes I feel like the last citizen left in America who thinks Bill Clinton is doing a fairly good job. Talk about being able to caucus in a phone booth. . . .

  Clinton was at the National Governors Association meeting the other day, griping to his former fellows about how Washington works and “the air-filling bull that we hear so often in the nation’s capital.”