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June 9, 2008

Exclusive: Does Hillary Clinton Really Embody the Feminist Spirit?

Ruth King

"I am woman, hear me roar
In numbers too big to ignore..." Lyrics by Helen Reddy 1972

The feminist movement is fraught with political silliness lately. Note the number of women threatening to skip the election because Hillary is not going to be the candidate. And why, pray tell? Is it her stance on health care or the war or the economy? Nah. It's because of the XX chromosome. She's a woman.

In the spirit of disclosure I must confess that I was a stay at home mother, and never held a full time job and I did all the diaper changing and cooking and the dishes. It was great. No regrets...I'm a real feminist and happy with my choices. I wanted and got real equality where it counts. My jurisdiction over all family and financial matters, my judgment, my opinions (and trust me they are legion), my capacity to handle problems and make major decisions, were encouraged and respected by all male family members ....my father, my husband, and my sons, as well as my mother and daughters. As for Freud's famous "penis envy" postulated as a cause of feelings of inferiority and psychic conflict, I am only subject to it when I need to use public facilities.

But let's get back to the feminists.Hillary is an icon? What in the blazes did this lady ever do for women and their rights and their future? She wants a seat in the front of Air Force One. Does that make her a Rosa Parks?

There are so many trailblazing women who really accomplished something for themselves, for women and for humanity.

What about Golda Meir, Israel's first woman prime minister and the third woman in the world to hold this office, but the first to do so without a family member having been head of state or government? Now Golda did not duck sniper fire in Bosnia, but she did preside over the devastating sneak attack by Egypt and Syria on Israel in 1973.

Take Rosalyn Yalow who became the second woman to win a Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1977, 100 years after another pioneer Elizabeth Blackwell became America's first female physician. Dr. Yalow was unable to get a job in science because she was poor, a woman and Jewish. When World War ll created a "brain drain", after having a secretarial job, she transferred to a Veteran's Hospital in the Bronx and converted a janitor's closet into a laboratory where she designed her own apparatus and became one of the most important scientists of the 20th century. When she received the Nobel she stated that she also cooked potato salad in the lab, to the dismay of feminists. Her famous response was: "We must believe in ourselves or nobody will. I have never accepted the idea that girls are not as important as boys."

How about Geraldine Ferraro, the first woman to run for Vice President in Mondale's silly campaign in 1984? Ferraro, a very likeable woman, has shown grace under fire while battling a terrible disease. When she made the rather obvious statement that Barack Obama was catapulted to his position because he is black, she was promptly scuttled by the woman who then went on to claim that "white working class males" were more likely to vote for her.

How about Aung San Suu Kyi the hero of the resistance to the Burmese dictators? A Burmese government official recently announced that her detention- she has already spent almost 13 of the past 18 years imprisoned - has been extended. On May 22nd, Clinton issued a press release on Burma without even mentioning Kyi's name.

And when has Hillary ever given even cursory encouragement to the brave women like Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Wafa Sultan, Nonie Darwish, Brigitte Gabriel and others who have defied Sharia Law and Islam's brutal oppression of women? Was there ever a word from her about "honor killings"?

Margaret Thatcher the first woman Prime Minister of the United Kingdom gets nothing but derision from feminists. Why? Well, you know, she's considered such a hawk and female hawks don't fit the stereotype that the faux feminists are comfortable with.

In American political history many feisty women were firsts. In Hillary's adopted state of Arkansas on January 12, 1932, Hattie Wyatt Caraway of Arkansas became the first woman ever elected to the United States Senate after winning a special election to fill the remaining months of her husband's term. Arkansans elected Hattie Caraway to the Senate two more times, and she served in the U.S. Senate until January, 1945 with a short spell as presiding officer of the Senate.

In 1924, within weeks of each other two women became governors....Nellie Tayloe Ross of Wyoming and Miriam Ferguson of Texas.

And, the first woman to run for President in a national election was Margaret Chase Smith, a Republican from Maine who served in Congress completing her husband's term after his death in 1940. She was reelected four times and in 1948 she was elected Senator, a position to which she was reelected for three terms, serving with integrity and independence.

In 1964 she became the very first woman to have her name placed in nomination for the presidency of the United States. At the Republican convention, Barry Goldwater was the winning candidate. Smith held the record as the longest serving female Senator until the recent re-election of Maryland's very popular Barbara Mikulski.

Not all "firsts" are really worth mentioning. See Madeleine Albright and Condoleezza Rice the underachievers at the Department of State.

How could Hillary, who papered over her husband's vulgarity, indiscretions and lies; who tamped down "bimbo eruptions" because of her overweening ambitions; who prevaricated and obfuscated and imperiously fired longstanding personnel to "get her people in and those people out" be a role model?

She is more like Evita Peron, thetart who married Argentina's tin pot dictator Juan Peron and served as the First Lady of Argentina from 1946 until her untimely death in 1952. She was Minister of Labor and Health and founded the nation's first Female Peronist Party. Her effort to be named de jure Vice President ran afoul of the military and was quickly scuttled.

While she made token gestures to the poor "shirtless" of Argentina, and several labor unions, Evita was imperious, arrogant and greedy, and stole thousands and perhaps millions from Argentinean citizens, hoarding her purloined treasures until her death in 1952.

Hillary's feminist supporters offer half advice/half threat when they state she would bring "energy" to the ticket as a vice president. On every level, Obama would do well to seek alternative sources of energy.

Serious women should by now make serious political choices. Otherwise, they will continue to pout and instead of roaring they will sing another song:

"Bye, bye happiness, hello loneliness...I think I'm gonna cry......"(The Everly Brothers)

Ruth S. King is a freelance writer who writes a monthly column in OUTPOST, the publication of Americans for a Safe Israel. Feedback: editorialdirector@familysecuritymatters.org.

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