The disturbing rise of the “Hillary Harridan”
Dahlia Lithwick knocks one out of the park:
You know her. She’s got wild eyes and rumpled hair. At some point she stopped caring about the stains on her blouse. She’s hurt, angry, rejected, and she’s willing to take the whole damn place down with her. She is Lady Macbeth. She is Jane Eyre‘s deranged pyromaniac Bertha Mason. She is Cruella DeVil and the biblical Lilith. She is Snow White’s wicked stepmother, Miss Havisham, and Emily Bronte’s ghostly Catherine Earnshaw. She is the oldest literary type around—the bitter madwoman, hellbent on revenge and willing to act against her own interest to win some respect. And now, to hear the media tell it, she is a Hillary Holdout; she’s a PUMA (Party Unity My Ass); and she belongs to 18 Million Voices.
Political campaign coverage is always driven by stereotypes. Blue-collar men, soccer moms, and latte-sipping liberals are the blocks on which election stories are built. But the rise of the “Hillary Harridan” is a disturbing development. It unearths a creepy literary type that harms women a lot more than it helps them. The suggestion that irrational, emotional, self-referential women are swinging the election is not a theme any woman should endorse.
That’s just the beginning. It just keeps getting better. Read it all.
Posted by Kevin K. on 08/20/08 at 07:38 PM • Permalink
Categories: Politics • Election '08 • St. McSame • Barack Obama • Hillary Clinton • Editorials • PUMAs •
