The Hillary train hasn't even left the station and already the mudslingers are lining up along the tracks. In fact, the former First Lady hasn't bought her ticket yet ( announced ) on the Presidential Express; already the Boyz are worried and have begun to act. They thought she might self-destruct defending her errant husband, but that didn't cost her the women's vote. Then they thought she'd lose upstate New York or fizzle as a Senator. Now even the other side of the aisle grudgingly admits, despite being a Freshman, she's doing a creditable job.
The Boyz tried to tar Hillary with every Clinton brush from the Starr witch-hunt on down. So far, nothing tossed has stuck. Now they are falling back on an old ploy used against feminists since the mid-1960s. Whenever a group of women started showing unity and strength, some patriarchal pawn would call them a bunch of lesbians. Everyone would run off in all directions, hysterically screaming 'I'm straight, I'm straight, I'm straight.' When Betty Friedan purged NOW ( the National Organization for Women ) of lesbians in 1969, the argument was they should shut up and pretend to be straight because as 'out' lesbians they would hurt the organization and the movement. Rita Mae Brown took the first hit, then a few years later came up against Billie Jean King telling Martina to keep Rita under wraps again because it could hurt the women's tennis movement. NOW and women's tennis are doing fine ( thank you ) in the post-Ellen period. Wonder how much farther ahead of the game we would be if not for that early paranoia. So now the Boyz are all but calling Hillary a dyke.
In a new book by Edward Klein, The Truth About Hillary, every woman with a butch hair cut or a lesbian book to her credit, that so much as breathed in Hillary's direction, is toted up to make a case for the possibility. Granted there was no trace of lesbian lechery in the White House, even with staff sniffing the Clinton bedsheets, or we would have heard about it by now. It's not like the old days when Eleanor Roosevelt squirreled Lorena Hickok away in the Lincoln bedroom for four years. I can just imagine Hick in her 'wears,' cigar in hand, avoiding the press and the President as she scurried through the halls on hot summer days. Klein is not the first, and certainly not the last, of those who will be tossing large red herrings at the Hillary Zephyr, hoping to derail it before it picks up momentum.
Three or four years ago, speculation was that if Hillary made a run for the presidential nomination, the Republicans would put up Colin Powell. Mr. Powell, no longer entrenched with the good old Boyz, might still be pressed into service by those across the aisle with doubts about Iraq and sniffing the winds of change. Also, Sen. John McCain is making like 'the little engine that could,' chugging around to talk shows and selling his bio. He has had a following of both political stripes back before whatz-his-name wanted him to run for veep on the Democratic ticket. Now there is talk of another possible candidate, Secretary of State Condi Rice. But she had better watch her caboose, too. Remember when she was lowly Secretary of Defense and slipped out with 'my husband said' quickly correcting to 'the President said.' And she ain't even married. Women in high places, it seems, just can't escape the potential attack of sexual innuendo, be it the lesbian or straight variety.
One thing is clear, if the Hillary Zephyr gets off and running, you won't see an ending ( ala Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest ) with the train disappearing into a dark phallic tunnel. More than likely it will continue on a cross-country run; and, like the first transcontinental railroad, it will link the country in a common pursuit, on track for a new Administration. That's why the Boyz are mounting up early and trying to head her off at the pass.
Copyright 2005 by Marie J. Kuda. e-mail: kudoschgo@aol.com .
