Why we envy the Mad Men and Women
Despite the dress codes and other strict rules of conduct, the men and women of “Mad Men” had a rather good time. Or was it because of the rules?
Hitch is not that great
Jennifer Senior perfectly captured the baloney side of Christopher Hitchens in yesterday’s New York Times. Reviewing his new memoir, Hitch-22, she damned both man and book with faint praise.
Hitchens is one of those Brits with all the answers. His opinions, though sometimes wrong on facts, are always delivered with unswerving righteous anger.
I used to admire Hitchens for his cleverness, independence and willingness to beat up on silly paleo-liberals. But the provocateur act grew less entertaining with time. Finding the point often required first wading through a string of brutal and witless ad hominen attacks.
I officially dropped out of the Christopher Hitchens Fan Club in 2008, when Hitchens called presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, “an aging and resentful female.”
The comment seemed another campaign in his sloppy war against Bill Clinton. Hitchens wasn’t so much a sexist jerk as just a jerk.
In his book, Hitchens speaks of his discomfort in hearing fellow leftists oppose military intervention to stop the genocide in Bosnia. Their “moral arithmetic” just didn’t add up, he said.
But Senior takes him down a notch or three:
it was Bill Clinton, a center-left president Hitchens detested for his opportunism and slipperiness, who finally ordered the troops in, and he did so over a squall of conservative objection, with 29 Republican senators voting against the intervention, versus only one Democrat. (How’s that arithmetic?)
Speaking of arithmetic, do note that Mitt Romney is several months older than Hillary Clinton.
Tags: Bill Clinton, books, Hillary Clinton, media, sexism, the left
Burqas don’t belong on our streets
My new column addresses the libertarian argument against banning burqas in the West. Steve Chapman’s column didn’t make a sale with me, but it did offer good points against which to parry.
Ban the burqa
Belgium has banned the burqa, the face-hiding head-to-toe veil common in parts of the Muslim world. French President Nicolas Sarkozy wants to follow suit. What’s a libertarian to think, especially when burqa-wearing is often forced upon women by their men?
The always witty but this time wrong columnist Steve Chapman defends the burqa, or rather, a woman’s right to wear one for whatever reason. He writes that outlawing the burqa “trades one form of compulsion (you must wear this) for another (you may not wear this).”
Not quite. “You may not wear this” leaves a lot more freedom than “you must wear this.” The Parisian options include everything from a tiny tube dress covering just the essentials to long granny dresses and hair-covering turbans.
In this country, Chapman says, modestly dressed Amish women and skimpily clad females who disapprove of each other’s wardrobes can look the other way. No doubt they do. But at least they have a face to look away from. An Amish woman walking the Champs Elysees would evoke curiosity but not discomfort.
Chapman’s worst argument is that, heck, very few Muslim women in the West wear the burqa, anyway. In France, it’s less than 2,000 out of 5 million Muslims.
It would follow that if only 11 out of 8 million New Yorkers venture into the streets of Manhattan stark raving naked, there’s not much of a problem. Police trying to maintain order might disagree.
What about security? Chapman holds that sunglasses and ski masks are also put to sinister uses by “camera-shy bank robbers.” With all due respect, I don’t think a bank guard need admit an individual wearing a ski mask.
Every society gets to make its own rules for conduct, which includes dress. Some cultures require covered heads. Some require uncovered faces. We don’t have to approve, but we have to respect. That’s what real toleration is about.
The “American woman”? Well, a few of them.
Gilden Age women
Wandering the vast Metropolitan Museum of Art looking for the new exhibit, “American Woman: Fashioning a National Identity,” I finally asked a guard for directions.
“Go to the naked boy,” he said pointing down a hall, “turn right, and you’ll be there.”
That was the last male I’d see, naked or otherwise, for the next half hour.
The exhibit purports to show how fashion reflected the changing roles, self-image and tastes of American women. Despite the exhibit’s historic perspective, the females were clearly there to salivate over the gorgeous outfits. (Sarah Jessica Parker, who played the bizarrely dressed fashion hound in “Sex and the City,” provides the voice of the audio tour.)
Hey, gawking is why I was there. But let me share some sociological insight:
According to the exhibit’s literature, the lavish ballroom gowns of the Gilded Age were mainly about displaying one’s wealth. The Gibson Girls’ long skirts — bifurcated for bicycling, heavily padded for ice skating — communicated a new interest among women in sport. The fabulous beaded columnar dresses and lace shawls that the “bohemians” wore in the 1910s reflected their passion for the arts.
The flappers of the 1920s were flaunting their sexual emancipation through short hair and form-hiding chemises. And what did the silks and and satins clutching the bodies of Hollywood screen sirens say? More sex, this time with curves.
Naked boy
The great Paris fashion houses outfitted them all. Bear in mind that the fashions on display belonged to very rich women, not the shop girls and housekeepers who also occupied the planet in these periods.
Which brings us full circle back to the Gilded Age and my conclusion: The Newport grande dames were simply more straightforward than their descendants about what they were flaunting.
Waving the bloody shirt for Hillary
To many women attending The New Agenda benefit last night in New York, it was still summer 2008, when presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton was subjected to sexist ridicule. Video loops of Tucker Carlson, Keith Olbermann, Chris Matthews and others making frat boy references to Clinton played throughout cocktails at the Thomson Reuters headquarters in Times Square.
For these women, the wounds still burn. And their anger goes beyond cable personalities to include Democratic Party officials and feminist organizations that accepted the sexism as collateral damage in the battle to get Barack Obama elected.
It was then that former Wall Streeter Amy Siskind and other powerful Clinton backers organized The New Agenda. Their unique brand of feminism is shorn of liberal litmus. They have defended Sarah Palin and now back Arkansas Sen. Blanche Lincoln as she faces a Democratic primary challenge from the left.
The evening’s honoree was Lynn Forester de Rothschild. The former Democratic fundraiser shocked many friends when she publicly endorsed the candidacy of John McCain, after Clinton left the race.
Clinton enjoys a near cult status in these circles, where she is both martyr and source of inspiration. Her picture frequently appeared on a giant screen behind the speakers.
“It’s almost as if she’s challenging us to take the next step to gender equality,” Siskind said with reverence, “and the beauty of Hillary’s words is this: They’re both revolutionary and indisputable at the same time.”
Now Obama’s secretary of state, Clinton may have moved on, but these supporters haven’t quite. They take solace in a few perceived victories against her foes.
When group chose its first target from a list of offenders, all hands went up for Chris Matthews. The MSNBC host had expressed interest in running for the Senate from Pennsylvania.
“We said this guy will never be senator in our country. Never!” Siskind said to laughter.
She recounted how the group publicized its displeasure and lobbied Democrats in the state. “Here’s the end result: He didn’t run,” Siskind said as applause rang through the room.
Tags: Hillary Clinton, sexism
