Hillary Clinton's Book: Exactly as 'Safe' as Female Politicians are Forced to Be

BOOKS-'As to the sexism that surfaced during the campaign,' Clinton writes, 'I knew that it arose from cultural and psychological attitudes about women's roles in society, but that didn't make it any easier for me and my supporters.' 

Hillary Clinton's new book, Hard Choices – a memoir of her time as secretary of state – is finally out, and the critical consensus is that it's a snore. 

CNN's conservative commentator Ana Navarro called it "50 shades of boring" while the network's liberal contributor Sally Kohn called it "safe" and "dry" – and joked that the book should have been called "Boring Choices". The New Republic criticized its "dullness and lack of critical energy". Politico's Mike Allen called the 596-page book a "newsless snore". 

I'm not exactly sure how action-packed the minutiae of a diplomat's life is supposed to be, but the Hard Choices haters ignore that a "safe" book was Clinton's only real choice. After all, whenever she's hinted at being anything other than measured and guarded, Clinton has been attacked as hysterical, a ballbuster or worse. So if people are bored by Hard Choices, they should blame the misogynist expectations of Washington, not the careful crafting of a seasoned politician. 

When then-presidential hopeful Clinton teared up on the campaign trail in New Hampshire in 2008, for example, Maureen Dowd penned a column in the New York Times that asked "Can Hillary Cry Her Way Back to the White House?" 

On CNN, Glenn Beck said, "After spending decades stripping away all trace of emotion, femininity, and humanity, Hillary Clinton broke down and actually cried. ... I don't buy the hype." 

On Fox News, Weekly Standardeditor Bill Kristol called the emotional moment "solipsistic and narcissistic". 

Similarly, when Clinton got into a heated exchange during her Benghazi testimony, the New York Post ran a cover of Clinton yelling with her fists clenched; the headline: NO WONDER BILL'S AFRAID. 

Any emotion that Hillary Clinton shows has always been used against her, and it has become a kind of stand-in for the many reasons women are said to be oh-so-unfit to lead. The building-up of her protective public armor, post- and potentially pre-White House, isn't just smart for Clinton personally - it's essential for the growing national image of women in politics. 

It's clear from reading Hard Choices that sexism - particularly during Clinton's 2008 run for president - has taken a toll on her. "I knew that it arose from cultural and psychological attitudes about women's roles in society, but that didn't make it any easier for me and my supporters," she writes. Indeed, the frenzy of misogyny was so intense that it's hard to imagine enduring it all while vying for the most important job in the world. 

As Rebecca Traister wrote in her 2010 book Big Girls Don't Cry: the Election that Changed Everything for American Women, the "misogynist aggression" targeted at Clinton ran the gamut from Tucker Carlson calling her "castrating" and pundits mocking her "cackle", to a Clinton-shaped nutcracker and t-shirts reading LIFE'S A BITCH – SO DON'T ... VOTE FOR ONE! 

And that was just during the campaign. 

For years Clinton has been derided as a harridan, made fun of for her hair accessories and pantsuits, or slammed for not being feminine or "likeable" enough. In what universe would a person who has dealt with all of that ever want - or think it wise - to be a firebrand? 

In her Monday night interview with Diane Sawyer, Clinton even admitted – in what felt like a moment of real disclosure – that sexism was behind her guarded persona. When Sawyer asked her about concerns that she's "scripted, cautious and safe," Clinton replied: 

I understand why some people may have seen that. When you're in the spotlight as a woman, you know you're being judged constantly. It is just never-ending. 

That's why a gender-blind analysis of Hard Choicesis short-sighted. For example, Slate's review – titled "Safe Choices" – compares Clinton's book to former Defense Secretary Robert Gates's "tough" and candid book, Duty. Political correspondent John Dickerson writes that Gates's book had "spice", while "Clinton's account is the low-salt, low-fat, low-calorie offering with vanilla pudding as the dessert." 

Can you picture the response had Hillary Clinton's book actually been "spicy"? If she had expressed just how pissed she was with the Obama campaign or - in the stuff that makes up my feminist dreams - called the young man who heckled her with "iron my shirt!" a real asshole? Hysterical woman alert! 

Where some saw Hard Choices as dull, I finished it on Tuesday afternoon finding the book careful and shrewd - particularly around its messaging to women. Clinton mentions sexism in the book, but brings it up as it often happens - in everyday interactions, like when a "Prime Minister whose eyes glazed over whenever I raised the issue of women's rights". 

No, her everyday interactions are not quite ours – very few people spend "more than two thousand hours in the air over four years" – but I think women the world over will empathize with Clinton's reminders of never-ending sexism, even at the (second) highest level of power. Not just because we're in a particular political and cultural moment when misogyny is a huge part of the national conversation, but because most of us remember the onslaught of sexism during her 2008 run – and we're now beginning to brace ourselves for another possible round of it in 2016. 

Others are holding out for "newsiness", but they shouldn't hold their breath so long as female politicians have to balance their policy stances with "likeability". 

And should she run as expected, I think Clinton should continue to be smartly careful - if a little less tight-lipped about misogyny. 

Clinton told Sawyer that she was not "as effective calling (sexism) out during that campaign," but that "there is a double standard, we live with a double standard, and people ought to think about their own daughters, their own sisters, their own mothers, when they make comments about women in public life." 

Perhaps they ought to think about that double standard when writing book reviews as well.

 

(Jessica Valenti is a daily columnist for the Guardian US. She is the author of four books on feminism, politics and culture, and founder of Feministing.com. This column was posted first at The Guardian)

-cw

 

 

 

 

CityWatch

Vol 12 Issue 48

Pub: June 13, 2014