Playing the Gender Card

If there's just one thing that's particularly tiresome about Hillary Clinton (just one!?), it's her opportunistic use of gender to try to score political points.

This AP story notes that:

Democrats, particularly Democratic woman, who run for public office are "going to draw some unfriendly fire," Clinton said at a breakfast fundraiser hosted by black and Hispanic women supporters. "People will be attacking you instead of your ideas, they may impugn your patriotism, they may even say you're angry."

Let's see. First, set aside the meritless aspect of the whole "patriotism impugning" silliness (anyone able to point to a quote where a Republican is charging a Democrat -- much less a Democrat female -- with being unpatriotic? As Rich Lowry pointed out, it seems that the patriotism impugning actually comes from the left).

But even ignoring the flagrant falsehood, it's just curious that Clinton believes all these purported attacks are a particular problem for Democratic women.

It seems fair to note that being a woman has seemed to work just fine for Hillary Clinton when the mood strikes her to "stand by [her] man," to pose for the cover of Vogue, to hold a Whitewater press conference swathed in a pretty pink sweater set, even, well, to decide to run for the US Senate while her husband is President of the United States. All in all, being a woman hasn't worked out so badly for her, if you know what I mean.

It's interesting that any time she comes under a political attack that she fears will be potent, she runs like a scared bunny to the old feminist victimization playbook. Hm. Maybe it's some kind of primitive distress call to alert her friends in the press that it's time to swing into a defensive crouch and counterattack -- that is, to accuse the American people of being unable to handle "powerful" women.

Happily, the success and popularity of Condoleezza Rice makes it much easier to put the lie to that canard than it was in 1992.