A friend sent me, this morning, a link to Gloria Steinem’s ope ed piece in the NY Times, with reference to the Maureen Dowd piece which followed the next day (and which she found churlish).  So here they are:  Maureen Dowd and Gloria Steinum going at it with quite divergent views of Hillary and her candidacy.  

I appreciated the issues raised in the Steinam piece and found Dowd’s commentary rather predictable and mean-spirited.  Stepping back, I realize that I LOVE Dowd’s facile humor when she’s aiming it at Bush et al … but maybe Maureen’s a one-trick pony and I need to re-think my appreciation of her. 

Is it because Hillary is Hillary that she is getting the particular form of scrutiny that she is … or is it because she is a woman?  Some combination, I suspect.  The way she gets discussed in the press (not to mention around water coolers) can be so full of venom – and the venom is presumed to be so “acceptable” – that’s what’s striking to me.  No journalist would dare write with the same tone about Obama, dissing him for some behavior that is seen as “stereotypical” … or just (eye roll here) typical. 

We should not congratulate ourselves that our culture has moved that much further along on racial issues than it has on women’s issues … I think we have miles to go on each (before we sleep).  But I do think that what is seen as acceptable discourse in the mainstream press is quite different when we’re talking about gender and when we’re talking about race.  Dissing a woman as a woman is still okay (wink, wink), but dissing an African-American man in similar tones puts one in the company of Ann Coulter. 

Dowd’s op ed is a weird validaton of what Steinem wrote the day before.  Come on, Maureen – surely you can do better than that.