Weighing In on Rolling Stone Piece Slamming Hillary Clinton
03.22.08

Dear Rolling Stone:

Matt Taibbi's piece on Hillary Clinton in the March 20th issue was certainly true to form for your magazine, which generally promises so much more than it delivers. At least your gender bias is consistent--you almost always manage to completely leave women out, objectify them, or (in this case) completely misrepresent and belittle the presumed views of "a certain class of Hillary supporter--women, particularly professional women, who are somewhat older." Since I can speak directly from that class of women your author presumes to understand, let me tell you what I think.

First of all, why should I (or any of my "somewhat older" Hillary-supporting sisters) care one bit what Matt or any other young white guy thinks about our analysis of the situation? Why is his opinion relevant in any way? Why not have the intellectual good sense to ask a woman from the class of people you're discussing to weigh in on her opinion--a much more logical and pertinent point of view, certainly. It is so YESTERDAY to hear some white man complaining about how women think they see sexism everywhere, even though he doesn't see it himself.

The more interesting analysis of Hillary as a political phenomenon is the way in which she functions as a kind of "blank screen" for all of us to project our fantasies onto. Yes, some of us "somewhat older" women are so delighted to see a woman holding her own in the face of the sexism your author feels is so insubstantial. Others are freaked out by the possibility of a woman actually leading the country and are projecting their fears onto her. And Matt Taibbi is clearly projecting his own mixed up material onto Hillary as well.

For example, he uses the Christ metaphor of a martyr to satirize Hillary Clinton, who never positions herself that way (either through her strategies or her personality traits) as messianic. While Obama on the other hand is actually being cast as a kind of Christ figure right now by the media. (Whether or not he has any hand in that himself is not my point).

Just the way that Rolling Stone chose to depict Hillary Clinton as an ugly cartoon image and Barak Obama in professional portrait photos, airbrushed and dignified--almost religious in tone--is enough to give away the magazine's misogynistic point of view. In relation to this positioning, Taibbi seems defensive and disingenuous when he remarks: "I began to run into women on the campaign trail who were furious over the success of Obama, seeing in it evidence that the public is incapable of accepting a woman an an authority figure, retreating instead to the familiar embrace of yet another seductive, lying-ass man offering the same old empty promises."

We women of a certain age don't need to demonize Barak Obama in order to support Hillary Clinton. This old tired dualism is unnecessary, as they are both interesting icons with the charismatic power to galvanize the public. Seeing ourselves mirrored back to us in the form of an intelligent woman is no small thing in contemporary America, but seeing an equally intelligent Black person holding his own in the political arena is also thrilling. Too bad you chose to ridicule the very thing that would have made a much more interesting piece of writing.

Sincerely, Vicki Noble