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Gloria, Madeleine and We

Gloria, Madeleine and We

The last time I stood in front of Gloria Steinem, in the fall of 2012, she spent little time talking to me.

Instead, she trained her laser-focus on the 24-year-old woman next to me. This was my daughter, whose favorite doll in early childhood was a blonde Cabbage Patch girl named Gloria Steinem.

We were in Hartford for a sold-out panel discussion for the Connecticut Forum — featuring Ashley Judd, Michelle Bernard, Gloria and me — on “The State of Women.” When Cait heard that I would be less than two hours from her home in Providence, she considered driving up. When I told her Gloria Steinem was also on the panel, I closed the deal.

What I remember most about that evening was the glow on my daughter’s face as Gloria leaned in and asked her about her life. I couldn’t recount a word of their exchange, but I will never forget the full-circle joy that blurred my vision.

I share this story not to excuse what Gloria said on Bill Maher’s show last week but to explain why I won’t let one clumsy comment diminish who I know her to be.

Maher asked her why so many young women are supporting Bernie Sanders. She has since apologized for this response: “Women get more radical as we get older. Men tend to get more conservative because they gain power as they age, and women get more radical because they lose power as they age. … When you’re young, you’re thinking, ‘Where are the boys?’ The boys are with Bernie.”

I understand the angry response of many young women, but when the outrage turns to rancor and declarations of her irrelevance, I bristle. Gloria Steinem has been a steadfast champion of this millennial generation of women, many of whom have likely never said her name aloud before this week. At 81, she has earned our benefit of the doubt.

It didn’t help that, in the same weekend, former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright stood next to Hillary Clinton and warned younger women, “There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other.” She has said the same thing countless times, often to rapturous cheers, but her timing was off.

At 58, I’m young enough to have found Steinem and Albright inspiring for many years. I even admire their impatience in this presidential year. It is comforting to see a small part of me in my heroes.

How to explain this? I think about that a lot. It’s not that I believe young women have to support Hillary Clinton. I just want them to understand why it’s so personal for many of us who do. We can rattle off all Clinton’s qualifications as the reasons to elect her, and we mean it. But there’s also the woman-ness of it all. Why are we still such a tough sell, even to one another?

In our family, three daughters and a daughter-in-law have careers and young children and a sense of self that triggers a deep longing in me. Sometimes I watch them and wonder, “Who are you?” It is a question of awe, not envy, and a reflection of my own what-ifs. Who might I be now had I been like them in my 20s? It took me so much longer to turn up the dimmer on my own ambition.

Not this generation. Everywhere I go, it seems, I meet young women who leave me breathless. They are teaching and preaching and delivering babies. Once a year, one of them calms my nerves before she walks behind the wall and tells me to hold my breath for the mammogram.

Sometimes, I am at my clumsiest with them, feeing a rush of unearned pride. Who am I, a stranger, to take glory in these young women’s lives? I feel so silly, so full of this song in my heart.

Finally, it seems, I understand how my own mother felt as she watched her daughters leave her behind to navigate a world she had never imagined for herself. Days before she died, she told me she wished she had stuck up for herself more in her marriage.

I braced myself and said, “What would you have done differently, Mom?”

She lifted her weak, manicured hand and pointed to her head. “I would have dyed my hair red,” she said. “And I would have had cats.”

They used to ask for so little, the women in my family.

Maybe that, too, is why I want it all.

Connie Schultz is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and professional in residence at Kent State University’s school of journalism. She is the author of two books, including “…and His Lovely Wife,” which chronicled the successful race of her husband, Sherrod Brown, for the U.S. Senate. To find out more about Connie Schultz (con.schultz@yahoo.com) and read her past columns, please visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.
COPYRIGHT 2016 CREATORS.COM

Vote For Hillary Or Go To Hell!

Vote For Hillary Or Go To Hell!

Bernie Sanders looks like an unmade bed. He appears to buy his suits in thrift stores and then sleep in them for three or four days.

His voice is somewhere between a rasp and a growl. On the stump, he gives the appearance of an angry bear who has missed his hibernation for the past 35 years or so.

If some corporate vice president ever tried to hand him a $335,000 check to give a speech, Bernie would probably bite his arm off.

Bernie is sometimes compared to the fictional Howard Beale, a network anchor in the movie “Network.” Beale announces one day that he is going to start telling people the truth because, “I just ran out of b——-.”

Beale urges people to go to their windows and shout, “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!”

In the end, the corporation that owns his network assassinates him.

I don’t envision this happening to Sanders. For one thing, he has Secret Service protection. For another, his opponents are usually political operatives, and they tend to come at you with words, not firearms.

On Saturday, for example, Madeleine Albright, secretary of state under Bill Clinton, took a stage in Concord, New Hampshire, with Hillary Clinton to promote her presidential campaign.

Of all the qualities that Albright could have emphasized — Hillary’s experience, intelligence and courage — Albright emphasized the one quality that Sanders couldn’t compete with: Hillary is a woman.

What’s more, women who don’t vote for Clinton because she is a woman will be consigned to the eternal fires of Hades, Albright said.

“There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help other women,” Albright told the crowd.

According to The New York Times, Clinton appeared to agree. “Mrs. Clinton, 68, laughed, slowly clapped and took a large sip of her beverage,” the paper reported.

We don’t know what she was drinking, but it probably wasn’t brimstone.

You would think the Clinton campaign would not have to worry about women voting for Hillary, but the signs have been very bad so far. In Iowa, though Clinton won the women’s vote overall, she lost women age 30-44 to Sanders by a hefty 21 percentage points and women age 17-29 by a stunning 70 percentage points.

A 70 percentage point gap is the kind of result you’d expect to see in an election in Russia or a Chicago ward, not an Iowa caucus.

Clearly, the Clinton campaign must now do something. So in order to win over women aged 17-29, it has brought out Albright, age 78, and Gloria Steinem, age 81, as surrogates.

And you can see why campaign consultants get the big bucks.

The strategy? Shame women into voting for Clinton.

Clinton has real qualities and real accomplishments. But Albright says the reason to vote for Clinton is God will send you to a special place in hell if you don’t. (As far as I know, God has not yet publicly endorsed a candidate, but maybe He did so by email and it got lost on Clinton’s private server.)

Asked to explain why some women flock to Sanders, Albright said, “The bottom line is: I don’t know.”

Gloria Steinem does know. When asked by TV host Bill Maher why young women are going with Sanders, Steinem said that it was a good way for them to meet boys.

“When you’re young, you’re thinking, ‘Where are the boys? The boys are with Bernie,'” Steinem said.

To which Boston Globe columnist Joan Vennochi responded, “If that’s the best a feminist icon can offer — ugh.”

Clinton supporters should not worry, however. Clinton’s campaign is dependent not just on the deep thinking of Albright and Steinem but also on deep data analysis and number crunching.

And you can bet women voters have been targeted with tightly focused messages for the New Hampshire primary.

Women might have gotten leaflets slipped under their doors saying: “Would you like to be burned by red-hot irons for all eternity? How about being torn to pieces by dogs or having burning pitch poured over your head every day? If you don’t vote for a woman, this will happen to you in the darkest reaches of hell.

“Don’t vote for a cantankerous socialist who doesn’t have enough sense to take super PAC money or even comb his hair. Vote for a progressive who can get things done and never get caught. Vote Hillary Clinton — she knows how to get away with it.”

Yes, that’s a little extreme. And here’s the leaflet that didn’t make the cut:

“Hillary Clinton is a person of intellect and accomplishment. She has spent almost her entire life helping people around the globe. As president, she will restore economic growth at home, stand up to our enemies abroad and safeguard our allies. She will break the glass ceiling and we will all feel proud.

“Or just wait a few years for Elizabeth Warren.”

Roger Simon is Politico’s chief political columnist. His new e-book, “Reckoning: Campaign 2012 and the Fight for the Soul of America,” can be found on Amazon.com, BN.com and iTunes. To find out more about Roger Simon and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Web page at www.creators.com.
COPYRIGHT 2016 CREATORS.COM

Photo: Hillary Clinton takes a photo with a supporter at a campaign event in Decorah, Iowa, January 26, 2016. REUTERS/Rick Wilking 

Steinem And Albright’s Comments Supporting Clinton Anger Young Feminists

Steinem And Albright’s Comments Supporting Clinton Anger Young Feminists

Hillary Clinton needs young women to maintain her status as the Democrats’ inevitable presidential nominee. And Clinton is the most likely candidate in history to shatter the highest glass ceiling in American political life. But lately, her support among women, especially young women, has shown signs of erosion — and recent comments by two leading feminists in support of her candidacy have created a new obstacle, ironically enough.

During a Friday night appearance on “Real Time with Bill Maher,” Gloria Steinem, an icon of 1960’s second-wave feminism, said of younger feminists: “They’re going to get more activist as they grow older. And when you’re younger, you think: ‘Where are the boys? The boys are with Bernie.'”

The following day, Madeleine Albright, one of the country’s best known secretaries of state and the first woman to hold that position, told a crowd at a Clinton rally: “There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other.” The crowd didn’t seem troubled by Albright’s remarks, and in response chanted “Madam President” — a common refrain for Albright, who used it against Barack Obama when he was running for the Democratic nomination in 2008.

Across social media, however, young women lambasted the two feminist icons for their comments, painting them as condescending and sexist. Some took issue with Steinem’s initial comment, others with her response to the uproar. Steinem said her comments had been “misinterpreted.” Moumita Ahmed, one of the leaders of the Millennials for Bernie movement, told The Guardian , “Gloria Steinem’s statement was the worst kind of sweeping generalization I’ve heard in years about women my age.”

But hearing those remarks from a feminist icon was even more surprising and hurtful.  “I identify as a feminist,” said Ahmed. “I’m not sure how she could admit us young women are graduating with more debt and earning less money, then say young women are supporting Bernie Sanders to impress all the boys.”

In a Facebook post on Sunday, Steinem responded to the anger, writing, “What I had just said on the same show was the opposite: young women are active, mad as hell about what’s happening to them, graduating in debt, but averaging a million dollars less over their lifetimes to pay it back. Whether they gravitate to Bernie or Hillary, young women are activist and feminist in greater numbers than ever before.”

Albright’s comments provoked similar excoriations. In an opinion piece for The Washington Post, reporter Janell Ross wrote, “The weekend collection of comments about young women and what they ‘ought to do’ in relationship to Hillary Clinton is, no doubt, insulting.” A simple search of Albright on Twitter revealed widespread anger with her comments. She has made comments about the “special place in hell” since at least 2004, during a panel at her and Clinton’s alma mater, Wellesley College. But after Steinem’s appearance on “Real Time,” Albright’s usually uncontroversial comment simply added fuel to the fire.

It is undeniable that today’s feminist movement includes a new generation of millennial activists who have built on the contributions and sacrifice of women like Clinton, Steinem and Albright. But many of these young feminists also focus on  class and socioeconomic issues that they consider as important as gender politics.

Affected by the gender pay gap, at a time where America faces the greatest levels of inequality since the Gilded Age, younger women see Bernie Sanders’ focus on socioeconomic justice taking precedence over electing the country’s first female president. That appears to be why millennial women voted for Sanders by a margin of 6 to 1 in the Iowa caucuses. And in New Hampshire, he leads Clinton by two points overall among women voters.

Meanwhile, Clinton has come out in defense of her friends. On Sunday she said told MSNBC’s “Meet The Press,” “Madeline has been saying this for many, many years. She believes it firmly, in part because she knows what a struggle it has been, and she understands the struggle is not over.” Whether or not that will make a difference to the slim majority of New Hampshire women voters now rooting for Sanders remains to be seen. It is possible that Albright and Steinem may have driven a few more voters in his direction.

Photo: Hillary Clinton takes the stage at a “Get Out the Vote” campaign rally in Manchester, New Hampshire February 8, 2016.  REUTERS/Brian Snyder