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Have you noticed that now that now that Hillary is presumed out of the race, the gender meme is huge?
Barack Obama thanked Clinton last night:
No matter how this primary ends, Senator Clinton has shattered myths and broken barriers and changed the America in which my daughters and yours will come of age.
I suppose, as the AP writes, "it's time to focus on candidates' legacies," and I'm hearing a lot of woman on the street pieces on TV and NPR from women who cite Hillary's "barrier breaking." Listen to this clip from NPR's Mara Liasson.
But when Hillary was viable as the Democratic nominee, or even winning, we avoided praising her "first" status. We didn't want to single her out, or even address the fact that she would be the first woman president. Now that it's time for eulogies of Hillary in 2008, her femaleness is loud and clear, praised, but in the end, certainly not enough to make her the nominee.
The nice thing is that the candidate herself is now finally talking about sexism. It may be a day late and a dollar short, but she's being pretty honest. Gone is the aggressive talk of "piling on politics," now, the tone is serious and, well, feminist:
"It's been deeply offensive to millions of women," Clinton said. "I believe this campaign has been a groundbreaker in a lot of ways. But it certainly has been challenging given some of the attitudes in the press, and I regret that, because I think it's been really not worthy of the seriousness of the campaign and the historical nature of the two candidacies we have here."
Why do you think mainstream media is openly talking about gender and 2008 now that it's pretty much over for Hillary? Why are we hailing Hillary's femaleness with great acclaim? Why is it only safe now?
