WHO AND WHAT IS HILLARY?

Poor Maureen Dowd

She is torn between loving Hillary Clinton and scolding her as a serial chameleon who will be whatever the next political advisor tells her to be if it looks like there are a few votes init for her.

Dowd\’s latest column shows this attitudinal dichotemy perfectly – along with Dowd\’s eager willingness to use one stereotype after another – in a way that right wing columnists like Ann Coulter are crucified for.

A few key excerpts:

In 2008, Hillary Clinton took advice from two men – Bill Clinton and Mark Penn – and campaigned like a man. Worried about proving she could be commander in chief, Hillary scrubbed out the femininity, vulnerability and heart, in image and issues, that were anathema to Penn.

Hillary saw the foolishness of acting like a masculine woman defending the Iraq invasion after she fell behind to a feminized man denouncing it. After losing Iowa and watching New Hampshire slip away to the tyro, Barack Obama, Hillary cracked.

Hillary always overcorrects. Now she has zagged too far in the opposite direction, presenting herself as a sweet, docile granny in a Scooby van, so self-effacing she made only a cameo in her own gauzy, demographically pandering presidential campaign announcement video and mentioned no issues on her campaign\’s website.

Tina Fey and Amy Poehler showed the way in 2008, deploring the sexism against Hillary and hailing her as the unapologetically tough chick. It was a precursor to her cool “Don\’t mess with me” Tumblr meme, showing her with dark glasses serenely checking her BlackBerry on a military plane.

“Bitches get stuff done,” Fey proclaimed in a “Weekend Update” segment on “Saturday Night Live” that ended with, “Bitch is the new black.”

As she hits the trail again, Hillary is a blur of competing images, a paean to the calibrated, artful and generic, a low-key lady who doesn\’t stand for anything except low-keyness. She has seen, over and over, that overcorrecting can be self-defeating for her and parlous to the nation, but she keeps doing it.

Let\’s hope that the hokey Chipotle Granny will give way to the cool Tumblr Chick in time to teach her Republican rivals – who are coming after her with every condescending, misogynist, distorted thing they’ve got – that bitch is still the new black. 

Who is Hillary Clinton?  What is Hillary Clinton?  More to the point, who and what will she be tomorrow, when the next political consultant whispers in her ear? 

And who is Maureen Dowd to ever criticize anyone for using racial or gender stereotypes?