Posted by Jed Lewison on Sun Apr 13, 2008 at 9:57 AM Pacific

The real condescension

If you followed politics back in 1992, you probably remember that Hillary Clinton was ferociously (and unfairly) attacked for making this remark in a 60 Minutes interview about her husband's marital fidelity:

You know I'm not sitting here, some little woman standing by my man like Tammy Wynette.

Hillary's critics absurdly claimed that she was demeaning American women. By March 1992, some had moved on, but only after latching onto what they sought to portray as a bigger act of condescension. Here's William Safire (a conservative columnist for the NYT):

Lyndon Johnson had "the Bobby problem"; Bill Clinton now has "the Hillary problem."

The problem is not that Hillary Clinton, successful lawyer and feminist, is coming across as a cunning political animal, threatening to insecure male voters. On the contrary, she is coming across as a political bumbler by appearing to show contempt for women who work at home.

Her first gaffe, derogating the Tammy Wynette stand-by-your-man pose, can be excused as an unfortunate choice of words under incredible pressure.

But Mrs. Clinton's second outbreak of foot-in-mouth disease -- "I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas" -- betrayed ignorance of the fundamentals of campaigning: You do not defend yourself from a conflict-of-interest charge by insulting a large segment of the voting public.

The cookies-and-tea stereotype is elitism in action. Even the columnist Ellen Goodman, a grass-roots feminist, was moved to comment: "Ouch."

The parallels between 1992 and 2008 are obvious, except now the Clintons have become the the vast right-wing conspiracy that they once denounced. (That and the fact that neither Obama has nearly as many skeletons in his or her closet as did the Clintons.) Change a few words, swap Hillary's name out for Michele or Barack, and you'd have an opinion piece that would make Geraldine Ferraro or Lanny Davis proud.

For them to expect us not to notice their hypocrisy -- that is the real condescension.