Oh, she was talking about the Hilder-beast.
Posted on 04/07/2006 9:40:04 PM PDT by CAWats
Sorry, but I wouldn't vote for a drag queen in the White House
Helen Rumbelow
THIS WEEK WE GOT to see how Americans think it would be to have a woman in the Oval Office. In the new TV drama Commander in Chief, which has just started in Britain, Madam President is more than 6ft tall, talks in a gravelly voice and has a mouth so inflatably large and laden with lipstick that voters would never have any trouble reading her lips. In short, Geena Davis does not play the first woman to lead the free world, but the first drag queen.
Of course the show makes great play of this girls-on-top fantasy. There is a sharp exchange between Davis and a rival who questions her ability to lead. “Well, not only that,” she mocks him, “but we have that whole ‘once a month will she or won’t she press the button’ thing.”
He responds nastily: “Well, in a couple of years you’re not going to have to worry about that any more.”
And there is a rather nauseating moment when the President’s young daughter spills her drink over mommy on the way to the inauguration speech. You know, the average pressures of balancing work, life, the national budget and your baby’s Ribena.
But never once in the tumultuous process of taking office does Davis betray any emotion. She remains cool, clipped, aloof and vaguely unlikeable. Although the programme-makers do their feminist best to show a woman succeeding at being in charge, in doing so they unwittingly identify the problem of being a female politician. They are drag queens of a sort, their femininity a mask, their humanity hidden.
Take the lunch I had with a minister when I started to cover politics. Here was a woman I had never met, but found irritating on television. She seemed cold, at best a little “nannyish” and dull, at worst patronising. I am hardly giving away clues to her identity here — how many women in government can you think of who do not fit this description? So imagine my surprise when she approached, swearing like a trooper at her lateness, a smile making her almost unrecognisable. On every point I had got her wrong: she was warm, very funny and surprisingly passionate about her cause.
I came away disturbed by my bad judgment of character. How could I have been so turned off by her public persona, but so bowled over by her in private? Yet the more female politicians I met, the more I encountered the same mystery — alter egos so different and so much more likeable that it was difficult to understand why they were kept concealed. When the demeanour of these women was criticised in conversation with friends, I would try to persuade them that really, underneath, they were fantastic. They didn’t believe me. It was, as I observed those suffocatingly safe performances in the Commons, hard to believe it myself.
Now, everyone separates their home and work selves to some degree. But the change is normally subtle: when you see a male politician droning on in public, it is a near certainty that he is a dullard in private. For many women in power the opposite is true — their work selves are the kind of disguise that would give Oscar-winner Geena Davis a run for her money.
I know why they do it. Their gender means their status is more in doubt, the scrutiny upon them greater, the margin for error smaller. They cannot afford to do a Mo, or an Edwina — careers sunk on a surfeit of “character”. So they keep to the line, and keep their jobs. But it also keeps them back. When David Cameron this week mouthed off about the UK Independence Party (“fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists”), it made him seem strong. Tony Blair, as his advisers at the election realised, is at his most convincing when sweating with panic among a hostile studio audience.
For a leader to be truly engaging, it is not enough to be good at his or her job. They have to reveal something of themselves, something for their public to connect with on an emotional level. That is why Bill Clinton is such a consummate politician, and why his buttoned-up wife Hillary — the current best chance of a real Madam President — is not.
We will have true equality when the word charisma is used about women in power, not just men. One day we won’t just aspire to have a woman in the White House, but a human too.
Helen Rumbelow is an idiot.
Shoot...I thought this was about Giuliani.
Do the English get to vote in our election, too?
You know, as an over-6-footer myself, I've heard bull$hit like this my whole life... and I'm d@mn well sick of it.
Note to the world: Simply being non-petite does not make a woman unfeminine.
To the brain-dead author of this stupid article, and to all others who share her sniveling attitude: F-CK you and the horse you rode in on!
Why not? Dead people, illegal immigrants, and pets get to. Let's let everyone jump on the bandwagon!
damn, take it easy. i don't think her height was crux of the issue. most men, except short ones usually, like tall women
London Times? If shes British she can't vote anyhow...
Rudy bashing is so tiresome.
Katherine Harris is prettier than that.
Rudy is the man, he will wear a dress to raise money for 9/11 victims.
And so are those FREEPERS who have said much of the same, as she.
What part of the rather ancient, by this time, "hairy leg show " ( which is what such performances are REALLY called ) is so damned difficult for people to understand? This has absolutely nothing at all to do with "DRAG" shows, nor latent cross dressing tendencies. For hundreds of years, politicians have put on these kinds of shows, but it is only recently, that they have been more open and garnered some public attention.
And predating that, American private and English Public ( which is what they call PRIVATE schools ) have put on these same kinds of send-ups.
See ya later
You don't have to bash Rudy to decide not to vote for him. All that has to be done is to tell the truth.
1) He is pro-choice.
2) He supports gun control.
3) He supports gay rights.
4) He has had cancer.
It is very unlikely that he can get the Republican nomination, and even less likely that he can beat Hillary.
Whatever...
Yep...real Presidential caliber material that guy is...
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