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- - - - - - - - - - D R A M A++Q U E E N Did a gorilla ever spit on your videocam? Send your worst outing tales to
dramaqueen - - - - - - - - - - T A B L E++T A L K Do mothers love all their children the same? Or do they pick favorites. Join mothers and children in a discussion of the nuances of mother love in Table Talk - - - - - - - - - - R E C E N T L Y Cracking down The demise of discipline: Second of three parts Global baby warming Mulan through the looking glass Boho/professional goddess seeks modern man BROWSE THE FEATURE ARCHIVES - - - - - - - - - - Mamafesto
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A MASTERFUL MACHIAVELLIAN MATRIARCH | PAGE 1, 2
The only thing the American people might hate more than government is the press. But you make the press out to be a watchdog of sorts. Lately I think the press has been in this whole gossip mode and has not been paying much attention to issues. Maybe with Brill's [Content] magazine they'll get back to where they were. Jefferson always said if he had to choose between a Democratic government and a free press he would choose a free press because a free press is supposed to be the great monitor of what is going on. Often I found the press to be very helpful in educating people about the issues I was trying to move forward. If you could get journalists to write about issues, then eventually people might read about them and begin to move the body politic. And tell me, where are those kinds of in-depth issue-oriented stories this year? You've been out of Congress for almost a year. How do you think they've been doing since you've been gone? Congress hasn't done a lot. There are so many issues that they're not covering: child care, environmental issues, how to make college affordable for the average family, the "Patients Bill of Rights" -- which has become a bigger issue as we see more and more people getting crushed by HMOs. I think it's very interesting that in the movie "As Good as It Gets" Helen Hunt gets a standing ovation when she attacks HMOs and Congress can't even can't figure out what to do about the system! I think the Republicans came in with a great mission and they wanted to accomplish things from their 10-point program [the "Contract With America"]. The problem was, the program didn't have a second page! They don't want to do anything the Democrats want to do. And meanwhile, the journalists all cover gossip and sex. So they've kind of abandoned the ship too. It can't go on forever -- I mean aren't people finally going to tire of all this? I assume you're talking about the Lewinsky affair. Why do you think that with Anita Hill, feminists were saying, "We have to give her a fair hearing, get her story out there." But with Monica Lewinsky, the same groups are sort of backing off and saying her story has changed over time, and the relationship, if there was one, was consensual anyway. When people like myself helped pen the sexual harassment laws we foresaw them as something that would be used by women who were victims or men who were victims. We didn't foresee them as something men were going to use in their power games. I mean Monica Lewinsky is not saying she is a victim. Anita Hill was saying she was a victim. The women in the Packwood case were saying they were victims. We have this body of law and these victims are protected and they have a right to be heard. Monica Lewinsky is not pursuing the case, she's not declaring herself a victim. So in your eyes Monica Lewinsky is a pawn? I don't think she's a pawn. I do think she has been dragged into this. This huge investigation that's going on started with Whitewater -- and they've now closed everything down in Arkansas and they found nothing. After all these years the only thing they have is some 21-year-old whose friend taped her bragging without her knowledge, and they hold her for perjury. I think most people are going to say, is that really what the law is supposed to do? So only women who say they are victims can be sexually harassed? It's up to the victim to decide if they've been harassed and then to pursue it. If somebody bothers you and you decide to pursue it, then I'm all for it. If you decide not to pursue it, and someone else says, "No, you're going to pursue it because I can't stand that guy. And I'm going to drag you in here and make you get an attorney and I'm going to accuse you of perjury and I'm going to make you talk because I'm going to bring him down," then you're becoming another kind of victim -- you're becoming a victim of people's power wars. It's depressing. A recent Time magazine article proclaimed that feminism is dead. Do you agree? It's not in great shape, but I don't know if it's dead. I just came from the doctor and he was telling me about his 11-year-old who has been on a diet since she was 3. And I'm like, what? In Parade magazine a couple of weekends ago teens were saying it is better to have a boyfriend that batters you than not have a boyfriend at all. What is this self-esteem problem in our country? I mean, it's the same old thing about bodies, about men. I'm stunned at how slow women's progress has been. I look at the House of Representatives and here we are at the turn of the century and we have 55 women out of 435! We'd hoped that the work and family issues would be much more resolved. We're still making women feel guilty about everything. They're guilty if they stay home because they're supposed to be working. They're guilty if they work because they should be home taking care of the family. We really should have buried a lot of that. I find it sad that women haven't used their political power a lot more to just say, "Stop this! We're not going to have full-time jobs 24 hours a day!" We've got to have some kind of support. This brings me to the title of your book -- a sort of play on words that perpetuates the woman-in-the-home stereotype. When you get to be middle-aged like I am, you really decide that life is about maintenance. If I had said, "Well, I was in Congress for 24 years and now everything is wonderful and we'll all live happily ever after," that would be a joke. You've inspired many women. Who are some good role models? I still like my role models. Women like Amelia Earhart and Eleanor Roosevelt and the Margaret Sangers of the world. These were just amazing women that totally broke out of the grain. Eleanor Roosevelt was one of the wealthiest women in America and yet she was out picketing with the maids and she never got into this beauty thing. The United States women's hockey team is making a new kind of statement and they don't look like Ally McBeal or whatever her name is. You've picked a lot of doers. Yeah, I don't think of women as geisha girls.
Lesley Gold is a producer at CNN in Washington. - - - - - - - - - - -
24 YEARS OF HOUSEWORK AND THE PLACE IS STILL A MESS: MY LIFE IN POLITICS | PAT SCHROEDER | ANDREWS MCMEEL PUBLISHING | 244 PAGES |
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