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Follow the leader
As Kosovo recovers from Serbian-inflicted devastation, rival political factions jockey for position.
By Laura Rozen
[07/02/99]

All things to all checkbooks
The smoothly humming Bush machine makes sure that no one gets a chance to find out just who that man in the driver's seat really is.
By Anthony York
[07/01/99]

Now what's blocking Richard Holbrooke's confirmation?
The United States goes without a U.N. ambassador while the right wing protects one of its own.
By Ian Williams
[07/01/99]

We're here, we're queer, I'm sick of it
The gay pride agenda is about partying, not politics. It's time to talk about "gay equality."
By Christopher Ott
[06/30/99]

Attack of the devil dolls
What do Austin Powers, Tarzan, Jar Jar and Tinky Winky have in common? They scare a nation that's already panicked about kids' sexuality.
By Richard Goldstein
[06/30/99]

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It's difficult terrain to negotiate. "Tipper Gore doesn't foresee a policy role," read an Associated Press headline of March 29. "With four children and aging parents," Gore bubbled, as if stepping right out of a 1950s commercial for Swanson's TV dinners, "I find that I only spend so much time on issues that I care about, and I spend a lot of time on keeping the family together."

Officially, Gore's public task so far in campaign 2000 has been to embrace the uncontroversial. She appeared alongside her husband on TV talk shows in June to chat up the 10th anniversary of Race for the Cure, a five-kilometer run put on by the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation. And she's also been dispatched with the hard sell of convincing the world that her automaton husband has a pulse.

"If you're talking about the fact that the man is somewhat reserved, yes, he is," she told NBC's Claire Shipman. "That's part of his personality. That's the way he was when he was 17, when I met him. That was something I liked in him, handsome, sexy, a little reserved. Watch out, America."

She even told Shipman that the vice president sleeps in the nude. "I tell you, he isn't wearing anything when we go to bed." It's hard to imagine the current first lady making such a statement; but, of course, we already know far too much about her husband's bedroom rituals.

When reporters have picked up on the possible "I am not Hillary" translation of how she foresees her first ladyship, Gore has insisted that she means no disrespect. "Everybody's different. We're all different people," Gore explained.

A senior political advisor for Vice President Gore insists that the second lady isn't trying to win converts for her husband by subtly assuring the world that in a Gore administration we won't find Tipper arrogantly trying to revamp the nation's health care system behind closed doors.

"She is just a fundamentally different person," the advisor says. "Hillary is an Eleanor Roosevelt figure for her time; she has redefined on her terms what a first lady can do. Hillary's a polarizing figure. She's a very strong woman who expresses her views. She's clearly a woman of the future and there are still people living in a different age who aren't willing to accept that. Tipper does not necessarily fit that role for anybody pushing for that type. She's not interested in playing any transformative role through the positions she's occupying."

But this is selling the second lady short. In fact, Tipper Gore has been more than willing to embrace controversial issues and serve a policy role both as a Senate spouse and in the Clinton administration. Her bubbly blonde exterior belies a far more involved wonk (or at least wonk-spokesperson), someone not entirely unlike her mother in-law, Pauline LaFon, who was one of the first women to graduate from Vanderbilt Law School.

Tipper was sounding the alarm about the pervasive influence of pop culture on children, for instance, long before most of us had heard of Littleton or even Bill Bennett. Her epiphany came when a babysitter played Prince's "Purple Rain" for the Gores' daughter Karenna in the mid-1980s, and Tipper heard the masturbatory lyrics to "Darling Nikki." After Tipper fielded questions from the younger two Gore girls about Van Halen and Mötley Crüe videos on MTV, and a had subsequent conversation with Susan Baker -- the wife of President Reagan's then-Treasury Secretary James Baker -- the Parents' Music Resource Center was born.

Whether you think she's playing responsible parent or meddling with the First Amendment, Tipper Gore's leadership on the issue far exceeded that of her husband. While the infamous September 1985 Senate committee hearings on the issue of dirty song lyrics suggested little in terms of actual legislation, Tipper Gore held fast to the PMRC's hope that the music industry would voluntarily tag their records with warning labels. Musicians and First Amendment activists singled out the blonde Democratic housewife with the silly-sounding nickname, and delivered crushing ad hominem, often vile, personal attacks against her.

Conversely, then-Senator Al Gore told furious testifier Frank Zappa, "I have been a fan of your music ... I respect you as a true original and a tremendously talented musician." Later, right before he launched his 1988 presidential run, Al Gore distanced himself from his wife's works, telling a group of Hollywood big shots that "I did not ask for the hearing. I was not in favor of the hearing."

Fourteen years later, in early June of this year, Tipper once again eclipsed her husband when she embraced another controversial issue, revealing that she had been treated for depression, though she refused to disclose the name of the drug. While plenty of pundits speculated that Tipper's revelation came as a preemptive strike for the 2000 campaign battle, make no mistake: Any admission by a political wife that she has suffered from mental illness and taken psychotropic drugs is courageous.

"The fact that we had the first White House conference on this issue speaks for itself," says the Gore political advisor.

"Tipper's own decision to discuss her struggle with depression is a testament to her courage and commitment to change attitudes and build understanding about mental illness," President Clinton said during a recent radio address. Later this year, Clinton announced, Tipper Gore and the surgeon general will "unveil a major new campaign to combat stigma and dispel myths about mental illness" through public-service announcements.

"Tipper Gore I can see very much in the mold of Lady Bird Johnson," Anthony says. "Johnson had very specific areas of interest -- in environmental protection and the Head Start program. I think within a very certain area, which was self-limited to those issues, Lady Bird had an impact. I think someone like Tipper Gore could have a big impact on mental health in that same way."

Indeed, though she may want to feign the simplicity of a bubbly soccer mom who focuses her energies on her kids and tells the media that her husband sleeps in the buff, Tipper Gore is far more complex and potentially incendiary than that.

But don't tell anyone -- that's her dirty little secret. It's much safer to be a non-Hillary, after all.

Next page | Ernestine Bradley: Keeping the Ph.D. under the apron