Pure as the driven slush
Writing by treason on Tuesday, 13 of November , 2007 at 11:58 am
“Nobody can be exactly like me. Even I have trouble doing it.”
– Tallulah Bankhead
T and I decided to take advantage of global warming down here in Nuevo Mexico last week, so we took a long walk on what looked and felt like a beautiful spring day – well, as long as we didn’t pay too much attention to the color of the autumn leaves. Anyway, I brought up Hillary and the mild kerfuffle generated by her campaign trail hoarseness.
“I can’t believe how few people got the reference. I mean, people actually said they’d never heard of Tallulah Bankhead.”
“Who’s Tallulah Bankhead?”
Okay, maybe Obama really is onto something with that “generational” strategery, who knows? But the whole thing was still nagging at me. Why Tallulah? After all, there are plenty of other women with low, husky voices that Hillary could have compared herself to. Why not good Democrat Lauren Bacall or Kathleen Turner? Barbara Stanwyck, perhaps. Peggy Lee. Oh – and wouldn’t Mercedes McCambridge have been an interesting choice? And can you just imagine what would have happened if she had paused, cleared her throat, and said:
“Hmmm. I sound like Jeane Kirkpatrick.”
One doesn’t get the impression that Senator Clinton is spontaneous, so why Tallulah? Miss Bankhead was a woman who had more layers than an onion. Still, parallels can be drawn: She liked children, baseball, moved from a Southern state that starts with an “A” to New York, and reportedly had conversations with Eleanor Roosevelt. But these weren’t really the things Tallulah would be best remembered for. Again, why Tallulah?
Just a throwaway line? Perhaps, but doubtful. Some interpreted Hillary’s remark as a shout-out to the LGBT crowd, and that’s certainly a possibility. Others disagree: Why would she want to dredge up old rumors? Frankly, if I were married to Bill Clinton, I might be turned off by men, too. But I doubt that Hillary made the comparison for that reason. I mean, look at me. I am an unmarried woman of a certain age who drives a Subaru Outback and has been seen tossing 40 pound bags of kibble into it. I wear sensible shoes. Since shaving my head two years ago, I’ve consistently worn my hair cropped short. Because I’m tall, have shoulders, and my arms are long enough to tie my shoes without bending over, I tend to keep an unusual number of men’s shirts in my closets. I like baseball, big dogs, and sturdy beer. I adore Florence King and have been known to listen to k.d. lang. Am I bisexual? A lesbian? Uh… no. I admit women can be interesting to watch, but then so is decomposition.
I’ll cut Hilldog some slack here – I might have said Tallulah, too. Why? Quite simply, because I have always appreciated the woman’s quick wit and what I like to call her “Algonquinisms.” So why Tallulah? I think Hillary just wanted to prove that she really is a fun girl. As fun as decomposition, perhaps, but fun nonetheless.
Which reminds me of something Chris Matthews said at that Miami Book Fair over the weekend. He suggested that Hillary could win because “men listen to women.” Well, it’s hard to avoid it, Chris, because we’re always talking at them. But his point was, I think, that women would make the lives of the men around them miserable if they didn’t vote for the girl. Then came the “wink, wink, nudge, nudge, you know what I’m talkin’ about guys” thing. I tell you, it sent a chill up my spine.
Is Chris Matthews suggesting that American men are that whipped? I hope he’s just speaking for himself here. Look. T and I usually go to the polls together when it’s a big election, and we generally review the ballot together before we head out to register our votes. But once we get there something happens. We separate. He goes into a booth, I go into a booth. We vote separately. We vote alone.
After all these years of being legal, one of the things about our system that still energizes me is that I can go into a voting booth and choose whatever I want. Whatever I want. None of this “I’d really like to order the cheesecake, but I know I should get the melon slice.” No, I can enter that booth and have that cheesecake. Outside that booth I can say one thing, then go inside and do another if I want to. Not that I’ve ever done that, but knowing that I could is what’s exciting. And then I don’t have to tell anyone – anyone – what I’ve just done. It’s the only real secret left.
So what the hell is Chris Matthews saying? Are there women out there who actually stand outside the booth then demand to see their partners’ ballots? “I want to see proof that you voted the way you were supposed to!” It wouldn’t even occur to me to violate T’s privacy that way. He’s an adult. Unlike the average Floridian, he understands how the ballot works. He is capable of doing research. He is capable of forming opinions. He is capable of making decisions. His own decisions.
I used to hear stories about women who said they voted the way their husbands “instructed” them to, and I always thought that was odd. Have that many women become those men? Gee whiz, what kind of harridans does Chris Matthews associate with?
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