American feminist feminism

The controversial replacement of Sandra Day O'Connor, the often decisive swing-vote, moderate, female on the Supreme Court, piqued my attention since she announced her intent to retire. The evangelical president and his socially oppressive right-wing devotees had primed their picks and licked their lips for years, gearing with an impetus seemingly driven by the need to spare America from irretrievable moral degeneracy, and I, along with many Americans unchastised by their holy oils, rightly feared the worst.

But the real deal for pundits, bloggers, politicians, and intrepid jokesters of all ranks was the nomination of Harriet Miers. Oh, we will miss her and all the singularly dedicated and spine-tingly funny blogs she spurred. The Harriet Miers Diary was one of my favorite, rife with a jovial school girl's enthusiasm that never dipped in energy and bemused blushes with her new fame. But the Diary was only an appetizer to the main course of diatribe, the substantive glut of rumor; whose author even claimed a resume including a clerkship in the federal judiciary. Underneath their Robes spoke with the sincerity of the rare connoisseur obsessed with the "super-stars of the law." I was confused and disappointed when I tried in vain to access it today, only later to learn that it will likely not return.

The anonymous author of Underneath Their Robes, with an elaborate but discrete biography, falsely claimed to be a female. The shrouded profile picture revealed a possibly stunning lady behind the irreverently monomaniac website. Now the story becomes a tale of the man's voice behind a woman's garb. Sure, Ben Franklin did it. Voltaire partook in his day. But as one Liberty Belle writes It's lonely at the top for the lady (libertarian) blogger. The whole admission was self-propelled into a New Yorker piece, ensuring at least 15 more minutes.

There seem to be fewer female voices in the media overall, though this is changing day by day, especially within the blogosphere. Though I enjoy all political derision, I admit I had some distaste with the scathing attack on Miers because she was a woman. She didn't need to be protected, but she was first off a sorry case in point, and too easy a target. Second, the personalized and feminized cheap cuts drained the dead-on punch of criticizing her irrelevant resume, complicated loyalty to the administration, etc. But now, the issue of sex/gender seems more acute. (In addition, nominee duo, Alito is now revealed as an effective pro-lifer in former memos.)

O'Connor is gone. Miers was a mediocre replacement. One of my favorite anti-Miers bloggers is revealed as an imposter woman. And O'Connor's chair may now possibly move to a man unfavorable to Roe v. Wade.

Now a new book by a Clinton-club insider makes the case for Hillary Clinton, the best bet for the first woman president since Geena David took over the West Wing. (A review is promised.)

My preference for feminists veers towards Senator Clinton, if I had to choose a model. But then, she's evolved into a public relation manager's dream come true: modeled from the unruly clay of the early Clinton presidency, burnished by strife as an innocent caught in scandal, reduced to the fiery sharp element of Hillary Rodham whose early (pre-Bill) years glow with brilliant accomplishments.

I have no doubt the refurbished Hillary is a genuine model. (The only thing that ever seemed unnatural for her was playing second-fiddle to the executive leader of the free world.) And yet, the very exceptional character of heroines and heroes makes them difficult prototypes to model. Politicians may obsess over swing-voting soccer moms like hanging chads, but the democracy is so far removed from the demos, politicians are better positioned to entertain viewers with scandal than serve as civic roles-models. (If you buy that non-controversial assertion, hold your breath.) Yet, an ever more challenging fit is young comedian Sarah Silverman.

Witty, lovely, hip and an under-dog starlet, Silverman is not fit company to bring home. Her dirty mouth and degenerate humor are famously cited as the most disturbing and outrageous passage in the wildly disguising old-school joke, comme movie, The Aristocrats. Pressing with the pack of hype on Silverman's new movie, Jesus is Magic, Slate offers an exceedingly elegant, eloquent and accurate detail of Silverman's nuanced and &*$^%_)@-outrageous humor. She is fluent in disorienting the accultured individual. I'd never seen her before The Aristocrats, but she was the most memorable scene after a full 89-minutes of the most famous queue of Hollywood funny faces possibly ever assembled into one documentary. She was chilling. I was frightened, as the Slate article predicted, because she was so effective in making me smile but disabling my laughter. She is probably the most despicable, foul-mouthed, unrepresentative specimen of female I've ever witnessed in life or screen (well, maybe second to Emelda Marcos).

But Silverman's uber post-modern persona--upending traditional feminism's politically-correct weening and throwing any-and-all social restraints to the wind--may just be the feminism of the future. American feminism is already just a silicone bag short of deflation. Few honor the founding mothers of modern, and recent, gains in women's rights. (Who is Betty Friedan, again?) Post-modern women have reclaimed Playboy and erotica. "Why not gender violence and coquettish navite?" Silverman seems to ask, feminists have alread salvaged stilettoes and snarky guy-humor after all. Just a thought. In any case, I just wanted to string these leading ladies together, and so I have.

I never thought of achievement. I just did what came along for me to do--the thing that gave me the most pleasure. --Eleanor Roosevelt