Is Carl Bernstein a Sexist?
It's been decades since I read Nora Ephron's Heartburn, her novel based on the crumbling of her marriage to Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein, so I don't have a ready answer as to whether Bernstein is a sexist. But judging from his new book on Hillary Clinton, I wouldn't be surprised.
Check out these passages from the book:
“The prospect that she could not bear a child, which seemed increasingly likely in the first two years of her marriage--and which she probably feared even earlier—could have been as frightening to her as anything she might conjure….Hillary suffered from a condition called endometriosis, which often makes conception difficult, can cause infertility, and frequently results in extreme pain during and after intercourse.’” (P. 149-50)
“‘She’s not a heavy-duty intellectual. He’s much brighter than she is. She’s bright, but she’s not very bright…” (p. 275).
“Her ankles were thick.” (p. 32)
“‘At first, she didn’t wear stockings….Her hair was friend into an Orphan Annie perm….There wasn’t one…feminine thing about her.’” (p. 130)
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“Hillary’s weight was a regular topic of conversation, spurred by her inability to shed the few pounds that would have made her more attractive.” (p.130)
“Many colleagues of the Clintons had concluded that Hillary was not as intrinsically bright as her husband.” (p. 274)
“[S]he was rarely, if ever, deferential. It had never been her style nor would it ever be.” (p. 130).
“‘She had an opinion on everything.…Issues. People. Where Bill was going to speak. I mean everything.’” (p. 165)
“[S]he was no longer wearing her trademark headbands…she had ‘zipped her lip’ and now gazed lovingly and silently at her husband from a wifely vantage point.” (p. 208).
“No first lady had ever addressed a president’s cabinet and staff with such unvarnished political candor.” (p. 268)
“Sometimes Hillary sounded like the national nanny.” (p. 447)
“In both her talking and her written voice there is a kind of grown-up Girl Scout-speak….It Takes a Village is often banal.” (p. 448)
“Some aspects of motherhood did not come easily, including breastfeeding.” (p. 152)
“Hillary had been understandably preoccupied by her pregnancy and then the care of their baby, born two months in to his governorship, when he could have greatly benefited from her help.” (p. 155)
“Six weeks after giving birth, Hillary went to Memphis and left Chelsea.” (p. 153)
“…Hillary in her Coke-bottle glasses of the moment, wearing striped bell-bottom trousers, her hair a mangy tangle.” (p. 59)
“It had been a bravura performance. She had looked pretty in pink.” Pp. 381-82 (emphasis in original)
“Hillary devolved into ‘kind of the classic bitchy wife…not quite putting her hand on her hip and finger-wagging at him, but practically…’” (p. 27)
“The décor” of their house in Hillcrest was a “testament to Hillary’s lack of domesticity.” (p. 162)
“‘Give me a break, when’s the last time she took a casserole to a grieving friend?’” (p. 449)
“Over the next year, Bateson and ... Houston ...struggled to get the first lady onto a new, more ‘positive’ track and off her ‘negative’ woman-warrior path.” (p. 414)
This is a book we're supposed to take seriously? Give me a break.
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