Coretta and Hilary, Not Yet Free
Salon.com
Both women got under men's skins in a peculiar way. And sadly, both of their legacies are likely to be marred by the actions of their husbands.
By Diane McWhorter
Feb. 10, 2006 As Hillary Rodham Clinton took the pulpit next to her husband at Tuesday's funeral extravaganza for Coretta Scott King, I couldn't help thinking that the Clintons' bittersweet eulogies described not so much the recently departed "first lady of the U.S. civil rights movement" (Reuters) as the up-and-running former first lady herself. First there was Bill Clinton's slightly out-of-left-field reminder that Coretta King was an actual woman, "not a symbol, a real woman who lived and breathed and got angry and got hurt and had dreams and disappointments." And then Sen. Clinton took the microphone to speculate on the trepidation of a go-getting young Coretta as she embarked on marriage to a man of destiny. "'What am I getting myself into?'" the senator imagined the bride asking herself.
What hurt and anger and disappointment indeed! This hint of buried narrative was a tantalizing contrast to the somewhat hollow tributes to Coretta Scott King in the days since her death on Jan. 31. For there is an elephant in the room, acknowledged in passing if at all, and it is one that Sen. Clinton has long trained herself to ignore. Both of these women entered the public arena as wives, only to endure the sexual brinkmanship of their charismatic husbands, so brazenly compulsive that the men would not curb it even when it jeopardized their professional effectiveness and their historic missions along with their marriages. And for the two wives -- ambitious, talented women who took flak for wearing their birth names as badges of independence -- there was extra humiliation in such spectacular "failure" at a marital role that they had assumed ambivalently, subordinating their own dreams to their husbands'.
More: http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2006/02/10/coretta_king/
Both women got under men's skins in a peculiar way. And sadly, both of their legacies are likely to be marred by the actions of their husbands.
By Diane McWhorter
Feb. 10, 2006 As Hillary Rodham Clinton took the pulpit next to her husband at Tuesday's funeral extravaganza for Coretta Scott King, I couldn't help thinking that the Clintons' bittersweet eulogies described not so much the recently departed "first lady of the U.S. civil rights movement" (Reuters) as the up-and-running former first lady herself. First there was Bill Clinton's slightly out-of-left-field reminder that Coretta King was an actual woman, "not a symbol, a real woman who lived and breathed and got angry and got hurt and had dreams and disappointments." And then Sen. Clinton took the microphone to speculate on the trepidation of a go-getting young Coretta as she embarked on marriage to a man of destiny. "'What am I getting myself into?'" the senator imagined the bride asking herself.
What hurt and anger and disappointment indeed! This hint of buried narrative was a tantalizing contrast to the somewhat hollow tributes to Coretta Scott King in the days since her death on Jan. 31. For there is an elephant in the room, acknowledged in passing if at all, and it is one that Sen. Clinton has long trained herself to ignore. Both of these women entered the public arena as wives, only to endure the sexual brinkmanship of their charismatic husbands, so brazenly compulsive that the men would not curb it even when it jeopardized their professional effectiveness and their historic missions along with their marriages. And for the two wives -- ambitious, talented women who took flak for wearing their birth names as badges of independence -- there was extra humiliation in such spectacular "failure" at a marital role that they had assumed ambivalently, subordinating their own dreams to their husbands'.
More: http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2006/02/10/coretta_king/
posted by Unknown | 7:31 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home