What Do Women Want? Read Free Page B

so-called prominent women had been drinking for an hour or more and were afraid to detour to the toilet for fear of missing the annunciation. Eventually there was a palpable stir in the room. “The first lady is coming!” someone said—and the words were echoed on all sides of the now sardinized space. Would she come from the east or the west? (The room had two entrances, and the faithful were gathered around both.) Rumors flew.
    “She’ll be coming in there !” said a source. “No— there !” said another. And finally Hillary and Tipper were glimpsed, surrounded by ladies-in-waiting. And there we all were—ladies-in-waiting ourselves. But our waiting appeared to be over at last. We jostled forward for a better view.
    Cheers, whistles, catcalls. Tipper Gore and Hillary Rodham Clinton climbed the raised speakers’ platform, while a factotum checked the mike. Tipper Gore was fulsomely introduced over the roar of the crowd. She seemed as warm and fuzzy as Hillary Clinton seemed tense and chilly. With her plump blond, American good looks, Tipper is everyone’s Girl Scout den mother, everyone’s first-grade teacher, everyone’s favorite sister-in-law. She is so normal-as-blueberry-pie and corny-as-Kansas-in-August that she’s a hard act to follow. After a short Tipperish speech, full of thanks for the organizers and praise for the first lady, Hillary came on.
    It’s impossible to watch Hillary Clinton work an audience without being aware of the sheer effort she puts into everything she does. I admire effort. But in politics, effortlessness, a sense of sprezzatura (that charming Italian word for the art of making the difficult look easy) is more valuable. Hillary spoke well; she always speaks well. She always says things I thoroughly agree with. But in those days she had trouble seeming warm. She was to become warmer and warmer as she grew more powerful—an understandable transformation. Even then, she turned the audience on with references to all their political heroines—the suffragists and Eleanor Roosevelt, in particular—and she convinced us of her erudition and her staunch feminism. But she did not then convince us of her everydayness, which was the gift Tipper Gore so abundantly possessed. Hillary Rodham Clinton was always in control.
    After her speech, Hillary was led to meet her adoring acolytes, of whom I was one. The Hillary handlers hustled us all into a receiving line behind a rope, and those who had prearranged audiences were told exactly where in line to wait. Secret Service men briskly patrolled the rope lest one of the pilgrims get too close. Hillary went along the “rope line” briefed by her personal assistant and her press secretary about the identity of each of the faithful. Waiting for her, I felt like an idiot. In my time I have hung out with plenty of contemporary icons: Nobel laureates, rock stars more famous than Jesus, movie idols who can’t walk unmolested in the streets, politicians in and out of high office. But waiting for Hillary, I felt diminished. What I had wanted was to know the woman behind the mask. That, after all, is my specialty. And here I was being given only a brief glance at the mask—gleaming with many coats of lacquer. I was determined to use even this brief audience as best I could, but the glazed eyes, the fixed smile, the rather too firm handshake, could only remind me of myself in zombie mode in the midst of a twenty-five-city book tour.
    What could I say? I admire you so? I need more time with you? I empathize with all the shit you’re taking? I said all that and more as we clasped hands and I used the trick so often used on me by fans: I would not let her hand go.
    “Call the White House to set up more time,” she said, turning to her drudge, who most certainly heard. And then she was gone, shaking the tiny hand of a small African-American girl, greeting a fund-raiser here, a prominent woman there—down the line toward her destiny, beginning with the big