ManicDDaily

Maureen Dowd today compared some of the “new” women candidates to the mean girls at school, the ones that painted your locker and made up stories that you were pregnant.

I am lucky not to remember a a big contingent of “mean girls” at my high school.  (The minute that I write this the fear arises that someone from my high school will post a comment saying that the reason I don’t remember the mean girls is because I was one of them.  I really really hope that’s not true.)

My high school, an all-girls’ school, was not a social Shangri-la.  There were girls that were more popular than others, more sophisticated, more cool.  But it was a relatively small school, and during the time I was there (the early 70’s), most of our emnity seemed focus on an external rival–the boys’ school, our brother school, which was only about a block away, but infinitely richer, with more land, buildings, more equipment, and far more edible food.  (Male alumni had money and power, women didn’t.)

The boys’ school, an in-our-face symbol of societal unfairness, not only quelled our internal bickering, but also made us conscious of a certain kind of responsibility.   If we wanted to get to the very same places as those boys across the green, we couldn’t afford to be just as good as they were, we were going to have to be better.

I don’t know if this turned out to be true.  When we first graduated, it was probably harder to progress as a women–to get a coveted place at certain Ivy League institutions, or, let’s say, the Supreme Court.  Later, as things burst open in certain ways, women were probably sought after.

Even so, politics has been a particularly difficult field.  There the narrow range of what is deemed acceptable in the female, and too, the demands of biology and family life have seemed particular obstacles.  Even women that got boosts from spousal connections (e.g. Hilary Clinton and Elizabeth Dole) traditionally felt bound to develop strong policy expertise and a reputation for an extremely solid work ethic.

And then came Sarah Palin, and this current host of female politicians.

Their success seems to illustrate that women have advanced to the point where they are as free as men to be idiotic, mean-spirited, uninformed.

I know I should feel happy.