Like everybody else, I go to the grocery. Like everybody else, when waiting to check out I can't help but stare at the tabloids racked above the rubber runway where your eggs, potato chips and beer wait until the clerk passes them through the bar code reader. On the tab covers, Hollywood is still Gomorrah. Now the headlines also roar that Hillary Clinton is a lesbian. Britain, Israel and India have all been led by women.
Women lead national political parties in Germany, France, Mexico, New Zealand, even Slovakia.
Yet somehow the American woman who most represents women wielding power unapologetically has to be smeared as somehow not normal. Powell was the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, somebody who turned every Republican stereotype on its head. But somebody was going to hate him because he was black. His wife was afraid they'd hate him enough to shoot him, the way they shot JFK, so Powell backed out. You will remember that JFK's candidacy got the same stares as Lieberman's appearance on the ticket with Al Gore.