Robin Givhan in the WaPo. [1]
There was cleavage on display Wednesday afternoon on C-SPAN2. It belonged to Sen. Hillary Clinton.
She was talking on the Senate floor about the burdensome cost of higher education. She was wearing a rose-colored blazer over a black top. The neckline sat low on her chest and had a subtle V-shape. The cleavage registered after only a quick glance. No scrunch-faced scrutiny was necessary. There wasn’t an unseemly amount of cleavage showing, but there it was. Undeniable.
I am reminded of 2001: [2] (Emph is mine)
As an early admirer of the Clintons who was shocked awake by the 1993 healthcare fiasco and other scandals (see the transcripts of two 1994 CNN “Crossfire” shows, reprinted in “Vamps & Tramps,” where I defended Clinton accuser Paula Jones and argued that Hillary “hides from accountability”), I strongly feel that Hillary has always benefited from a weird residual sexism. Special treatment is still protectively accorded middle-aged heterosexual women by supposedly egalitarian journalists whose brains go soft when Hillary, who’s as butch as they come, turns on her pink estrogen light. It’s the manipulative tyranny of the mother imago.
But Hillary has already paid a high price for her willful blurring of the ethical borderline. Her maiden Senate speech two weeks ago, which had been glowingly projected by starry-eyed telejournalists last fall as sure to draw worldwide attention as her first step toward the presidency, was sparsely attended and largely ignored by both the press and her fellow senators because of boiling controversies over pardons, furniture and flatware after the Clintons’ chaotic decampment from public housing.–Camille Paglia
Same game, different cycle. Do you understand? She’s played this game before. She recognizes that she’s getting some problems (Most recently from the Pentagon on her anti-war nonsense…) so she breaks out the “look at me I’m female” look. Or, as Camille Paglia puts it, she turns on her pink estrogen light to hide from accountability.
BitsBallcap Tip: James Joyner [3], who has a picture. Warning: You may fall asleep.