An Inclusive Litany

2/14/94

From the SF Weekly, December 29, 1993. The "SF," by the way, stands for "San Francisco":
I guess everyone's begun to realize a simple truth: It's dangerous at the top of the food chain. As the economy freezes over and the level of affluence goes down and the bitter social shoreline is exposed, certain highly specialized creatures are threatened with extinction.

The most important cultural event of 1993 provides a perfect illustration of this. The event, of course, is the symbolic consummation, the Passion, in a biblical sense, of Michael Jackson. I believe it was David Spade's rude character on "Saturday Night Live" who first made the Jackson-as-foodstuff concept explicit. "Put a fork in yourself, Michael," he said. "You're done." Jackson, it now becomes obvious, was being fattened for sacrifice over a period of many years, and now it is time for the feast. His body, like that of any self-respecting sacrificial victim, has been ritually altered, and his personality has transcended the boundaries between male and female. Heck, he may even be a virgin. Into the volcano he goes!

[More from the same source...]

It seems that Hillary consciously makes herself a moving target, while previous presidential wives often projected a simpler identity. In her straitlaced and mainstream way, she embraces gender-bending with all the enthusiasm of a cowboy-boots-and-lipstick grrrl. She chooses, very deliberately, to create an image that blends traditional markers of masculinity (toughness, immersion in public policy) with the most conventional signs of femininity (nurturance, concern with home and hearth). Her melange of butch and femme may be more muted than that of your basic gender radical—and most of the femme effects come off as calculated political moves—but it draws on a similar spirit of mix-and-match role-playing. Spy once featured a doctored image of Hillary-as-dominatrix on its cover, but you can be sure that if S/M were her thing, our First Lady would be an enthusiastic "switch," delighted equally in the top and bottom roles.

[Ed.: Questioning Hillary Clinton's sexual identity might qualify as hate speech on any other occasion.]