An Inclusive Litany

4/4/94

The Village Voice, January 25, 1994:
I don't believe for a second that Clinton's been a better or worse president because he's femme—only that he's been cruelly and suggestively skewered because he is more like a woman than not. When he stands next to his vaguely butch, breadwinning wife, Clinton looks less power-hungry than accessible, mortal. Taken together, the Clintons embody the changing nature of politics, sexual and otherwise. Taken alone, Clinton looks more like people I care for than people I fear. Ultimately that is the shock of this new presidency. Clinton incarnates a generation of men who came of age under feminism and the civil rights movement, men who don't always wear privilege with ease. Like his, their hunger isn't reducible to pure need, pure greed. When I look at Clinton, the memory of Reagan and Bush's toxic paternalism and appetite for destruction fades. Bill Clinton looks more like the future, as uncertain as that seems.