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Al Gore the bully? Could it be?
Adele Ferguson
Political Columnist |
Will American women really vote for boring, lying Al Gore because they swooned over his “suck-face” with Tipper at the Democratic national convention to prove he was as sexy as she claims? Were they really that turned on?
Women are funny.
In 1976, they voted in droves for a brilliant but eccentric zoology professor to become the first woman governor of Washington state, and in 1980, they turned her out for embarrassing them. And that’s women as a group.
When I spoke to the Bellevue Women’s Republican Club shortly after Dixy Lee Ray’s election, someone asked how she got elected over the much better known and experienced King County Executive John Spellman.
You did it, I said. You women here, a great many of you, voted for her even though she was a Democrat because you wanted to elect a woman governor and she fit the bill. A no-nonsense, old maid school teacher who had chaired the Atomic Energy Commission and wasn’t the least bit shy about telling the alarmists about global warming and ozone depletion that they were nuts.
I could tell by their expressions that I was right.
When women voters realized that being outspoken has its drawbacks, such as when Dixy told a legislator his constituents could go to hell, they un-elected her, in the primary yet. Men probably weren’t as offended.
Dumping of Dixy actually hurt women candidates for a few years because voters were afraid to be burned again, but along came the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill debacle where Senate Judiciary Committee male members so ticked off women over their cavalier treatment of Miss Hill that women nationwide were roused to run for the Senate just to stick it in the eye of those senators.
In addition, in this state, in 1992, Sen. Brock Adams retired, following harassment accusations of a young woman. The first Democrat to step forward was state Sen. Patty Murray, the “mom in tennis shoes,” which characterized her perfectly. Her state Senate history consisted chiefly of repeating comments made to her by young son Randy and daughter Sara. Women voters didn’t care about her caliber as a candidate, they wanted a woman senator, any woman, so they sent her.
Six years later, even though Sen. Murray regularly made listings of the dimmest bulbs in the Congress, she was re-elected because her opponent was another woman but a member of the Republican right wing God Squad, Linda Smith, demonized as dangerous kooks..
Gov. Mike Lowry went the Brock Adams route in bowing out in 1996 because women were outraged over accusations by a woman staffer of sexual harassment. I don’t think they’ve put that behind them enough to elect him lands commissioner this fall.
Women don’t forgive and forget that easily. I still say the reason they overlooked Clinton’s Monica episode was because, while many men are turned on by oral sex, most women are not. Obviously, Hillary is not, so Clinton only enhanced his standing with women by going to a stranger for satisfaction. Good guy. Respecting the feelings and wishes of his wife.
As for Al Gore’s new tender image, I prefer to judge him by what Ward Connerly, the anti-affirmative action activist, said about him in his book, “Creating Equal.” When he met with Clinton and Gore a couple of years ago, Clinton was friendly but Gore was not. On leaving, Connerly said, Gore took his hand, “and instead of shaking it, he ground my palm and fingers in his grip hard as he could. I felt the cartilage compress and almost cried out in pain. I looked at the vice president and he stared back at me with a slight smile as we walked out.”
There may be an Al Gore we haven’t seen yet. Al Gore the bully.
(Editor’s Note: Adele Ferguson can be reached at P.O. Box 69, Hansville, WA., 98340.) |
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