The XX Factor: Slate women blog about politics, etc...

Hillary Clinton: Battling! Fighting! Soldiering!

We have reached the moment of the endless military metaphor—the image of one lone warrior steeling herself against the tsunami of enemy forces—which, as any Hillary watcher knows, marks the beginning of the end. Yesterday, in the front-page New York Times story about Hillary and the gender wars, Jodi Kantor let on that Hillary had declined to be interviewed earlier about gender dynamics in the race because it would be "impossible for her to address in a frank way." This implied some deeper, darker truth she would share with the American public when the time was right. Yesterday, in Maysville, Ky., she broke her silence. Instead of letting Ferraro speak for her, Hillary said it herself: "It's been deeply offensive to millions of women"—"It" being the "sexist" pundits, the lewd t-shirts, the "Iron my shirt" moron (who turned out to be the  best thing that's happened to Hillary). The sexism is "more respectable," "more accepted," than, say, other unmentioned "isms," she went on, and then on again: The press shrugs at the "incredible vitriol" engendered by the "misogynists."

Ah, bitter, contented Hillary. We have finally come back around to where we started. After the weeping Hillary, the gun-toting Hillary, the race baiting Hillary, now we finally have a Hillary we recognize. Back in the Clinton years, Joe Klein used to write how Hillary was all purposeful and aglow when her husband was discovered to be cheating, because it restored her to the central, aggrieved position where she was most herself. This suggests that for the next 24 hours, or perhaps two weeks, we will get the very best of Hillary: alive, comfortable, warm and toasty and angry all at the same time. She will be our Dolly Parton, our Oprah, our Artemis, our Thelma and Louise: the "avenging angel," as Kantor put it, for millions of American women who have been wronged in some way. We, the women of the press, will be held to feel guilty, responsible, nostalgic, elitist. We will somehow have to explain ourselves. Anyone want to go first?