Cry Me A River, Barbra.

Cry Me a River, Barbra.

A reply to Barbra Streisand's piece, published in The Huffington Post, entitled "The Sexism in American Politics.

I am not quite old enough to remember the career of Ms. Barbra Streisand. I’m told it was once rather impressive; she boasts a resume that glitters with the accumulated stardust of decades.

I’m sure she has achieved much that is worthy of respect. Gandhi probably did not say, of Western civilization, “I think it would be a good idea,” but one would be justified in saying the same of meritocracy. It is more concept than truth. Still, success is success and sustained success is a feat of its own.

But it is an unfortunate foible of our over-the-counter culture that a placement on the Billboard Top 100 grants, as an unofficial award, a platform from which celebrity may pronounce and pontificate and hold court in the real world; an arena from which celebrities are by definition removed.

So it is that I have long been aware of Ms Streisand not as a singer and an actress but in her role as a moonlighting political activist; a friend and supporter of the Clintons and a donor to their Foundation.

All three roles were merged in a paltry and patronizing piece in the Huffington Post, penned by Ms. Streisand, under the title The Sexism in American Politics.

The argument, for those who’ve hitherto avoided exposure to it, can be fairly summarised as follows: Hillary Clinton is disliked, sometimes viscerally so, because her critics are sexist and cannot stomach the thought of a woman having power.

To quote Ms. Streisand directly: “There is no one in this country who would deny the competence, intellect, stamina, warmth and courage of Hillary Rodham Clinton... But the criticism of Hillary Clinton has again demonstrated that the strong, competent woman is still a threatening figure in our culture.”

That is a challenge I intend to meet in due course. But first: I have never found this excuse to be anything other than facetious. If I were a woman, living in the United States, I think I would be fed up with the likes of Streisand, and the odious Madeleine Albright, speaking at me in this tone of voice.  (Hillary Clinton’s dire performance amongst millennial women in particular suggests that I would not be alone.) I think I would be fed up with being told that policy and record and character are to be considered irrelevant by presumption of merit earned and that Ms. Clinton deserves my vote because we happen share a gender.

As it is, I am a man living in the United Kingdom. But I am morally certain that my opposition to the likely Democratic nominee stems from something a little more substantive than my feelings toward, shall we say, the female form and visage.

I am quite willing to concede the broader, non-specific point about sexism in political discourse, but I was surprised at the relatively innocuous nature of the examples cited by Streisand.

“When MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough tweeted she should, “Smile. You just had a big night,” should we have been surprised? Hillary Clinton has a great smile and smiles often. So does Barack Obama. So does Bill Clinton. But no one would tell those two men to smile.”

This strikes me as ill-treatment of an important issue. There are tropes and visualizations and dog-whistle innuendos reserved exclusively for women in public life, to be sure. Donald Trump’s spat with Megyn Kelly is perhaps the most prominent case (though Ms. Streisand would have served her own purposes better had she cited his far more overt and reprehensible response to Clinton’s late return to the ABC debate stage in December). But to claim that something so innocuous as an injunction to smile ranks amongst the worst cases of sexism in American life is to invite the charge of over-sensitivity. Facile it may be, but it is no more severe or degrading than Rubio’s ‘small hands’ quip against Trump, or the talk of John McCain’s senility in ’08, or Hillary Clinton’s own suggestion (in the same campaign year) that Barack Obama was too black to be president.

But these remarks, when made about or against Clinton, are evidence of what Streisand believes to be “a pernicious double standard” to which Ms. Clinton alone is subject. That may or may not be true, but if Streisand believes that making women the subject of special standards is a bad thing then perhaps she will consider advising her friend to avoid playing to that same disparity in future. For it is not just Clinton’s allegedly sexist critics who define her candidacy in terms of gender but also Clinton herself: it was Clinton, not her critics, who deemed her womanhood to be more important than policy during ABC’s Las Vegas debate.

“How,” asked Anderson Cooper, “would you not be a third term of President Obama?”

“Well,” Clinton replied, grinning with arms outspread and a confident twinkle in the eye, “I think that’s pretty obvious.” Whoops and cheers all around the room for that remark. Clinton went on to say that “Being the first woman president would be quite a change from the presidents we’ve had up until this point, including President Obama.”

Clinton is no stranger to this sort of pandering to identity over policy and substance. Let no one claim she is not a quick and studious learner: prolonged proximity to loathsome manipulators like Dick Morris, friend of both Bill and Hillary and an infamous race-baiter who exploited the identity-related fears of the white working class during the first Clinton administration, has surely rubbed off. 

But either women are different, and thus subject to different standards, or they are not. Either Ms. Streisand believes gender disparity to be a bad thing (in which case she disagrees with the candidate she is supporting) or she does not. I should like to know which view she intends to adopt.

If identity is to be treated as the first of all issues then I should also like to ask Ms. Streisand how it is that she finds herself defending someone who both defended and enabled what we might charitably call the imposition – on Juanita Broaddrick, Kathleen Willey, Monica Lewinsky and others - of Bill Clinton’s services to women. If we are permitted indignation by association, I should like to know how she can support a candidate who supported DOMA and Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and who claimed that the Reagans were good for LGBT citizens. If identity is important, I should like to know how Ms. Streisand can support a candidate who played the race card against Barrack Obama and whose husband, not to mention many of her associates and employees and advisors, is a Dixiecrat.

If, on the other hand, Ms. Clinton is to be judged by the same standards as her peers and on, as Streisand herself puts it, “the substance of what a candidate has to offer: his/her policies, his/her agenda, his/her experience, knowledge and demeanor in dealing with world leaders,” then surely she cannot complain about the sexism of Clinton’s critics when they point out her compromising connections to Wall Street, when they point to her botched healthcare reforms (and the fact that hundreds if not thousands of lives in Bosnia were spent on securing it coverage in the American media); when they question her links to Big Pharma and Big Oil; when they look into the murky world of her financiers and tremble with rage, and when they question her conduct and competency in the office of Secretary of State and conclude that her oft vaunted experience is a fortress built on sand. Surely Ms. Streisand would then understand our non-sexist aversion to any candidate on good terms with Henry Kissinger, would then appreciate our doubts about Ms. Clinton’s principles given that she behaves as though she has none, would then share our ire at a candidate who cynically exploits identity for personal gain.

Streisand says “We should stop being afraid of women, and meet them on a level playing field without resorting to name calling and sexist condescension.”  Rest assured: We are more than happy to oblige. But Ms. Streisand should be aware that a level playing field does not free her preferred candidate from criticism. Far from it.