Powerful men
Neff, LaVonne
expect the crisis to result in a widespread adoption of something resembling the American market economy, however, are mistaken. Western capitalism's intellectual and moral foundations...
...G, 1998, Los Angeles Times Syndicate LaVonne Neff POWERFUL MEN When philandering becomes misogyny O f course, this isn't about sex...
...Very few will turn him down, and virtually nobody will kiss and tell...
...Back in 1964, the year Hillary Rodham graduated from high school and a year after publication of Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique, Jack Jones was crooning to nervous housewives: "Hey, little girl, comb your hair, fix your makeup...
...Well, I for one find sex fascinating, and having been grounded by the flu just when Monica hit the airwaves, I relentlessly watched the alleged scandal unfold...
...In the century-and-a-half since the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo many Westerners have preferred not to see the vast numbers of Hispanics living in what was once part of Mexico or acknowledge their rights as U.S...
...Is that really what it means to be a ma~to be unable to resist attractive women...
...I confess I've been startled to hear countless fastidious people denying any interest in Clinton's sex life (though at parties, after a drink or two, they begin calling him the Unabanger, and worse...
...Though the territorial shift was enormous, the treaty itself was temperate...
...Take a breathtaking ride up the elevator past that glass barrier, right into the inner sanctum of power...
...The moral foundations of East and Southeast Asian civilizations have been religiously based hierarchical political structures and patriarchal social and family structures...
...This is dangerous, just as colonialism was dangerous...
...Look up, women: you can' t miss it...
...The subtext of l'affaire Clinton is that old law of nature: the most powerful male can have all the females he wants...
...She may be powerful in her own right...
...One major complication for the United States was that the Mexican Constitution of 1824 had granted citizenship to the Indians in Mexico...
...I'll agree with the prevailing wisdom on one point: the current scandal is not about sex...
...With enough power, we apparently still believe, a man can have all the women he wants...
...In the end the empires withdrew, but they left a great deal of wreckage, and in some places a legacy of hate...
...If you're young and nubile, he may beckon to you...
...political astuteness was insufficient for Lady Bird Johnson...
...citizens...
...Some will throw themselves at him...
...I don't know how, when, or if women are going to get past the glass ceiling...
...They were presumed to be Americans, at least legally, if they did not leave or register as Mexicans within one year...
...According to one school of thought, men will behave if their wives play a prescribed role to perfection, whether the role be domesticity and maternity or professionalism and assertiveness...
...Western colonialism, in its day, was a moral challenge to Asian civilizations...
...And through it all, the wife smiles graciously and makes excuses...
...If his wife can live with him, why should we care...
...The new Western offensive means no damage...
...If it weren't for those questions of perjury and the electoral mandate, we would certainly not be watching all those prurient commentators, now would we...
...Sex may have been all we thought about in the late sixties, but we're far beyond that now...
...In the West he is unlikely to have a state-supported harem, but he is allowed to keep a wife, a mistress, and any number of sexual servants at his disposal...
...His bright pink rump is planted firmly on the glass ceiling...
...The damage has political consequences...
...If the top baboon can have all the females he wants, it's clear where he's sitting...
...Otherwise the West would not be doing it...
...And are the only possible female responses either to "Stand by Your Man," if you're directly involved, or to argue that adults can do whatever they like sexually, so long as they're otherwise fulfilling their job descriptions...
...Gosh, we're all so grown-up...
...Women--whether single or married, professionals or homemakers--are not tokens of winning, like poker chips, and we demean ourselves when we speak of adultery, sexual compulsiveness, and harassment as peccadilloes...
...Now the attack once again comes from the West...
...These lie behind both the East Asian economic model and Asian economic feudalism...
...She bears his children, speaks for him when he cannot be present, counsels him at Commonweal 7 March 13, 1998 will...
...More recently, in China (and Vietnam, North Korea, and Cambodia), an imported Marxism attempted to destroy inherited moral structures...
...Article IX declared that the Mexicans in the ceded territories "shall be incorporated into the United States of America, and admitted as soon as possible, according to the principles of the Federal Constitution, to the enjoyment of all the rights of citizens of the United States...
...Western capitalism's intellectual and moral foundations have been Western Christianity and Enlightenment liberalism...
...They now are under implicit attack from the West...
...It's about possible obstruction of justice...
...In fact, in California, many people seem to have difficulty admitting that there are more than 8 million Hispanics living among LaVonne Neff is executive book editor at Loyola Press in Chicago...
...Their wives' dazzling beauty did not keep the husbands of Jacqueline Kennedy or Diana, Princess of Wales, from finding extracurricular interests...
...It guaranteed the civil, religious, and property rights of Mexican citizens in the ceded territory...
...This is not because I'm a Clinton-basher...
...It is more likely to happen in our lifetime, however, if we have the courage to say that philandering is misogyny...
...Clinton's sex life is his own business...
...Commonweal 8 March 13, 1998...
...But I am really watching because I am amazed at women's willingness to overlook men's perfidy...
...Did all these women simply make poor choices...
...I voted for him twice, and I hope he is eventually found to be pure as the driven snow...
...For there is also a top female: the wife...
...Coretta Scott King and Kasturbai Gandhi married saints, but both had to endure the elevator that kept delivering fresh women (Gandhi, who presumably was not after power, also claimed not to be after sex: he wanted naked young women in his bed so he could strengthen his character by saying no...
...others will be more subtle...
...You'd better look good when your husband walks in the door, advised Hit Number 14, "Wives and Lovers," because "day after day, there are girls at the office, and men will always be men...
...It's about power...
...Well, one of them might...
...The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ceded nearly one-half of Mexico to the United States--1 million square miles encompassing what are now the states of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Nevada, California, most of Colorado, and part of Wyoming...
...But within the American territories, they were treated, in effect, as foreigners, members of other nations...
...gentle reticence was no safeguard for Mamie Eisenhower...
...Make him feel good and be rewarded with small gifts and better jobs...
...David K. O'Rourke OUR WAR WITH MEXICO Rereading Guadalupe Hidalgo he war between the United States and Mexico ended 150 years ago this past February, but in some sense the struggle has continued by other means...
...Presumably that would have meant that the Native Americans in the ceded territory shared in all the legal protections guaranteed by the treaty...
...Perhaps this idea works with lesser baboons (though it seems hardly fair to blame one person for another's misbehavior), but the top baboon does not generally subscribe to it...
...But it's not about perjury either...
...But it is a war of society and culture, and causes damage...
...What matters is whether he's doing what we elected him to do...
...She certainly shares her husband's glory...
...If men do not behave, it is because their women have somehow failed...
...And she can live above the glass ceiling for life---as long as she does not mind the eager young things getting off and on the elevator...
...That does not seem really understood today...
...I IostiIe actions on their part against Americans or American-owned property were judged to be acts of war...
...It's time to stop making excuses for men who see women as prizes in the power game--playmates, not players...
...In the meantime, they shall be maintained and protected in the enjoyment of their liberty and property, and the civil rights now vested in them according to the Mexican laws...
...We all do--especially when we say that allegations of sexual misconduct are relatively unimportant, as long as the alleged perpetrator tells the truth about them...
...Afterward, as you fly past your plainer colleagues on your way to the basement, console yourself: at least you have seen the view from the top baboon's penthouse, while they--with all their integrity and hard work and brains--will never get past the barrier...
...The West's drive toward globalization demands elimination of "backward," "inward-looking," "protectionist" structures in other societies, so as to incorporate the members of those societies into the Western-dominated global economy as consumers and produce r s - t o the West's advantage, obviously...
...Who allows him to do this...
...Brilliance did not protect Eleanor Roosevelt from the other woman...
...This scandal is also about self-respect...
...Colonialism undermined and sometimes destroyed the moral underpinnings of colonized peoples, producing violent reactions...
Vol. 125 • March 1998 • No. 5
