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June 2000

The Hillary Trap By Laura Ingraham Hyperion Click on the title to buy the book

Laura Ingraham is a beautiful, brainy blonde, who at 34 has her own television show and no end of high-profile escorts. But she is not happy. In fact, she is hopping mad. Hillary Clinton makes her crazy. Like several other conservative women, she has taken pen in hand hoping to drive it like a stake through the First Lady's heart.

Laura Ingraham doesn't know Hillary Rodham Clinton. She doesn't judge her as a Methodist or a human being. She says her religion is between her and God, and she relents enough in an epilogue to say that "in many ways she must be a good person." But she sees her as a one-woman social crime wave, at least partially responsible for "schools that don't teach ... or reinforce values parents try to teach at home; a workplace constricted by government edicts ... [that] end up hurting women ... for a permissive sexual culture ... " and, oh yes, a rise in goddess worship and witchcraft.

Ingraham's thesis, that the First Lady is really a faux feminist, is hardly original, and she restates it many times. This one, which occurs early, gives the flavor: "I wondered how a woman so impeccably educated and credentialed and prepared for independence could have made such a devil's bargain. Was this the bargain of feminism? Were women now to submit to any indignity, even a sham marriage, for access to power, celebrity, and fame?"

She sounds the same note again on page 142: "She's either a dupe who loves her man so much she's willing to sacrifice all dignity for his sake, or a Machiavellian who craves power so much she'll do anything to keep it."

Her point is that as a role model Hillary is an outrage: "an old-fashioned doormat," "clinging to her abuser," a betrayed wife who "has made the country safe for infidelity" and tries to trap her sisters into the kind of victimhood she claims for herself.

You can tell from the excerpts that Ingraham is a vehement writer and also something of a nag. She concedes that the women's movement broke down barriers in education, business, and the professions. She got a splendid public school education in Glastonbury, Conn., she attended Dartmouth on scholarship and the University of Virginia Law School. She has had no trouble making her way through the jungles of television journalism. But don't talk to her about sisterhood. She posed in a leopard miniskirt for a cover of the New York Times Magazine and liberated women failed to defend her right to choose her clothes. She seems baffled by their criticism. What had she done wrong?

Trashing Hillary can be well paid work. Peggy Noonan, Reagan's elegant speechwriter, is on the best-seller list. Will Laura Ingraham follow her? Maybe New York voters are on the lookout for another how-to-hate-Hillary manual, so they can measure her against her rival for the New York Senate seat, and focus on the future: If she wins in New York, she may be on her way back to the White House.

The Clinton's marriage, which so infuriates Ingraham, who is not married but reveres the institution, may not be a key issue. The Rudy-Donna union, and separation, almost makes Hillary and Bill look like Ozzie and Harriet.

Readers looking for titillating bits about Hillary's private life will find nothing here. Ingraham is attacking her public record: her eager alliance with the teacher unions, who, according to Ingraham, are too busy dodging charges of racism, sexism, and elitism to give our children the best education possible; or Hillary's ceaseless efforts to persuade women that they are defenseless without the help of "educrats," government counsel on "parenting," and federally-provided day care.

Ingraham makes her points with vehemence and plenty of statistics. She rages that concern for women's health issues, the glass ceiling, and equal pay are exaggerated by Hillary and her friends. Many may agree with her about the dumbing-down of public schools, the fatuous legislation that does such things as forbid discrimination against parents in hiring practices. But while reading about Hillary's many traps, readers may feel trapped themselves and begin to think longingly of the taming of the shrew at the word-processor.

Where she lost me was in her impassioned chapter on guns. Laura Ingraham was a "proud" gun-owner until she settled in "the people's Republic of the District of Columbia," which has strict gun laws. She exults over the number of states coming around to concealed carrying of guns. She glorifies women who reject "the sexist, retrograde claptrap" about the dangers of women with guns. One paragraph illustrates her pistol-whipping prose: "Guns are not the only way for a woman to protect herself. If she can fend off a predator with a front kick to the groin or use her car keys to gouge out his eyes ..."

Laura Ingraham has carpet-bombed Hillary, no question about it. I think she has also shot herself in the foot, the way angry people sometimes do.