Face It

Whether you were for or against Hillary Clinton when she ran for the Democratic nomination, we think this anecdote below should make you angry.

After Matt Drudge put an unflattering picture of Clinton on his web site, Rush Limbaugh commented about it on air. “So the question is this,” the radio personality said. “Will this country want to actually watch a woman get older before their [sic] eyes on a daily basis?”

The only other candidate whose age seemed to evoke any notice is, of course, John McCain, who, had he won would have been 72 when entering the White House. In a six-page cover story about his candidacy in Time Magazine, only a couple of sentences were devoted to discussing his age—and, as an inseparable issue, his health—and the paragraph ended by quoting McClain making light of those “liabilities.” Others, of course, considered McCain’s age to be a more serious concern, one that perhaps should have excluded him from running altogether. Running the same week as the Time story was Anna Quindlen’s essay in Newsweek called “How Old is Too Old?” She took serious issue with McCain’s presumption that being the oldest person ever to begin a Presidency was immaterial. True, she began the essay on on a light note, unscientifically theorizing that the presidency ages a person in dog years, “[based] on before-and-after photographs of the occupants of the Oval Office.”

But we didn’t hear Quindlen or anyone else suggesting that the citizens of the U.S. would find it distasteful (as Rumbaugh implies) watching a man get older. While their constituents may have objected to the policies of Margaret Thatcher or Golda Meier, do you think their looks were cause for comment? Is Limbaugh’s point of view one you think that others share? Is this an American thing? And why? We’d like to hear your thoughts. –Dr. Vivian