The 2008 presidential election candidates

It is from Newsmax.com so it is probably not even true.

ci

Don't bite.

First, there's no appropriate perspective. Part of the attempt here is to portray Hillary as wasting excessive monies on appearance. The hope of whoever is pushing this is that middle class people will compare such expenses Hillary has (assuming the figures are true) to what those middle class families have available for same. But the proper comparison would be what Bush spends on scene-setting (what does it cost to re-route a carrier or to clear and secure and light a town square in New Orleans?) or what Condi Rice spends on hair, etc.

Second, and much more pernicious, is the attempt to equate Hillary with frivolous, silly, flighty and ineffectual femininity. Watch this one. This is a key element in the American Republican framing of all issues. It attempts (however consciously) to portray the two parties in opposing sets of characteristics based on a really cliched notion of gender:

male = strong, resolute, no nonsense, militaristic, brave, practical etc
female = weak, can't decide, hysterical, frivolous, cowardly, intellectual, etc

Look at some of the words/notions which they used to characterize Kerry vs Bush:

Bush...sleeves rolled up on a ranch
Kerry...skiing...an effete elitist sport for rich sissies, probably a French ski resort where there would be lots of rose-in-lapel homosexual deconstructionists hanging about, etc.

Don't bite.

blatham, Thanks for the head's up; I'm still a naive old man.