Two months ago, the Washington Post decided it was an amusing lark to write about how women aren't very smart. Now, WaPo reporter Ian Shapira delivers another star turn in today's portrait of Chelsea Clinton, a piece replete with all the adjectives of a misogynist cast he could reasonably cram into his 1,800-word piece.
Chief among them is his contention that -- well, Chelsea doesn't sufficiently razzle or dazzle. Why? Here, Shapira recycles the old Hitchens argument: women like Chelsea just aren't very funny. She's humorless, she isn't witty. She's shallow, bland and treacly. Shapira serves up the same adjectives that have dogged her mother with gusto: she's schoolmarmish, "too calculating," her policy beliefs seem insincere. (Since there's nothing like a good-ol' take-down of a Clinton female, he doesn't let his inability to scare up any evidence -- or even plausible anecdotes -- to back his snarks get in his way.)
But it's clear that the real meat of his frustration is the fact that Chelsea has refused, steadily, to give herself over to the press. She doesn't sit for interviews, and as Shapira notes, she's been quick to shoot down questions on the campaign trail about Monica Lewinsky. All of which piques his curiosity -- er, his "reporter's skepticism."
It's not clear what malicious thoughts or activities Shapira -- who seems to fancy himself something of a generational mouthpiece -- thinks might be skulking behind the curtain of Chelsea's reserve. Or which of the many criticisms he levels (too solemn? too goody-goody?) he thinks really matters. Instead, he dawdles and insinuates for pages, stringing the reader along, too entertained by his evident distaste for Chelsea to ever get to a point.--Te-Ping Chen
