domestic disturbances

Judith Warner, the author of Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety and Hillary Clinton: The Inside Story, has a New York Times blog called Domestic Disturbances.* Since the end of February, Warner had been on book leave from the blog, but luckily, as of Friday, she's back! Domestic Disturbances only gets updated once a week, on Fridays, but it's really lovely and thought-provoking to read... especially for women; I imagine men wouldn't quite get it in the same way.

This past Friday her post was about Hillary Clinton's loss and Sex and the City. Before I quote her, let me make clear that I do really enjoy Sex and the City. I liked the movie a lot - for the clothes, largely, but also just to get a little further in the story. (I was pretty addicted to the show when it was on.) Anyway, though, here's a taste of what she says:

Is it a coincidence that the bubbling idiocy of “Sex and the City,” the movie, exploded upon the cultural scene at the exact same time that Hillary Clinton’s candidacy imploded?

Literally, of course, it is. Figuratively, I’m not so sure.

And before I set off an avalanche of e-mails explaining why Hillary deserved to lose, I want to make one point clear: I am talking here not about the outcome of her candidacy – mistakes were made, and she faced a formidable opponent in Barack Obama – but rather about the climate in which her campaign was conducted. The zeitgeist in which Hillary floundered and “Sex” is now flourishing.

Give it a look.

Anyway, I know there are a lot of people with a lot of theories as to why the Clinton campaign didn't work out. In truth, I always kind of knew it wouldn't, though I'm very proud to have seen Hillary get as far as she did (and I did vote for her in the Ohio primary). In a way, the Clinton-Obama race reminded me of the battle between Nicolas Sarkozy and Ségolène Royal for the French presidency last year: I really wanted her to win, but knew that in the end, he would.

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p.s. Check out Molly's delish-looking baked pasta.
*My favorite post of hers on this blog is called Memory Refill. It's a really amusing and warm exploration of Warner's relationship with coffee. And actually, her follow-up post the next week isn't bad either. It's kind of funny, because it describes her husband Max's fears, when she was writing it, that the coffee post "would read like the worst sort of foodie feature ('The smell. The drip. The sound of grinding beans');" luckily it doesn't read that way at all.