Kerry the Symbolic Cuckold

Hindrocket at Powerline makes some interesting points about Naomi Wolf's latest piece, an analysis of the "feminist" rhetoric and iconography of the Bush campaign. Wolf argues, among other things, that Teresa Heinz Kerry's retention of her late husband's name (the name of a dead, white Republican, at that) represents a symbolic cuckolding and "unmanning" of Kerry. Okay . . . that's . . . interesting, but in the end it's typical Wolf -- and it's especially typical in its condescension toward suburban mothers:

I am convinced that Michael Deaver is the invisible hand behind the calculated visuals of the Bush campaign—the signature use of deep, majestic backdrops behind the candidate, the use of jewel tones on Laura Bush and other women associated with the administration, the trick of forcing photographers to sit close to the stage so that they must shoot sharply upward, showing the candidate from a heroic angle. By contrast, the Democrats ignore them, losing women, who are simply too busy racing to get school lunches ready and kids out the door to get their impressions about the candidates from Meet the Press.

Bless their hearts, those harried suburban moms are just too busy with school lunches to do much more than unthinkingly absorb the images that each campaign choreographs for their benefit. They're so harried, in fact, that they are apparently still preparing lunches and getting the kids out the door on Sunday morning, when Meet the Press airs. Wolf pats suburban moms on the head, excusing them for being too busy to inform themselves, while at the same time absurdly suggesting that watching Meet the Press is the sophisticate's method of informing herself. I imagine Sunday mornings in the Wolf household to look something like this: Wolf gets up a few minutes before nine, ascertains that the kids have had their breakfast, sends them off to the park with the au pair, and settles in with her latte to enjoy Meet the Press. After an hour of listening to candidates and their spokesmen spout platitudes for the benefit of a gullible, television-besotted public, and after calling the au pair and instructing her to keep the kids out until dinner-time, she sits down to write an editorial bemoaning the fact that Bush's campaign is more attuned to the sheepish mentality of women in the heartland than Kerry's. If only Kerry would put his wife in "jewel tones" and excise the "Heinz" from Teresa's name, the Stepford Wives of flyover country will leap lemming-like into Kerry's corner. If Wolf's editorial is any indication, the Bush campaign is indeed more attuned to the lives of American women, but not for the reasons that Wolf supposes. But what do I know? I don't watch Meet the Press.