More insecurity from Nora Ephron

Nora Ephron, who I am trying desperately to remember is a good screenwriter, rants again at HuffPost, apparently intent on reminding the world that Hollywood liberals can be flaky and narrowminded. Unlike her last post, which I at least enjoyed as somewhat amusing, this one is just ridiculous. Most Democrats are thrilled that this election presents a historic choice; the only downside is that we have too much historic choice. But Ephron sees the glass as not just half-empty, but probably filled with something poisonous:

This is an election about whether the people of Pennsylvania hate blacks
more than they hate women.

And Obama got slammed for being an elitist? But of course, there are many women and blacks in Pennsylvania, so who is going to decide this?

And when I say people, I don't mean people, I mean white men. . . To put it bluntly, the next president will be elected by them

At least she is completely upfront about her biases. She can't complain about white men being the only candidates, so she gives them credit for undue influence, just so she can complain about that influence. Just in case it's not clear how she feels about white guys and their voting patterns, here's a clue:

the outcome of the general election will depend on whether enough of [white men] vote for McCain. A lot of them will: white men cannot be relied on, as all of us know who have spent a lifetime dating them.

I was under the impression that the purpose of feminism was to move beyond gender stereotyping. Maybe the purpose was to move beyond stereotyping of women, but it's still perfectly acceptable to define men in terms of broad, negative generalizations. Want another example? How about this:

A lot of white men have terrible tempers, and what's more, they think it's normal.

And this is from the woman who directed that well-known font of white male bitterness and rage, Tom Hanks, in two romantic comedies.

It is not entirely Ephron's fault that she's throwing around these stereotypes. As a Hillary supporter, she's had to watch her heroine/candidate/walking Rorschach test try to build a case against the first African American candidate to have a reasonable chance at becoming president, and she has, I am sure, experienced a lot of the same frustrations. And so now she is giving in to the same temptations:

Hillary's case is not an attractive one, because what she'll essentially be saying (and has been saying, although very carefully) is that she can attract more racist white male voters than Obama can. Nonetheless, and as I said, she has a case.

So it's not Hillary's fault that she has been walking on thin ice regarding race in this country - it's what she has had to do keep hope alive. It's just politics, you know?

Which, unfortunately for both Hillary and Ephron, is exactly Obama's point - that's the politics of division that has kept us from making progress in this country on so many issues.

"When Harry Met Sally," "Sleepless In Seattle," and "You've Got Mail" are about basically decent white guys who get the girl. Didn't Nora Ephron learn anything from her own movies?

Nora Ephron on Hillary - Quit for my sake!

Nora Ephron in HuffPost has an unusual rationale for asking Hillary to quit the race:

"I would like to put myself among the growing chorus of people demanding that Hillary Clinton withdraw from the election. I don't really think it's fair to ask her to withdraw, and I certainly don't believe she's going to; she'll hang in there till the last dog dies, or till she runs out of money, whichever comes first. I'm not asking her to withdraw because I prefer Obama, and I don't think she should withdraw "for the sake of party unity," or whatever current bromide is being flung at her to get her to pull out. I think she should withdraw because I'm losing my mind."

Thus it has come to pass: baby boomer feminists, who told us that "the personal is the political," fall victim to the problem of equating democracy with therapy. Fortunately, Ephron knows that the first step in solving your problem is admitting that you have one:

"I am particularly sensitive to this because I'm a woman of a certain age, and this means that part of the pie that passes for my brain contains a large slice called Hillary. I've been thinking about her in a fairly pathological way ever since 1992 and dreaming about her as well. She is me, and then again she's not."

Nora Eprhon is one of those people who has been sort of on the edge of my consciousness for years. I remember buying her book "Crazy Salad," but not really reading much of it, and then either giving it away or trying to sell it to a used bookstore. I like the fact that she writes and directs romantic comedies, because I'm a fan of the genre. "When Harry Met Sally," for which she was nominated for an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, is of course a classic. I once made a dish that I called Radicchio Babylon, inspired by Meg Ryan ordering grilled radicchio in that movie. But I also thot "Bewitched" was a disaster, with Nicole Kidman playing a strangely powerless woman in a movie written, directed, produced and greenlit by powerful women.

Back to the issue at hand:

"But the point is that it doesn't matter why Hillary lied; what matters is that I'm hooked on Hillary and on the Rorschach process that defines my relationship with her: she does something, I spend far too much time thinking about it, I superimpose my life and my choices onto hers, I decide how I feel about what she's done, I bore friends witless with my theories, and then, instead of moving on, I'm confronted with yet another episode of her behavior and am forced to devote more hours to developing new theories about her behavior. I don't have time for this.

I understand that asking Hillary to withdraw from the race has more to do with me than it does with her, but that's my point."

It's a cliche to describe baby boomer intellectuals as self-obsessed narcissists, but then one of them goes and write something like this. It's funny and honest. It might make a good screenplay. OK, probably not a good screenplay. But can't people like this afford therapy?

One other thing about boomers we now know: some of them have worried that they will turn into their parents. I'm not so worried about that. My guess is that, at the very least, they will be more entertaining.