A Term of Honor

THE CONNIE CHUNG-KATHLEEN GINGRICH INCIDENT, in which the famous anchorwoman lured House Speaker Newt Gingrich's mother into revealing that he has called the First Lady a "bitch," raises a number of thought-provoking issues. Should Ms. Chung be redeployed from CBS to the CIA, in some department of interrogation and espionage? Should Bill let this incident mar his emerging romance with Newt? Should Mr. Gingrich be Speaker of anything, or should his mouth first be washed out with soap?

There is another issue, of even larger public import, raised by the insult itself: What should a woman do when a fellow calls her a bitch? We already know Hillary Clinton's response. She invited the perpetrator and his mom to her house for a visit and consulted with women from the press on how to yet again "soften her image." But could there perhaps be some other form of response, one that would be less humiliating to Ms. Clinton and the entire female race?

; Verbal-insult trading is admittedly not a viable option. Hillary Clinton may think a certain Congressman whose name rhymes with "thin witch" is a bastard or an s.o.b., but neither appellation has anything like the force of bitch. The meanest things you can say about a man boil down to attacks on a woman: the mother insult, implying subhuman status and moralsand men can experience its sting only indirectly, at a generation's remove.

The asymmetry of the available insults reinforces the oft-noted dilemma of women in public life: how to be business-like without inviting perceptions like "ball-buster" or bitch. O.J. prosecutor Marcia Clark had to be remanded to the make-over salon where she was recoiffed and taught to make tender references to her offspring in public. Hillary Clinton, perhaps more than any woman in public life, has been subject to relentless review by the gender police. Even when she stood steadfastly by her man during the Gennifer Flowers incident, she was savaged for doing so with insufficient humility and possibly dissing Tammy Wynette.

In Hillary Clinton's case, the problem has never been reducible to a mere matter of style. Our First Lady does not go around in a leather bustier or pick her teeth with a riding crop. If she has a problem -- and clearly she does -- it's that somehow, characterologically speaking, she doesn't add up. A vigorous advocate of the poor, she devoted much of the '80s, yuppie fashion, to dubious schemes for the accumulation of loot. A feminist, she's been faulted for doing little to advance women's careers in her husband's Administration. Motivated by the noblest intentions no doubt, she nonetheless came up with what was, from almost any ideological perspective, the health- care plan from hell.

So you could call her many things: yuppie scum, liberal, elitest, hypocrite, sellout to the patriarchy. But bitch would hardly seem to apply.