Leona Helmsley Dies
August 21, 2007, 10:42 am
Posted by Cathleen Kaveny
Here is the New York Times obituary. I remember seeing her ads for perfect hotel rooms in the New York Times Magazine in the 1980s. (“I wouldn’t setle for skimpy towels. Why should you?”)
Like Martha Stewart, and Hillary Clinton, she seems both to fascinate and repel large segments of the American population. Why is that? Is it merely the fact that they’re tough women trying to make it in a man’s world ? Or is it more than that?
Cathleen, you’ve suggested an interesting trio.
I don’t know these women personally (few of us do), so all we can really do is speculate about them based on the sound bites we get from TV and newspaper stories.
It’s my impression that trio you mention are viewed as not merely tough, but rude, sarcastic and generally abrasive.
They do not compare well alongside other equally tough and successful women such as Sandra Day O’Connor, Condoleeza Rice, Margaret Chase Smith, Helen Thomas, Katherine Graham, Meryl Streep, Madeleine Albright, Mother Teresa or Dorothy Day.
That explains the revulsion–but what about the fascination?
Leona was one of my neighbors in Lexington, Kentucky for awhile. She resided at the federal prison just two miles down U.S. Route 421 from the VA medical center where I was employed at the time.
We were honored by her presence behind bars in our community.
:)
The point is a man may be rude, sarcastic and abrasive while a woman may not. Just as the financial crimes by the clergy go on because of the tolerance of everyone else, assertive women are abused because other women not only allow it but encourage it.
Whether Hillary said she will not stay home and bake cookies, stand by her man, or run for office, a certain contingent will oppose her. Leona, Hillary and Martha are saints compared to the way George Steinbrenner used to treat his emplyees. (he mellowed with age). Charles Finley, the former owner of the Oakland A’s was as mean as it gets. Rudy G can be as nasty as anyone.
There are signs declaring “Anyone but Hillary.” That is hatred.
Most acknowledge that she was right about health care, for which she recieved tremendous vilification. Leona increased the business at Helmsley Hotels by 75%. And Martha is inimitable.
Jean wrote: They do not compare well alongside other equally tough and successful women such as Sandra Day O’Connor, Condoleeza Rice, Margaret Chase Smith, Helen Thomas, Katherine Graham, Meryl Streep, Madeleine Albright, Mother Teresa or Dorothy Day.”
All of these women suffered much from misogyny. Each of them has their share of critics. Again, is it because they were not publicly sarcastic, rude and generally abrasive that they are better?
I know this angers many women. But their tolerance for this unusual vilification of successful women is the reason this activitiy continues. The truth is that many of them are not ready for full liberation.
Note that I am not talking politically. The issue is male/female and whether there is equal tolerance for combative females.
I’m not sure, on reflection, that the three belong together. I think Helmsley and Stewart “sold” a certain type of domesticity and caretaking, that their ruthless business endeavors called into question. Plus I think there is a certain type of female domestic cruelty that their stories fed–broadly, the ‘wicked stepmother” stories in fairy tales.
Hillary is a different story.
Re: Leona. Yawwwwnnnnnnnnn.
Assertive? OK!
Rude and sarcastic? Not OK!
In a woman OR a man…
We’ve had this conversation before. Bill (I do appreciate his feminism) argues that
“unusual vilification of succesful women” continues because women themselves allow it to go on.
There may be some truth in this statement.
But the opposite position -that ALL criticism of succesful women is rooted in unacknowledged prejudice is certainly wrong.
“Uppity” women may be the target of undeserved hatred in our society ( and also objects of fascination.) But, because of this phenomenon, should women escape judgement if they are deceptive or downright nasty?
Please note- I am not attributing these negative qualities to any of the triumverate previously mentioned, just posing a question.
But Jimmy, that’s the issue: why wasn’t she boring to everyone? Why does she have a huge obit in the NYT, and a column devoted to her on the op/ed page.
There was something. . . fascinating about her to the public at large, too.
And I guess, I think Hillary is respected, and feared, and hated, but doesn’t evoke the kind of fascination and repulsion that Leona and Martha do. So I take her out of the triumvirate–or triumfeminate, since “vir” means man..
Is it because the latter two presented us with a vision of gracious living that turned out to be built on ungracious behavior?
So in a way, it’s hypocrisy, rather than gender –it reminds me more of OJ Simpson than anything else. The “nice guy” in the Hertz ad didn’t appear to be so nice after all. Robert Blake’s trial didn’t get nearly the same level of attention.
Bill wrote: The point is a man may be rude, sarcastic and abrasive while a woman may not.
Jean suggests: Bill, I think that’s kind of an old chestnut (not to be rude, sarcastic or abrasive …). Donald Rumsfeld didn’t win a lot of friends by beign rude, sarcastic and abrasive.
My point was more that women don’t like other women to be rude, sarcastic and abrasive, and that has nothing to do with “liberation.” I don’t think it’s liberating to belittle other people.
Cathleen: I can’t explain the fascination with Leona, Martha or Hilary, because none of them fascinate me, though I suppose there’s a certain cachet if you’re rich and get thrown in prison (how the mighty have fallen). Or have thrown a lamp at your two-timing Arkansas hubby.
Cathleen,
I know you are diplomatic and maybe that is the way to go. Somehow I sense your real thoughts and feelings are very different.
Sanford Weil the head of Citibank recently declared how worthy he is of his riches and great wealth because he enriched this country and world with his talent. If Leona, Hillary or Martha made such a statement they would have been roased, morning, noon and night.
So take the gloves off a little Cathleen, and tell me why I grew up believing that Mary Magdalene was a whore (albeit repentant) instead of the Apostle to the Apostles that she was.
Jean, Back in the 60′s Richard Nixon described Rumsfeld as “a cold hearted SOB.” This did not hurt his career. I am not referring to Nixon’s words but to the fact that Rumsfeld probably was the same person forty years ago.
Joanne, my mother has eight sisters. I know about nasty women. But aren’t you stating the obvious? The imbalance is against women, no matter how one slices it.
Bill, I do think there’s a significant amount of sexism in this–the behavior, as you say, would be scarcely remarkable in a man.
I also think toughness, in and of itself, isn’t the relevant quality. It’s selfishness. As my mom pointed out to me, Jean’s list involves women who are tough but they are all in some sense or an other serving a higher cause. Martha and Leona were serving their own monetary interests. Judges, saints, newspaper reporters can be tough women, in service of others – but women who are out to amass money–or power- are still suspect–more suspect than comparably selfish men. I think this is the key to fascinating but repelling.
At first I thought an additional layer is the hypocrisy–Martha and Leona were selling gracious living–they were asking women to hold themselves to a certain standard of homemaking–or hospitality– that their own behavior belied.
But now I think the issue is deeper than hypocrisy. It was thoroughgoing subversion. They got rich by turning the standards of what women should be ==warm, welcoming, concerned with people, not product– to their own advantage–and that’s the sort of self-involvement that is very much NOT what women should be.
So in a nutshell: they took the idea of the non-monetary “feminine genius” as self-gift (gift OF self) and turned it into the monetary “feminine genius” as self-gift (gift TO self).
And tacitly underneath it all, I think they made a lot of people uncomfortable: It could make you think that maybe all of this “self-gift” in the form of homemaking and hospitality out there didn’t come without strings attached in other women, even oneself.
Which, of course, is true–everyone –men and women– suffer from original sin (which has been frequently been defined as a form of self-involvement) –even the happiest home-makers.
But we don’t tend to like to see our mother figures and our homemaker figures in this way–maybe (and here’s my nod to Bill) because we do tend to slot them into dichotomous Madonna/whore categories.
So that’s my dimestore psychology.
It’s worth what you paid for it.
I had almost forgotten about Leona Helmsley. Her self-promotion had an annoying quality about twenty + years ago. I am fond of Malteses, however, so we had that in common.
I thing Martha Stewart was unfairly convicted on a technicality. On the whole she has probably done the world more good than most politicians. Her attempt to trade mark Katonah has aroused some ill-feeling, chiefly, in Katonah but also among some native Americans. I am not sure I care.
Why do so many people, both men and women, hate Hillary Clinton? Such dislike is likely to be a sign of pathology in those who have it. Politics is an area in which the least bad is usually the best you can do. I have come to feel she is it, the least bad. I could change my mind, but I doubt it will happen.
Bill wrote: Jean, back in the 60′s Richard Nixon described Rumsfeld as “a cold hearted SOB.” This did not hurt his career. I am not referring to Nixon’s words but to the fact that Rumsfeld probably was the same person forty years ago.
Jean says: Yah, but, Bill, being a cold-hearted female doesn’t necessarily hurt your career, either. Hilary Clinton, assuming she’s on the Stewart-Helmsley axis, won a Senate seat in New York state the first time she ran for public office, and I don’t call that unsuccessful.
But I don’t think Clinton IS on the Stewart-Helmsley axis.
Cathleen has an interesting idea about the Stewart’s and Helmsley’s perversion of the hospitality/homemaker ideal and that causing a sexist backlash.
But Clinton doesn’t fit that notion. She never positioned herself along that axis. She was the one who said she wasn’t some “stand by your man” woman who stayed home and “baked cookies.”
When Hilary made those statements–yes, they were taken out of context and overemphasized by the media like Howard Dean’s famous “scream”–I felt she was trying to appeal to the over-achievers, the already successful professional women.
And she made those of us who tried to stick with our marriages when they got tough, baked cookies for the kids (and held down modest jobs) feel like patsies.
She tried to rehabilitate her image with “It Takes a Village,” which is a nice book. And she DID “stand by her man” at a time when the public humiliation must have been awful, and that took courage.
My basic beef with Hilary Clinton is that I don’t really know who she is or what she really thinks. I’m not sure she knows, either. I’m not persuaded that her basic motivation for seeking power isn’t vindication–vindication that she’s as good a man as Bill.
So, there’s another five-and-dime psychological theory to chew on.
I am not as interested in the development of Hillary, Martha, or Leona as I am in people’s attitude toward them and particularly because they are woman who act in a particular manner concerning which others disapprove.
There are many distinquished scholars in feminine studies. But none had the impact on me as Elizabeth Schussler-Fiorenza now a professor of biblical studies at Harvard.
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/relig/spirit/stories/s923231.htm
http://www.pinn.net/~sunshine/book-sum/sf1.html#ch3
bill mazella
where can i find sandy weill’s declaration of his astutness. i am one of his dependents( citibank retiree) and am nervous about the hubris
Thanks for the question, Mary. Overall this is an important article.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/15/business/15gilded.html?ex=1342152000&en=b93e1c0193b4182c&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss
I covered Leona Helmsley’s trial for New York Newsday. Underneath, it was a dull case in which she was shown to have listed personal expenses as business write-offs, thus avoiding taxes that constituted a fraction of the amount she and her billionaire husband gave to charity. But the news coverage was over the top. The NY Post had broken the story of the “queen of mean” and her taxes, setting the tone for the frenzy that followed.
There have always been celebrated trials, but a series of cases in late 1980s New York (also Bess Myerson and Imelda Marcos, who were both acquitted in the same courthouse) set the stage for the kind of celebrity-chasing craziness we have nowadays.
Why were these cases such a big deal? Envy for the lifestyles of the rich and famous. Rudy Giuliani, the U.S. attorney, knew a good thing when he saw it.