Member of the Club

Indeed is she? Condoleezza Rice has ascended to what Forbes Magazine calls the "most powerful woman in the world" and has unprecendented entry into one of the most exclusive and most powerful enclaves in the world -- the United States government. So is she a member of the club?

The above cartoon was created by a white, liberal political cartoonist by the name of Jeff Danziger in 2004. Richard Prince's Journalisms describes the climate from which this was created,

"The cartoon was drawn after the New York Times received considerable attention for an Oct. 3 piece noting that administration officials claimed in 2002 that the United States had ''irrefutable evidence'' of thousands of tubes made of high-strength aluminum "that the Bush administration said were destined for clandestine Iraqi uranium centrifuges." Yet "almost a year before, Ms. Rice's staff had been told that the government's foremost nuclear experts seriously doubted that the tubes were for nuclear weapons."

Danziger's cartoon, called, "Condoleezza Rice in the role of a lifetime," shows a barefoot national security adviser in a chair nursing an aluminum tube with a human face, saying, "I knows all about aluminum tubes. Correction. I don't know nuthin' about aluminum tubes."

"For liberals, Condi Rice's real crime is bucking Democratic orthodoxy and working for a conservative president," charged the Wall Street Journal Friday.

"This makes her fair game for race-based attacks even when the issue at hand has absolutely nothing to do with race. She is a black woman who, in Mr. Danziger's view, has wandered off the liberal plantation. And this is his way of putting Ms. Rice and other black conservatives in their place."

The cartoon places Condi in the context of Prissy in "Gone With the Wind" in a mammy role, nursing the aluminum tubes touted by the Bush administration as being fodder for Iraqi centrifuges. The cartoon was banned by liberal and conservative publications alike.

Fast forward to 2006 and I ask the question again. Is Condi Rice a true "member of the club" (in homage to Lawrence Otis Graham's book of the same name)? And if so what does that mean? How has she had to reconcile her race and her gender to gain access to this club?

My interest in Condi Rice for this post comes after seeing a video post on the cnn.com website today entitled: "Condi Rice's single status sparks lover talk". I've always been very interested in the persona of Condi Rice -- her ascendance to the "Club", her parentage and childhood background, her academic and intellectual prowess, her Republicanism, her social circle, etc. I realize that a woman of a certain level of success often has her personal life scrutinized -- whether she can balance the roles of motherhood and career successfully or if she isn't married and/or have a family, why? To go further in-depth as it relates to Condi Rice would take up pages and oodles of my time, therefore, I just wanted to posit some questions about a woman who has always remained somewhat of an enigma to me. Any thoughts? Also, I found an interesting article written by Slate Magazine where Condi's freudian slip i.e. her reference to Bush as her "husband" made a way into one of her talk.

termagant -- noun: 1. A scolding, nagging, bad-tempered woman; a shrew. adj: 1. Overbearing; shrewish; scolding

“If you can't change your fate, change your attitude” -- Amy Tan