The XX Factor: Slate women blog about politics, etc...

What Connects Paula Radcliffe, Hillary Clinton, and Margaret Thatcher?

Emily, I’m so glad you offered Paula Radcliffe as a model by which to understand Hillary Clinton, because after years of struggling to comprehend why such a lot of people seem to dislike Hillary so, I finally get it. (She strikes me as more likable than most politicians, though that’s a bit like saying she smells more like dog poop than elephant feces.)

Why? Because I cannot stand Paula Radcliffe. My anti-Paula animus is completely irrational. We’ve never met, and I’m sure we never will. She’s made no statements that offend me and taken no positions that infuriate me. I admire her talent and her single-mindedness. And as someone who loves athletics and who still has a British passport somewhere at the back of a drawer, I’m extra-appreciative of her success. But there’s something about her that drives me up the wall. It’s probably not even her fault. I was in Britain during the 2004 Olympics, and judging from the media coverage, the entire Olympiad was mere background to the women’s marathon, which "our Paula" was favored to win. In the event, as the BBC put it, she ended up “slumped on an Athens pavement, crying bitter tears of pain and frustration.” If I’d had to look at one more image of her “agony,” I’d be crying bitter tears myself.

By the way, your mention of Radcliffe resuming her training schedule just 12 days after giving birth reminded me of a story about Margaret Thatcher taking the bar exam the afternoon after she had twins. It’s one of those anecdotes that’s too good to fact-check, but I just looked it up. According to an interview she gave in 1985, four months passed between giving birth and taking the final exam to become a barrister, but it was seeing the new babies that left her determined to really pursue the law: “I wrote off to Lincoln's Inn for my Finals papers for my Bar Exam which was to take place in December, and I knew that once I had done that and entered pride would make me work hard for it to get them.” (Incidentally, the interview is fascinating and reminded me what an outsider Thatcher was—she was famously a “shopkeeper’s daughter,” but she also grew up in a home without an indoor toilet and was the first person in her family to go to university.)