The Times in the U.K. ran a profile on Nancy Pelosi. It is not an attempt to flatter her, and even the most obtuse reader picks that up from the title of the piece: "Now she has the power to go with her grudges". Even the ending reinforces the overall message:
A woman leader who nurses a grudge, even at the risk of defeat, can expect hostile scrutiny. But for the moment she is lapping up the applause. "She's absolutely giddy at the thought of being America's most powerful woman," said a journalist. "She's really up there on her own." And it's a long way down.
You know, it's a very well-written profile, in the sense that if I hadn't read other articles about the same biographical facts earlier I might not have picked on the judging and insinuating that the writer adds here. To give you just one example, look at this paragraph:
But Pelosi has been used to getting her way since she was born on March 26, 1940. "There wasn't a lot of money for the best kind of clothes, but whatever the family could afford, Nancy got the best of," recalled her brother, Thomas, who served as mayor of Baltimore from 1967 to 1971. "Little Nancy" never went through an awkward, ugly-duckling phase, he said proudly. "She wasn't a tomboy."
Subtle! It is the first sentence that is not linked to any evidence. We have no idea if Nancy wanted to have the best clothes or not. Perhaps it was her parents who wanted to dress her nicely, as the only daughter? Perhaps Nancy disliked it all? Well, now we all have this image of the little self-centered princess ruling over her impoverished family. Rush Limbaugh never gets to this level of persuasive half-truths and smears. Maybe the British do misogyny better?
To return to the final comments of the article:
A woman leader who nurses a grudge, even at the risk of defeat, can expect hostile scrutiny. But for the moment she is lapping up the applause. "She's absolutely giddy at the thought of being America's most powerful woman," said a journalist. "She's really up there on her own." And it's a long way down.
What a masterpiece it is. There is that little "woman" qualifier for the leader, which tells us that a man leader nursing a grudge wouldn't expect hostile scrutiny. And the whole nursing-grudges-at-the-risk-of-defeat structure! Pure artistry! Especially as both the idea of the grudges and the concept of defeat are pretty much drawn out of a hat. These things would be called something quite different if Nancy Pelosi was a man. The grudges might be called "political differences" and the risk of defeat might be called "willingness to take risks".
Then we have the Speaker of the House LAPPING up the applause, like a cat might lap up cream. Not a bad connection there, either. Let's make it even more incredible by adding a diagnosis of what Pelosi must be feeling right now, by some unidentified journalist! And then we can predict her fall from the power as she deserves it.