tickle fight!

America feigns pride these days as it prepares to ditch sexism and racism by nominating a woman or a black man as a serious contender for the presidency. Pundits on the left predict that, finally, in 2008 voters will vitalize the constitutional dream that any American can achieve the top office. From the right, we hear, “Just not these two!”

But hold the cuddly feeling.

While sexism hasn’t had the same hideous history of lynchings as its companion “ism,” the case can be made that gender bias is even more prevalent, more accepted, more insidious and more likely to die a drawn-out death. The presidential campaign of Hillary Rodham Clinton is this thesis writ large.

It goes way beyond the insults about Hillary’s un-anorectic ankles if she wears skirts and guffaws when she favors pantsuits. It goes beyond Chris Matthews’ open misogyny on the aptly named “Hardball” when he claims Hillary owes her Senate elections to her husband’s womanizing. He says it accusingly as if Hillary had been the one on her knees. I don’t know what it means when Matthews claims to get “tingling” up his leg when he hears Obama speak.

It goes beyond the criticism leveled at Hillary when her talk turns tough and passionate. That’s the cue to decry her “shrillness,” a polite wink-wink way of saying she is a shrew and a bitch. If she gets a watery eye, it’s either phony or a sign of weakness, not just being human. She is amazingly controlled as a top executive should be, but that’s “coldness.” When her desire to win is the topic, she is sneeringly called “ambitious” as if a would-be president could be anything but.

The debate this week in Cleveland contained examples of the hidden “ism.” Hillary took just umbrage at Obama’s characterization of her supposed cheerleading for NAFTA, a cruel policy for Ohio. On CNN, when former Reagan and Clinton communications director David Gergen defended her as being part of the internal debate he observed at the White House and said she had been a strong voice warning of its potential dangers, the rest of the media and Obama paid no attention. What? Do we expect that the then first lady should have called a press conference to denounce her husband’s NAFTA advocacy? What would she have been called then? Uppity? Obama is of course no fool in any of this. If the hidden, insidious “ism” benefits him, he won’t be objecting.

The next day, I watched a quartet of Fox News women in their stilettos and push-up bras pretend to be enraged feminists when discussing Hillary’s “whining” to NBC’s Brian Williams about always being asked the first question. The Fox anchor-ettes said it was an insult to their hard-won position as professional women. They missed the point that those hosting presidential debates have always varied the order of questions to male contenders out of fundamental journalistic fairness.

It is further alarming when the hidden “ism” flourishes in the voice of a female national radio host. Randi Rhodes of “progressive” Air America blithely jokes about Hillary’s reproductive equipment and the size of her necklace beads. I see also the faux outrage over superdelegates because this long tradition may benefit Sen. Clinton. Time to change the rules. Then there’s the age thing. The early 60s have long been thought to be the perfect age for an American president, not too old, not too young. Suddenly we have to change the rules. Hillary is too old.

History will record whether American women seize their moment or not. But no one should pretend that gender bias isn’t alive and well. Hillary’s campaign has shown it, and I salute her resilience, knowing as she must that many who would reject any scintilla of overt racism would and do easily accommodate the other hidden “ism.”

I was taken aback years ago when I had a conversation with Anita Hill. She told me the most disheartening turn of her righteous objection to the coronation of Clarence Thomas had been the attacks she bore from women. She saw all too clearly then that women were the last n-words, conditioned to denigrate their own kind.

A Hillary presidency could vaporize much of that inequity.

It was vastly underreported when she kicked butt in California by more than nine percentage points. Right now she leads in Ohio, but you’d never know it. Are you ready to HOPE for a CHANGE? My hand across my ample bosom, I’ll settle for a miracle.

Christine Craft is a lawyer who will fill in as a talk-radio host at KGO next week from 10 p.m. to 1 a.m.