For the week of  October 31 - November 6, 2001

Hillary’s target of venomous rumors, again

Commentary by PAT MURPHY

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One sure sign Americans are almost back to normal is the return of scurrilous Internet rumors about Hillary Clinton.

This reappeared on the Internet last week after lying dormant since last November:

When the Clintons bought a home in Chappaqua, N.Y., the Secret Service was required by law to provide protection as it does to all former presidents and their families. A small residence was built on the property for agents.

Rumormongers thereupon spread word that Hillary charges the Secret Service $10,000 (!) a month for use of the house — the exact amount of the main residence’s mortgage.

I went to the Internet hoax debunker, Urban Legends Reference, did a word search of "Clintons" (www.snopes2.com/inboxer/outrage/landlord.htm) and found this to be another malicious myth, along with others, such as Ms. Clinton being the lawyer for Black Panther criminals.

Yes, the small Chappaqua house was built and the Secret Service itself set rent payments of $1,100 a month — but not $10,000!

Furthermore, hoaxers didn’t disclose this: Ms. Clinton has declined any rent payments authorized by Congress, which approves housing for Secret Service agents and cost of security systems, including at second presidential homes.

Just as President Franklin Roosevelt’s wife, Eleanor, was the object of venomous rumors in her day, Hillary Clinton is doomed to being targeted for hateful gossip.

Perhaps hoaxers may feel threatened by smart, ambitious women and believe they can sabotage Ms. Clinton’s stature with belittling, false information.

I discovered this same phenomenon years ago while researching the history of why airlines refused for so long to hire women pilots.

Aided and abetted by males who may have felt threatened, airlines peddled a witch’s brew of tales about women to avoid hiring them.

Women, they said, tended to be emotionally unstable (a euphemism for "hysterical"), disabled by menstrual cycles, capable of being home-wrecking sexual temptresses in the cockpit, physically too weak to manipulate aircraft controls, clumsy with mechanical gadgets.

Mind you, women pilots excelled during World War II as instructors of male pilots as well as Women's Air Forces Service Pilots (WASPs) ferrying the fastest U.S. fighter planes and largest bombers. (My first flying lesson in 1944 was with a female, Verna Burke, who later became a military flight instructor.)

But airlines still balked. However, in 1973, Frontier Airlines broke the barrier and hired a persistent applicant, Emily Howell, who eventually became a 737 jet captain with United Parcel Service, then an FAA flight examiner of other airline pilots.

Now, thousands of women distinguish themselves as pilots — of the U-2 spy plane, the U.S. space shuttle, in combat military fighter jets and huge transports, airline jets of all sizes. All-female flight crews are not uncommon on such giants as the C-10 Air Force aerial tanker.

If dire predictions involving mythical female frailty and instability materialized, I haven’t read them.

Women pilots who helped my research shared dozens of wonderful personal experiences. But one stands out — about Jean and Vic Carter, of Englewood, Colo., husband-and-wife pilots for United Airlines.

Jean was promoted to captain ahead of her husband.

On her first flight as captain of a Boeing 737, she requested her husband as her first officer/co-pilot.

So much for inferiority of women pilots.

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