6/06/00 2:50 p.m.
Hillary at the U.N.
She was Ricky Martin on tour. And every woman in the room, it seemed, wanted to touch her…

By Kathryn Jean Lopez, NR associate editor----------------lopezk@ix.netcom.com

ow they love her! When the First Lady spoke at a Beijing + 5 reunion conference at the U.N. yesterday as part of a panel on microcredit, her audience (predominantly women) was won over even before she started speaking. (Beijing was the setting for the controversial 1995 U.N. conference dominated by vocal Western pro-abortion feminists; microcredit is the awarding of loans, mostly from the World Bank, to women who would not typically qualify for bank loans.)

Hillary held forth — the 1995 Beijing Conference was “one of the most moving and meaningful experiences of my life” — asked questions, soaked in the applause, and listened to a serenade of We Shall Overcome. She talked about the struggle among women in the United States for “equal pay for equal work,” and mothers pleading with Congress to “pass sensible gun-safety measures to protect children,” implying that these matters are on par with Third World outrages such as girls getting “doused with gasoline, set on fire, and burned to death because their marriage dowries are too small.”

More interesting than the content of Hillary’s speech was the setting, and the fact that Clinton was there, returning, as promised, to check on the progress of her beloved issue of microcredit for women. This was 100-proof Hillary Rodham Clinton, pure liberal, pure wonk, talking about repayment rates and transaction costs, listening to her sisters’ stories of overcoming.

The audience couldn’t get enough. She was Ricky Martin on tour, the Backstreet Boys outside MTV. Every woman in the room, it seemed, wanted to touch her, get her to sign her copy of It Takes a Village, or their U.N. “Women 2000” conference pass. They nearly knocked U.S. envoy to the U.N. Richard Holbrooke over to get to her. Hillary shook hands, hugged, kissed, had her picture taken, and even shrieked upon seeing one long lost sister.

Unfortunately for Hillary, these were not New York voters; many of them were not even Americans. But they are natural Hillary fans. These are, after all, women who signed onto a document declaring abortion a fundamental female right; they also think that women are as much in peril in the United States as they are, say, in Communist China and under the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Yesterday, Hillary was in her natural habitat — and it wasn’t Chappaqua. Rick Lazio ought to take notes.