Of Mouse and Women

It's not only that Schiff's women seemed to operate further from the political mainstream than Al Gore has, we suggest. It's that they were mostly neck deep in humanity, fighting for people -- be they 8-year-old children sent to work in mills and mines, African Americans terrorized into second-class citizenship, or factory workers poisoned by lead dust. Gore's major concerns, from the arms race to the environment, gravitate more toward systems and abstractions.

"That is definitely accurate," Schiff says, and laughs. She won't cop to Gore-as-wooden-wonk stereotypes, though. He may not be "the schmoozy type," but that's something she happens to love about him.

Speaking of media distortions: Schiff recalls how her mother got typecast as a pro-censorship prude. This was back in the '80s, when she was pressuring the music industry to put parental advisories on its increasingly raunchy and violent products.

The media version "was just so unrecognizable," she says.

Maybe so, we're tempted to say, but what about that disturbing episode with the cartoon mouse?

* * *

Some of you out there might not remember Mighty Mouse, the non-Disney animated flying rodent whose motto was "Here I come to save the day!" Schiff doesn't even know if he shows up in reruns anymore. But the Mouse of Steel, as he was also known, was quite popular when she was 6 or 7 -- and she wasn't at all pleased when her mother told her she couldn't watch.

"I'm still a little bit upset about it," she says.

"It was a huge fight," the villain confirms when we call later to check out the story. "It was one of those things. I said no."

Sex and violence weren't the issue. It was a gender role thing.

"The theme of every episode was that the girl mouse would get into trouble somehow and be kidnapped," Schiff explains, "and then it would be 'Mighty Mouse to the rescue!' and he would come and rescue her and he would be kissing her at the end and she would be fawning all over him."