Of Mouse and Women

Tipper Gore says, "It was giving a message to my daughter. I wanted to change that."

Schiff's immediate response was to watch the forbidden cartoon at a friend's house whenever she could, scarfing "Wonder Bread and butter-and-sugar sandwiches" in defiance of the Healthy Food Police as well. But in the long run, her mother's point got through: "I still internalized that there was something to question there."

"She became a feminist at 11," Gore says. "When I say feminist, I'm talking about equality and awareness of perceptions of roles."

So there we have it. Obviously it was just a short step from confronting the gender implications of "Here I come to save the day!" to writing a book about women with the confidence and drive to, well, save the day themselves.

Ridiculous? Of course.

But maybe containing a hint of truth just the same.

For the mother-daughter conversation didn't stop with Mighty Mouse. "She was always reminding us to question how women were portrayed in movies or ads or whatever," Schiff says, "and encouraging us to think that we could do whatever we wanted." The three Gore girls got that message from their father, too.

Schiff went from somewhat shy kid in elementary school to confident high schooler who excelled in lacrosse, field hockey and competitive water skiing. She studied history and literature at Harvard and law at Columbia and did a bit of journalism in between.

Along the way, she went through what she calls a "bratty" phase with her mother. She couldn't help but notice that dad was the one with the big career.

"Why don't you work," she would ask, "you know, like my friend's mom?"

With children of her own, Schiff says she understands the conflicts better now. It's one of the things she tried to highlight in the lives of her nine women.

And her own life? When she looks into the future, what does she see?

Maybe she'll do another book, she says, and maybe it, too, will be history related. (She has given some thought to her Tennessee homeboy, Davy Crockett.) She knows she needs time for her kids; she has already left one legal job in which even a part-time schedule was too demanding. But it's a measure of the way the world has changed since her mother and grandmother's day that she gets the do-you-think-about-running-for-office question all the time.

Schiff doesn't know, she tells us. She hasn't ruled it out. But her book, in part, is an exploration of other ways to be a public servant.

We offer no opinion, of course, but we do know this:

If she runs, she's in for a lot of tough questions about that flying mouse.