Knowing Your Value by Mika Brzezinski Page A

twenty-six-year-old MBA students.

OUR ACHILLES’ HEEL
    The simple fact is that even the most successful women among us just want to be liked. Joy Behar is not comfortable being a bitch. Yes, I said that. Like Susie Essman, Behar rose
up the ranks in the world of stand-up comedy. Currently she’s on television two hours each day, hosting her own talk show as well as The View . She is both unfailingly funny and searingly blunt. During the 2008 campaign, Behar famously asked John McCain some of the toughest questions he faced. He arrived on set of The View , no doubt expecting light conversation, when Behar confronted him on his campaign commercials: “We know that those two ads are untrue, they are lies. And yet, you at the end of it say you approve these messages. Do you really approve them?”
    This is a woman who doesn’t have a hard time speaking her mind, so it might surprise you to learn that she doesn’t speak up when it comes to asking for money and perks. “I’m just a big mouth,” Behar tells me, “[but] I’m not demanding, and I don’t say I have to get special privileges or anything like that.” It’s not that she doesn’t want the big money and the big perks; it’s just that, like most women, being demanding makes her uncomfortable. “You want people to feel that you’re a team player,” she says. “I’ve always been the good girl, in a certain way. I have always been the good team player.”
    Plus, there’s the risk that she’ll be called a bitch. But don’t bitches often get what they want? “The squeaky wheel gets the grease, as they say,” Behar says. “They don’t really give a f—k that you think that they’re a bitch. You and I, we don’t like to be thought of as bitches ... if you don’t care that people think you’re a bitch, you can run the networks and the country. I don’t have that; I’m not comfortable with being a bitch.”

    Behar is right. I didn’t want to be thought of as the b-word. And that was the crux of my problem: I really wanted to be liked.
    My desire to be liked outweighed my wish to be valued. When my bosses would compliment me for being “a jack-ofall-trades,” a warm feeling rushed over me. I felt ...liked. But I have learned the hard way that compliments don’t pay the bills. Which brings me back to my story, and one of the best and worst moments of my career, all at the same time.

NEW HAMPSHIRE AND THE RED HAIR CLIP
    New Hampshire was pivotal in the run-up to Super Tuesday. This primary would decide whether Hillary Clinton, whose candidacy was on the rocks, would drop her bid for the presidency. Instead it turned out to be the place she “found her voice.” But before she did, we found her at 9:30 at night on a high school stage in Nashua. We had been trying to get some time with her all day. My phone did not leave my ear and we did not get out of the car until we nailed down the interview.
    Everyone was predicting a crushing loss for Hillary. But the Hillary we saw that night was a winner. As usual, she had been up earlier than everyone and she stayed up later, fighting both the odds and her critics. She was unflappable. Determined. Confident. Hair perfect. Makeup intact.
    We walked away from our interview in awe of her physical might and resilience. How was she still going? This is when Joe Scarborough’s adoration for “his girlfriend” Hillary Rodham Clinton began. He started to say it every day on the air:
“I can’t deny it. My girlfriend is tougher than any man I’ve met on the campaign trail.”
    She is a force of nature, and clearly when the chips are down, Hillary Clinton is at her very best. To this day, both Joe and I think she was by far the strongest candidate in terms of steel will and political agility. When she won the next day, her surprise victory made for an incredible narrative.
    Late into the night, we discussed how impressed we were and what it would mean for the race if she didn’t drop out. We were still