Women, we are told by some people who say they know them, are not amused. Women, or at least those whose consciousnesses have been properly raised, supposedly think that the impatience being expressed about the protracted futility of Hillary Clinton's campaign is disrespectful. They say that if the roles were reversed — if Barack Obama's delegate arithmetic were as hopeless as hers — people would not be so insensitive as to try to hurry a man off the stage.

But they would. And some people, claiming to speak for African Americans, would be explaining that African Americans find it all disrespectful.

In America, however, nothing ages as fast as novelty, and efforts to encourage Clinton to pack it in are heartening evidence that the novelty has worn off: The female candidate is like all other candidates. This is what equality looks like — life as an equal opportunity dispenser of disappointments.

When, in 1975, Frank Robinson became Major League Baseball's first African-American manager, with the Cleveland Indians, that was an important milestone. But an even more important one came two years later, when the Indians fired him. Then he was just like hundreds of managers before him.

Some of Clinton's supporters seem to be cultivating, for a purpose, a permutation of the entitlement mentality that many voters thought they discerned in her candidacy and found off-putting. She seemed to feel entitled

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to the Democrats' nomination, and having been denied it, she may feel really entitled to be Obama's running mate. But for him, choosing her would be even more dangerous than Bosnian sniper fire. She would solve none of his problems, and would create others.

Because Democrats are desperate to win in November, they will support Obama, so his most pressing priority should be to compete with John McCain for independent voters,.

On several occasions presidential nominees have felt the need to choose as their running mates the persons who were their strongest competitors for the nomination. But two successful occasions were quite unlike Obama's situation.

On the eve of the Democrats' 1960 convention in Los Angeles, the campaign of Lyndon Johnson, who was decisively behind John Kennedy in the delegate count, intimated — correctly, we now know — that Kennedy's health was much more precarious than was then understood. Ten days later, Kennedy asked Johnson to be his running mate.

In 1980, Ronald Reagan, who was cool toward George H. W. Bush, chose him partly to assuage the disappointment of the Detroit convention.

Clinton has been carrying categories of voters that Obama has had trouble attracting. But it is implausible that she is the only Democrat who would enhance Obama's appeal to white, blue-collar Democrats.

Finally, Clinton is not entitled to a consolation prize. Robert Frost provided a warning for those who become too accustomed to the limelight:

No memory of having starred

Atones for later disregard,

Or keeps the end from being hard.

Contact George Will at georgewill@washpost.com.

(c) 2008, Washington Post Writers Group