Confessions of a Political Spouse by Schroeder James;

Author:Schroeder, James;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Fulcrum Publishing
Published: 2015-04-14T06:00:00+00:00

PART III

Observations and Experience

Wisdom…may be defined as the exercise of

judgment acting on experience, common sense and available information…

—Barbara Tuchman, historian and

Pulitzer Prize–winning author

The Smarter and More Successful

the Woman, the Better

I’m so old that I still read newspapers. The third thing I need in the morning after coffee and tobacco is a paper—anywhere, anytime. I have searched hotels in Mongolia for a Herald Tribune, savored a USA Today in Belgrade, Serbia, or walked a mile in Istanbul for a New York Times (and some pipe tobacco—not a pack of Camels).

Of course, one should and must read the local paper. What is going on here and now, today? What are the views of local editorial writers and columnists; which national columnists are available? I’m afraid their numbers are diminishing, and the quality is disappearing.

One of the principal pleasures of a good newspaper are good columnists, people who know their stuff, have strong opinions, and can state them clearly and often with a sense of cynicism or humor. George Will, David Broder, Paul Krugman, Tom Friedman, and Ellen Goodman all come quickly to mind. They’re always thought-provoking, whether you agree with them or not.

Then there’s Maureen Dowd, Pulitzer Prize–winning columnist for The New York Times. Maureen is always worth reading. She is smart, sharp, and a brilliant writer. It’s good that she is a writer. If she weren’t, she would probably be wanted in half a dozen states on charges of murder and mayhem. (Thinking of Maureen makes me recall our good friend Pat Oliphant, the brilliant cartoonist, whom we first met in Denver when he was drawing for The Denver Post. Someone once said that it was fortunate that Pat was a cartoonist, otherwise he would be an assassin.)

Maureen is cynical and sharp as a razor blade. She can spit out venom like a cobra and cut up a public figure with the skill of a Japanese samurai. She once called Bill Clinton the Animal House president and George W. Bush the Big Emperor. Maureen wasn’t very kind to my wife when she wrote a rather unflattering column about Pat’s presidential exploratory efforts in the fall of 1987. Ms. Dowd’s columns on Hillary Clinton during the recent presidential campaign were often abrasive and negative. One, I remember, was entitled “Clinton Jokes It Till She Makes It.”

Oh well, I still love to read Maureen Dowd’s columns and only wish that I could write half as well as she does.

If Maureen has a problem, though, it is that she is too cynical. She glories in taking on everybody and everything. She also tends to oversimplify and overgeneralize. Now we all generalize. I have done so in these pages. All generalizations are usually based on some facts and valid observations, but they are still only generalizations. There will always be exceptions to any rule and specific cases that cast serious doubt on the validity of a generalized observation or conclusion.

A good example is Maureen Dowd’s best-selling book Are Men Necessary? One of Maureen’s principal, if not

primary, theses is that men fear and are threatened by successful women.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.