Tuesday, December 30, 2008 - Posts
-
sponsorship
Melinda, good point about Caroline Kennedy playing by the rules of the old political guard. Judith Warner, a columnist for nytimes.com, recently wrote an op-ed for the paper implying that Kennedy is not playing by the rules at all. She posits that Kennedy doesn't deserve, and has done nothing to earn, Hillary Clinton's seat in the U.S. Senate. That's Warner's opinion and of course she has a right to it, but I nonetheless found it a bit troubling, especially coming from a woman. This last line of the piece was particularly irksome: "Caroline doesn't have to be a fairy-tale princess anymore. She can be her own white knight, vaulting the Kennedy's proudly into the 21st century, if only she plays by the rules and waits her turn."
Wait her turn? Isn't that what men use to say to ambitious women who seemed too eager to scale the walls of the corporate ladder or break the glass ceiling? When exactly would Kennedy's turn come? And by what means? Imagine if the suffragists and black civil rights activists had sat back and waited for their turn to come knocking on their doors. The notion of waiting for power to be handed to us as some sort of reward for waiting patiently in the wings while others go out and get what they want is so outdated. The people preaching patience are usually the ones holding the power, and are usually unwilling to give it up without a fight. They're also the ones who usually write the rules that Warner says Kennedy should play by.
Just how is Kennedy flouting the rules if they specifically allow for the governor to appoint a replacement for Clinton? The last time I checked, Hillary Clinton had not held political office before she ran for the Senate from a state she had never even lived in until she decided to seek office. So I'm not exactly sure what Clinton did to earn the Senate seat? She ran and she won, and if Kennedy is appointed to Clinton's seat, Kennedy will eventually have to do the same thing to keep it.
I agree with much of the recent commentary and news stories—this one is a particularly fun read—about the sickening level of nepotism in politics, but I don't believe that Caroline Kennedy should be held to a different standard than the many, many other members of Congress who got their seats through familial connections or won their seats with little or no prior political experience.
-
sponsorship
I'm having a hard time summoning a lot of outrage over the story of Herman Rosenblat, the Holocaust survivor who reimagined his stay in a subcamp of Buchenwald. In his (now canceled) and unfortunately subtitled memoir, Angel at the Fence: The True Story of a Love that Survived, he told the beautiful lie that a girl who lived near the camp had kept him alive by chucking apples over the fence to him. He'd already gone on Oprah and told the world that years later, in Coney Island, he and the girl had improbably met again, on a blind date, and had married. But does that really make Rosenblat another Margaret Seltzer? (She's the author of Love and Consequences, the 100 percent trumped-up "memoir'' in which, instead of growing up white and well-off in the San Fernando Valley, she's a half-Native American foster child gang-banger in South Central. Details!) Or does Rosenblat's fabulism put him on a moral par with James Frey, whose real adventures in addiction and rehab were wildly improved upon for his memoir-ish A Million Little Pieces? No and no. I guess there is a sense in which every lie is pathological. But there is also a pretty wide chasm between an addict lying to sell books, and a camp survivor lying, according to the statement released through his agent, "to bring happiness to people, to remind them not to hate, but to love and tolerate all people. I brought good feelings to a lot of people and I brought hope to many. My motivation was to make good in this world. In my dreams, Roma will always throw me an apple, but I now know it is only a dream."
You know how every time John McCain did something crappy—like oh, say, abandon the wife who waited for him the whole time he was a POW—we said, Hey, the man was in a box for five years; he's allowed! Why would the McCain Rule not apply to poor Herman Rosenblat? Of course passing fiction off as reality is wrong. And I get why Holocaust scholars are "fiercely on guard against fabrication of memories because they taint the truth ... and raise doubts about the millions who were killed or brutalized.'' But aren't there cases in which embroidering on the truth might not be a sign of insanity so much as the only guard against it?
As Rosenblat's tale is still going to be made into a movie, maybe this is just another case, as per Ben Crair, of America's weird insistence on prettying up the Holocaust by focusing on resistance fighters or righteous Gentiles or especially inspirational survivors. I don't see, though, that this emphasis is either a peculiarly American phenomenon—ever been to France?—or particular to our treatment of the Holocaust. Isn't that what Hollywood does? Could be I am just reacting to Crair's jerky line about "the most wonderful season of the year.'' But while it's true that Schindler's List is no Shoah, making the topic accessible to the general public is no crime, either, is it?
-
sponsorship
That's an interesting question, Susannah: Why aren't women (and other) writers obsessing about Caroline Kennedy's makeup and hair, cleavage and (lack of) peep-toe pumps? I wonder if it doesn't have to do with the fact that her looks are at odds with the preferred narrative about Caroline Bouvier Kennedy, child of privilege and woman of leisure. I mean, she's a handsome woman, but she doesn't look like she spends her life getting facials and shopping, does she? If the visuals screamed Park Avenue Princess, you can bet we would be going on and on about them.
Join the Fray: our reader discussion forum
What did you think of this article?