Blog for Choice

My darling daughter N. reminded me that today is “blog for choice” day, in honor of the anniversary of Roe v. Wade and in observance of the importance of freely (yes, that’s my word–freely) available contraception and family planning for all women. Unlike Senator Hilary Clinton, who departs from her otherwise strong pro-choice record by declaring every abortion a “tragedy”, I join feminist writer Katha Pollitt in stating that abortion is desirable and necessary. Full stop.

In the News . . .

I just love seeing my college classmates (Mount Holoyoke 1979) in the New York Times. Today it was Priscilla Painton (MHC ‘80, because she took off a year in France), who was in my German conversation class freshman year. Priscilla, who recently left Time Magazine, was heralded on p.C3 of the Times  as a newly named  editor-in-chief of a section of Simon & Schuster. Although the division’s name, “adult trade” sounds vaguely pornographic, Painton has made a wonderful career move.  Just think, getting paid to promote all those books!

Priscilla’s good friend and Mount Holyoke ‘79 classmate Elizabeth Taylor made a similar leap from Time’s Chicago bureau a few years back, joining the Chicago Tribune as its Literary Editor. Although the Tribune moved the Sunday book section to the Saturday paper about a year ago, Taylor is still listed as “Magazine Editor and Literary Editor” in the Tribune’s staff e-mail directory.  Just think, getting paid to read, think about, and write about all those books!

The “old girl network” pipeline from MHC to Time worked pretty well back in the day. Ellie McGrath, ‘74, was a Time reporter who mentored Liz and other cub Time reporters, and Headley Donovan, Editor-in-Chief, was a trustee of Mount Holyoke. (If memory serves, his daughter attended Mount Holyoke, although don’t hold me to it.)

Star Struck

I loved the 60s Southwest Missouri State College (SMS) basketball Bears. For three seasons, Curtis Perry, an impressive forward from Washington, DC, led the team. Perry made the 1970 draft to San Diego. A young Perry later showed up in a George Pelecanos crime thriller, in an early 60s chapter.

SMS produced actors, too. It was known for Tent Theater, the summer stock drama program. My dad still reminisces about his favorite performance of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream, ” in the 70s. John Goodman was Bottom. Kathleen Turner was Titania. Tent Theater also featured Tess Harper back then, who later starred in a Texas movie with John Malkovich and was never heard from again. A kid named Pitt from Kickapoo High School made the big time. On Sell’s bio page IMDB erroenously reported that Pitt spent time at SMS but Pitt actually attended Mizzou. Known as Brad, made his big screen debut getting offed in a parking lot by Susan Sarandon. My brothers played little league with Pitt’s brothers.

Springfield produced TV notables, too. Our neighbor Wilbur taught Price is Right host Bob Barker at Drury College when Barker was an economics major in the 1940s. My friend Kathy’s parents entertained Donna Douglas, “Ellie Mae” of the Beverly Hillbillies, at their boat up at Lake of the Ozarks. Kathy’s family met Donna when an episode was filmed in Missouri. Branson had not yet become the entertainment mecca we know today. Back then, the Shepherd of the Hills pageant was the biggest show after Silver Dollar City.

My cousins lived a block from the Ciccone family in Rochester, Michigan. The Ciccone’s oldest daughter graduated from Adams High School with my cousin Tom in 1976, and attended his graduation party. My late Aunt Kathy recalled that the girl came to the party barefoot, her feet dirty. Aunt Kathy also sold an a used girls’ bike to Mrs. Ciccone. My cousin Marie once espied the neighbor girl under the school stadium bleachers, smooching another girl. When the neighbor girl became famous in show biz. she dropped her family name and went by her first name, Madonna.

A guy I knew from high school, Rod Sell , spent time at SMS, but then became a stage actor in Chicago in the 80s. I used to see Rod in plays. He was great in Bob Meyer’s brilliant production of Mamet’s “American Buffalo.” Rod got into movies. Years later, I watched a home video of “Groundhog Day.” Who should be playing the mustachioed town mayor, but Rod! Over and over and over again, Rod presided over the big town rally with his shoulders shaking, belly rolling and voice booming : “Hey, there, what can I do yah for!!” “Hey, there, what can I do yah for!!”

My NYU law school classmate Marc Platt produced the law school musical every year. Marc is now a fabulously successful Hollywood and Broadway producer with more insight into the entertainment needs of my teen and pre-teen girls than I’ll ever have. See, e.g., Wicked; Legally Blonde; Legally Blonde II, Wicked, the movie, Legally Blonde, the musical . . . .

I studied piano in Chicago with Mrs. Evans, whose daughter Andrea Evans was a soap opera star. Mrs. Evans is in one of the pictures on Andrea’s website. I now study piano with Mrs. L, whose actress daughter Robin starred in an HBO series where Robin’s character cussed up a storm. Mrs. L. is not on Robin’s website.

My husband’s college classmate Chris Murray finished filming the new season of Zoey 101 at the end of August last year. Chris’s star-struck seven year old daughter was so excited to meet Jamie Lynn Spears at the wrap party! Chris was so pleased to be working for Nickelodeon! When Chris came to visit my daughters were so thrilled to meet a star from cable! We can’t bring ourselves to phone Chris and ask him his plans for next season.

How Far is “Far?”

With certain exceptions, most U.S. Supreme Court cases are heard as appeals from decisions by lower courts, so the justices may only rely on evidence developed in the trial court “record” below. No question, Justices reviewing cases also draw from their life experiences. For example, in the last Supreme Court term Justice John Paul Stevens invoked his Chicago upbringing as the child of tavernkeepers in a case concerning interstate liquor sales. But typically Justices may not incorporate facts from outside the record unless it is a matter of which they may take “judicial notice,” such as the time of sunrise on a date certain. The question of personal knowledge affecting a case brings me to U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, son of a Bethelehem Steel company executive, who grew up in the comfortable environs of La Porte County, Indiana, where he attended a Catholic boys’ boarding school before he left for college–eventually, Harvard and Harvard Law.

Last week, Chief Justice Roberts cited, without reference to the record on appeal, personal assumptions about Indiana geography during oral argument in Crawford v. Marion County Elections Board. Crawford is a suit challenging recently enacted, burdensome Indiana Voter ID laws. Plaintiffs charge that the law places the unconstitutional burden on Indiana voters who lack the specified form of ID now required, because, among other reasons, these voters must now travel to the county seat to”vote by affidavit” each time they wish to cast their ballots at their local polling place.

Polling places tend to be extremely convenient to voters and located a short distance from home. But now, no matter how well known to the poll watchers and election judges, no matter how many years a citizen has cast her ballot at the location, no matter how identically her signature matches up with the signature card on file, an Indiana voter without the newly imposed, specified form of “official” photo ID must travel from the polling place to her county seat to fill out the required affidavits to cast a provisional ballot.

Attorney Paul M. Smith presented this argument to an unreceptive Court. Smith tried to explain that the county seat isn’t necessarily close , or easily accessible, to the voter, but Smith could not punch through the gauzy memory of Chief Justice Roberts. To Roberts, and to at least one of his Republican colleagues, “close” is just a gassed up car at the ready. Chief Justice Roberts openly scoffed at Attorney Smith, demanding “how far away is the furthest county seat for somebody in the county,” only to cut off Smith’s reply , “I don’t know the–” interjecting his own evidentiary conclusion:

Chief Justice Roberts: “County seats aren’t very far for people in Indiana.”

But the underlying question, forthrightly presented by by Attorney Smith, and dismissed by the arrogant Roberts, boils down to this: how far is “far?”

Smith continued: “If you’re an indigent person, Your Honor, in Lake County, in Gary, Indiana, you’d have to take the bus 17 miles down to Crown Point to vote every time you want to vote. And if you’re indigent that’s a significant burden, and. . .”

Here, the indefatiguably arrogant Justice Antonin Scalia interrupted with his signature combination of bullying and arrogance:

“It’s not a burden if you’re not indigent?” Responded Smith, “Well, it’s–it’s less of a burden, Your Honor, considerably less of a burden. You–

The ever bombastic Justice Scalia interrupted again: “17 miles is 17 miles for the rich and the poor.”

So there it is, Republican jurisprudence in a nutshell. Gosh, it’s just as burdensome for a Bethlehem Steel executive whose passport was stolen yesterday to drive to La Porte to vote by affidavit as it is for the low-income Gary resident who needs bus fare, frequent bus service, possibly para-transit (which has to be reserved days ahead), child care, or half a day off from her hourly job to “dash” off to the county seat. Which neatly summarizes the open antagonism of the Republican party toward the poor, the infirm, and the elderly. It also reflects the right wing power structure’s naked desire, reaching its fullest expression through these Reagan-Bush II Supreme Court appointees, to eliminate from public discourse and public life the voices of any individual with the bad judgment to lack middle class income, or its accoutrements of ease and entitlement.

The cavalier pose of Chief Justice Roberts is as self-centered and clueless as that that fictional scion of Northern Indiana suburbia, the eponymous Jerry Engels from the novels of the late Thomas Rogers . Nothing is far for a guy with a car.

Known Associates

“It’s not what you know, it’s who you know,” so goes the old saw. My political bona fides span four decades, three states, and two continents. Here are some of the public figures whose paths I’ve crossed since my Missouri childhood.

Our Catholic Archbishop for the Springfield-Cape Girardeau Archdiocese in the 70s and 80s was a Bostonian named Bernard Law. The Vatican sent a series of up-and-comers through that Ozarks posting, a hardship position and a great training ground for Bishops of potential rising through the ranks. Truly the “buckle of the Bible Belt,” Springfield boasted the world headquarters of the international Assemblies of God, sponsor of the local affiliate Evangel College. Two other fundamentalist colleges graced our fair city, Central Bible College, and Baptist Bible College (alma mater of the late Jerry Falwell.) The President of Evangel College in whose years was a man named Ashcroft, whose son graduated the Springfield public schools before heading off to Yale, and Yale Law, of whom more later.

Bishop Law’s predecessor, a kindly, bald and bespectacled fellow named Baum, bounded off to Rome from Springfield, landing a high level policy job and his Cardinal mitre with barely an intermediate stop in Kansas City. The Vatican welcomed him as “Cardinelli Boom.” Cardinal Law also launched his rocket climb up the hierarchy from his seat as Archbishop of Springfield-Cape Girardeau. After Springfield, Bishop Law rose to Cardinal and Archbishop of Boston, where, sadly, he gained notoriety for his morally bankrupt, his politically inept, obstructionist rejection of allegations of priestly child abuse in his archdiocese. Law ended up in Rome, after all, put out to a pasture by a Vatican desperate to keep him out of sight and equally desperate to quell the Catholic public uproar.

My connection to Law dated back in the mid-1970s, when Law was counselling my sweetheart Mike S. (who dubbed Law “Bernie”) during Mike’s years in priesthood prep at St. Meinrad’s Seminary in rural Indiana. Bernie often reminded Mike that Bernie, originally from Boston, attended Harvard before he enrolled in his own ecclesiastical studies. Bernie spoke of those years with a wink-and-a-nudge, innuendo that was reassuring to a seminarian struggling with a future of forced celibacy. I recall Mike taking me by Law’s archdiocesean offices in downtown Springfield for an introduction and visit, and I would like to believe no wink or nudge passed between the men that day.

Incidentally, Mike’s late father, a public school educator, was a social studies teacher in his early career. One of his prized students at Study (rhymes with “Judy”) Junior High, on Springfield’s North side, was none other than the young John Ashcroft. As he lay ill with cancer, Mr. S. still referred to Ashcroft fondly as one of “his boys.” By then, Ashcroft had been elected to county, then statewide office,well on his way on the trajectory that (he credited Jesus for fueling) put him in the Attorney General’s seat in George W. Bush’s first term. I later wondered whether then-Missouri Attorney General Ashcroft ever met with then Bishop Law, in those quiet years before both burst onto the national scene. My father played pick-up basketball games with Ashcroft from time to time from the 1960s through the 1980s on the campus of what was then Southwest Missouri State College. Ashcroft avoided the draft by teaching business at SMS for a few years in the 60s; my dad was an English lit. prof. there his whole career.

My mother attended Wal-Mart shareholder’s meetings in Arkansas in the 1980s. She met Bill Clinton at one such meeting. Mom described looking up at the “best looking man she’d ever seen.” Bill Clinton taught my friend Marin’s Constitutional Law class at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville in the 1980s. Marin did not ask Professor Clinton for a reference at the end of the semester. Marin’s friend, who did, won a cushy job at State in 1993.

In the late 80s, my Chicago chum E. became the first chief of staff for a newly-created ABA Commission on the Status of Women in the Law, whose champion and creator was the wife of Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton, his Yale Law School classmate Hilary Rodham. Rodham added “Clinton” to her name, made her fortune in commodities trading, left her mark on the ABA, then returned to Arkansas to tackle the state’s education system. E.stayed at the ABA, but moved from the Commission on Women into the Torts division by the mid-1990s. By 1992, Governor Bill embarked on his presidential campaign, back in the days the primary season stretched from February to August. E. and her then-husband, an aspiring Chicago Alderman , hosted a series of small gatherings to introduce candidate Bill Clinton to the locals providing my one and only chance to meet Mrs. Clinton. I saw her up close in an event at the executive offices of the YWCA in early April of that year.

Ah, the Chicago years. Those were the days. My book group included the future wife of Rahm Emmanuel.My closest friend in Chicago–who coincidentally attended high school with Rahm–married a speechwriter for a Democratic presidential frontrunner. Our 1988 Wedding guest roster included one sitting and one future member of Congress; several Illinois legislators, one sitting and one future Chicago Aldermen; the eventual chief of Staff to mayor Daley; an eventual Evanston School Board Member; Congressional staffers; policy wonks, and various other unsavory types. I had been an attorney for the City of Chicago in the exciting days of the progressive administration of Harold Washington, the Black mayor of Chicago who unseated the political machine.The following year I went to work for the venerable Leon M. Despres, who had been the most notable and accomplished dissident Alderman to oppose the first Mayor Daley in the 50s, 60s, and 70s. In 1990 my husband, who had worked for a Congressman, then an alderman, then as a lobbyist for a consumer group, was a volunteer fundraiser and supporter of the upstart U.S. Senate campaign of the late, great Paul Wellstone.

These days, my connections are remote, the politics tame. Having moved to Australia for three key years in the late 90s, then relocated to the Washington, DC area on return stateside, the Chicago glory days of political elbow-rubbing are but a distant memory. These days I even have to scrape up connections to Republicans: my mother-in-law’ friendship with Richard Armitage’s mother-in-law; my brother’s former job as pitchman for Amway products under Doug Wead, who later becaume a staffer in George W. Bush’s first term; or my college chum who served as a town council member in her Pittsburgh suburb.

The elected officials I now encounter run along the lines of our PTA executive board. In a company town where government is the industry, rubbing elbows with politicians seems like work–and triggers yawns, not thrills. Oh, I’m officially a “Friend” of an impressive freshman member of Maryland’s House of Delegates, Tom Hucker. And I finally stepped up to the plate to campaign for Donna Edwards, an exciting progressive challenger to our sclerotic incumbent Congressman. True, my oldest and dearest friend in DC is an elected official, but ours is a personal, and not political, connection. I have fun tweaking her Hill colleagues when they see us together at dinner,especially when they appear to worry that I’m “someone” they should remember.

My dear Chicago friend’s husband still writes those Presidential campaign speeches, but most of the elected officials at our wedding have left office. Chicago Mayor Harold Washington died 20 years ago November. We lost our beloved Paul and Sheila Wellstone in 2002. My husband went back to work for the Aussies last year, and I practice law just part-time, on contract, for Maryland and DC employment lawyers who support good Democrats. Politics should be essential, urgent, and vivid. But these days I’m blogging, opining, listing known associates. Taking stock alongside, no longer inside, politics.

Gloria Gets It Wrong

Gloria Steinem’s rant in yesterday’s New York Times, apparently written over the weekend, may have been the second most popular op-ed piece in the Times this week, but not because she was right–or accurate. Except for the brief few days of post-victory bounce enjoyed by Senator Barack Obama between the Iowa caucus and yesterday’s New Hampshre primary, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton has been the front runner in nearly every national and local poll of likely Democratic voters. Forget her high negatives; never mind nagging voter concerns about “electability;” Clinton has been the top choice of the plurality, if not majority, of self-identified Democrats for many months. So Steinem’s tirade about women “never” being “front-runners” rings false, and sounds whiny.

Steinem also misses the mark with her attack on Senator Obama’s biography. In the guise of a thought experiment interrogating the role of gender, Steinem huffily demands whether a woman with an identical c.v. might claim the “biography of someone who could be elected to the United States Senate?”

Has Steinem now forgotten that in long-ago 1992, the same year Bill Clinton won the Presidency, the good people of Illinois elected an African American woman to the United States Senate? Remember Carol Moseley-Braun? Senator Moseley-Braun, a lawyer and former state legislator, was born and raised and made her political base on the South Side of Chicago. Unlike Steinem’s fictitious “Achola Obama,” Mosely-Braun boasted no Ivy League degrees, although she graduated from the top-ranked University of Chicago Law School. Also unlike her fictional counterpart, Moseley-Braun hailed from an intact, African-American family. Moseley-Braun was, however, divorced–from a white ex-husband, with whom she had a son. During her senate term she forged an exceedingly a close attachment to her chief of staff whose first name, Kgose, was at least as exotic as either “Barack” or Steinem’s made-up moniker, “Achola.” Finally, if memory serves, Moseley-Braun in 2003 formed an exploratory committee as she pondered a run for the presidency.

Neither race nor gender “restricted” Moseley-Braun in her race for the U.S. Senate. In fact, she was the beneficiary of widespread feminist and civil rights-activist based outrage at incumbent Senator Alan Dixon’s judiciary committee vote in favor of Clarence Thomas for the Supreme Court. And, yes, her presidential trial balloon fell absolutely flat. No one ever touted Moseley-Braun for her charisma, but look how far she went nonetheless? No goose-cooking there.

No question, 20th century American voters traditionally discounted women seeking high political office, strong or not. I vividly recall the late Harriet Woods describing her 1982 campaign against [the phlegmatic] John Danforth for the U.S. Senate seat in Missouri. Her polling revealed that the majority of Missouri voters would never elect “a woman” at the head of a ticket, irrespective of “qualifications,” “charisma,” “experience,” or even party identification. By 1982 Woods was already an elected Lieutenant Governor, a post she had handily won, and had served with distinction in St. Louis county politics. Still, the voters had a visceral reaction against elevating her to the top. And Danforth, who was Missouri’s incumbent Attorney General (where he mentored a young Yale Graduate named Clarence Thomas; see above), sailed to victory.

So who now holds that very U.S. Senate seat in Missouri? A woman, former Missouri Auditor/Attorney General/Jackson County Prosecutor Claire McCaskill, elected in the Democratic sweep of 2006. McCaskill is one tough cookie, an ambitious, savvy, career politician who was already in the Missouri State House of Representatives back in 1982.

Like Missouri’s Democrats, millions of American voters act ready to knock back the phantom “sex barrier” Steinem divined in the Iowa results. Together with her friends and allies, Steinem, a fearless second-wave feminist foremother, achieved so much in the latter third of the 20th century. She rallied and organized and exhorted and cajoled women and men alike, to name, and then resist the sexism, patriarchy, and gender oppression that held women back and prevented a just society. Look how much we’ve gained! Here we are, with a woman front-runner! I just wish Steinem would step back and take credit for the successes her movement achieved.

Smart Girls

Glenn Greenwald made this observation today in his roundup of press reports of and blogger reactions to an otherwise minor Iowa campaign trail snippet:

Just contrast the frosty, petulant reception they gave Hillary when she entered their bus with the way White House press reporters at the President’s news conferences, for years, cackle at his every attempt at humor and light up with glee when he deigns to engage them in his insulting frat-boy repartee. But in contrast to George the Popular Jock to whom they’re grateful for any attention, Hillary is the overly competitive, know-it-all girl at the front of the class with all the answers, and so instead of acting like professionals and just treating like her like a candidate running for President, and taking the opportunity to ask questions when she entered the bus, they instead band together like they’re in eighth grade and give the mean, unpopular girl the cold shoulder.

Is it any wonder that Hillary never boards the press bus? Personally, I’d rather be in Siberia than be in Iowa around all of that.

Hoo, boy, does that trigger rotten memories of my Ozarks grade school, junior high, and high school years in the 60s and 70sl! Like Glenn, I don’t have to support Hillary to be pained and disgusted by the story. (We know-it-all Seven Sister grads still need to stick together!) I’m disgusted to see that pack anti-intellectualism still reigns supreme, and pained to be reminded of behaviors I’d hoped to escape when I left Missouri more than 30 years ago.

Unlike Glenn, I don’t conflate “mean” with “smart.” A brainy girl who knows the answers was bound to be unpopular in 1960, but not necessarily because she was “mean.” I still recall, vividly, the hatred directed across the classroom toward my eagerly waving hand. The meanness came at me, not from me. Our freshman civics teacher, Coach Roweton, chided three of my female classmates who equaled or out-scored me on pop quizzes: “Donna, Peggy, you’re hiding your intelligence,” he’d say. Donna and Peggy were no dummies. Coach was right about that. Each shrewdly kept her light under a bushel, knowing full well the key to popularity was an apparently empty head. I can’t speak to classroom dynamics in Park Ridge, Illinois, but I have to imagine that it wasn’t far ahead of Parkview High School a decade later. Like Hillary, I fled the hostile middle west for an all-women’s college out East where achievement from young women was expected, not resented.

And, like Hillary, I’ve had to learn the hard way that, no matter how far we flee, lots of folks still dislike gals who know stuff. Having been chided at Washington dinner parties for my command of “facts,” I know all too well the malice aimed toward the female, gifted, and smart. “Walking dictionary” is still an epithet, not an accolade.

There was an internet joke circulating a few years back, calculating the comparative dollars/per/second earned by Michael Jordan versus Bill Gates. “Nerds rule!” they chortled. But smart, confident girls? Rule? Remains to be seen.

Bring Back the Lorgnette!

As a print-based lady of a certain age, one’s arms fail to reach far enough to bring one’s reading matter into focus. The shrinking-arm-syndrome was no surprise; dear Dr. David Kepner, D.O., had predicted, perfectly, the impending need for +1.25 bifocal magnification, at age 42. Several years and a dozen pair of spectacles later, one is completely reliant on +2.00 magnification (up close) and +1.5 (mid-range). A lady friend, Diana, meets her focal needs with “monovision,” wearing a single contact lens to allow functional close and far range vision without resort to bifocals. Late Great-Aunt Helen achieved the same result by popping out a contact to read a document or letter.

Reading glasses suited one just fine, providing a guilt-free, ongoing excuse for accessory shopping. One never had too many pair of reading spectacles! Red, blue, black enamel, oblong, cat-eye, oval, Pink for piano; rose for the pc. Tortoise shell from CVS; wire rim from Now and Then–the gamut. A beaded librarian-style neck chain completed the ensemble. One converted the necessary evil to a fashion statement.

Yet; and yet. . . One’s first stirrings of discontent arose at the beauty salon (topic of a future post), where the toxic stew of ammonia based dye corroded the legs of reading glasses slipped over unprotected ears. The stylist provided little plastic sleeves to cover the glasses, but the tiny slipcovers annoyed the wearer rather than protected the glasses.

At that moment, one longed for the return of that essential accessory of the Edwardian age, the lorgnette, briefly defined as a pair of eyeglasses perched on a handle. Here’s a fetching example. One envisions elderly characters in the Disney Mary Poppins.

Since that epiphany, the urgency only grows. Last month at an afternoon tea, one needed to read name tags on fellow lady lawyers, but fumbled the hasty handbag plunge for reading glasses. How elegantly, and discreetly, one might have sharpened one’s vision with a gentle lift of the frames perched atop their delicate handle, as one leaned ever so slightly forward, for the closer, crisper peek at the lady’s name and affiliation.

Restore elegance. Preserve dignity. Command respect.

Bring back the lorgnette!

Background Check

Joe Nocera’s column in Saturday’s New York Times focused on FDIC Chairwoman Sheila Bair, formerly staffer to ex-Senator Bob Dole and more recently a professor at UMass. See the whole story here.

This aside stopped me in my tracks:

“The person the administration had hoped to nominate as chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the nation’s primary bank regulator, was suddenly proving unacceptable. (According to the Washington rumor mill, that choice, Diana L. Taylor, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s companion and, at the time, New York’s superintendent of banking, was nixed by the National Rifle Association, presumably because of Mayor Bloomberg’s antigun stance.)”

But a bit of research and reflection suggests that the story isn’t the grim tale of suffering-because-of-spousal assocations (or, non-spouse) it first seemed. The Times’ lengthy 2006 profile of Ms. Taylor when her FDIC nomination stalled also hinted at the possibility of an NRA veto. See the earlier story here.

 

But the FDIC Chairmanship is subject to Senate confirmation, and the Senate was evenly divided between Rs and Ds back in early 2006. It is easy to imagine a scenario in which the White House congressional liaison advised Bush that no one with anything to do with Bloomberg had a prayer of Senate confirmation. The NRA held tight rein in that chamber, and the White House probably lacked the votes, or the interest in the arm-twisting it would take to counter NRA opposition. Bair, the final pick, had Senate ties, presumably a plus for the 50 Republicans (and several pro-gun Dems) whose votes were key.

Yes, it’s annoying that Ms. Taylor’s nomination was withdrawn because of the actions of her friend Bloomberg, and nothing to do with her views, personal or public. There was no suggestion she ever personally lobbied for or advocated for or in any way spoke out about gun control. She’s no Sarah Brady or Congresswoman Carolyn McCarthy. Taylor’s passionate policy pronouncements seem to have run the gamut from denouncing excess banking fees to urging greater access to banking services for immigrants. No, she was the victim of NRA payback to Bloomberg, pure and simple.

But the Bush Administration will happily name persons to influential policy posts irrespective of the politics or alliances of the person’s spouse, or “companion.” Mary Matalin, counsel to Vice President Cheney, and wife of notorious Democratic Consultant and pundit James Carville comes to mind. Josh Bolten, White House chief of staff is another example.  Libby Copeland reported in an Aug 29, 2006 Washington Post story last year that  Bolten’s live-in girlfriend Dede McClure was a Democrat. Neither Matalin nor Bolten’s appointment was subject to Senate confirmation. And there was no suggestion in either of these cases that either appointee was tainted by her husband or “companion.”

A quick Google search revealed that Ms. Taylor rebounded pretty well from the FDIC mess. She took a job in the private sector, and this June was been named to serve on the FDIC advisory board. Her skills, knowledge, banking experience and formidable talent are already put to good use in helping regulate America’s banks. Maybe the next president, a Democrat, will find a way to keep using her talents, despite her association with a notorious Republican.

Watch those Wives

The other day I attended an afternoon tea sponsored by the Women’s Bar Association. (No fancy hats or white gloves–it’s winter!) The guest speaker was New York Times reporter Linda Greenhouse, Supreme Court correspondent for more than 25 years. I took the opportunity to ask her what she thought of the recent practice of the press to give extensive news feature coverage to spouses of Supreme Court nominees, and whether she thought this was a change from her earlier years covering the Court, in the ’70s. I named the particular focus on Jane Sullivan Roberts, an attorney, and  Martha-Ann Bomgardner Alito, a law librarian-turned-at-home-mom. Ms. Greenhouse’s initial, somewhat dismissive response was that “well, back in the old days, the wives weren’t lawyers. And besides, it’s interesting!”

Knowing how carefully the Bush Administration stage-managed the nominations of John Roberts and Samuel Alito, I doubt the Times or other papers had to do much digging to reach friends and family members who were quoted extensively in the many stories leading up to the nomination hearings. Astonishingly detailed profiles emerged in each case. Seemingly everything was offered for scrutiny, from Ms. Sullivan Roberts’ quirky choice of car to her working class roots in the Outer Boroughs. Times pundits opined that Ms. Sullivan Roberts’ activities in Feminists for Life (or a similarly named group–forgive my memory) were being offered as a wink and nudge to the pro-life lobby. Mrs. Alito’s career arc merited a bit less ink, but her devotion to her children’s sports activities and her active, supporting role as a substitute staffer in their schools were duly noted and analyzed.

So the reading public was treated to this coverage of the ladies solely because it’s “interesting?” Greenhouse was a bit too coy, and her first response was more telling. The wives of yore didn’t merit the same coverage, because they “weren’t lawyers.” Oh, really? If the mere fact of being a lawyer-spouse was the reason for the coverage, then one might expect the analysts to focus on areas of potential case conflicts or sources of recusals. Anyone who covers the law as closely as Greenhouse must know of  attorney’s and judge’s ironclad oaths of confidentiality. Presumably Chief Justice and Mrs. Roberts were scrupulous to honor their oaths during their years of law practice at separate firms, and presumably would remain as scrupulous during Justice Roberts’ tenure on the bench. But, as I recall, aside from brief descriptions of Ms. Sullivan Roberts’s communications law practice and her somewhat reduced work schedule following the adoption of their two children, the tenor of the stories followed the usual tone adopted by any standard personality profile.

What I hoped for from Greenhouse was the acknowledgment that, while the press feeds the reading public’s insatiable appetite for gossipy profiles of wife and family, those features weren’t particularly relevant to substantive, important issue at hand, whether Judges Roberts and Alito were the right picks for the U.S. Supreme Court. And, if there is an argument to be made that the work, courtship, and family history of a potential Justice’s wife is relevant, then we need to know why. In that case, the Times and its fellow newspapers of record dropped the ball.

My next post will examine a recent instance where the Bush administration allegedly slapped down a potential appointee because of spousal politics. Sometimes it matters, but for the absolutely wrong reasons.