Dear David,
I love Friday mornings because I get to read my two favorite Washington Post columnists, Donna Britt and Carolyn Hax. They both always make me say “yeah, that’s what I thought,” or, more often “yeah, that’s what I think now that someone has explained it with such intelligence and panache.”
Today, Donna Britt talks about yesterday’s above-the-fold odd couple, Linda Tripp and Clarence Thomas, both of whom responded to criticism this week by telling everyone they were just like us. Britt and Tripp may not have realized, when they took actions that seemed reasonable at the time (in Britt’s case, creating a life in which a dog, a husband, a child, and a job all needed her at the same time; in Tripp’s case, creating a life in which she was portrayed by John Goodman on Saturday Night Live), what the consequences might be. Britt says that, like Tripp, she told herself she was in a situation not of her own making, but then she adds, “like Tripp, who is me, I was lying.”
Britt agrees with Justice Thomas that what makes people alike is more important than what makes them different. And, like Thomas, she has been criticized for “not toeing whatever the black line is at any moment.” But Britt is willing to admit that she has been helped in some cases, as well as harmed in many others, by being black, while Thomas continues to deny that he has been the beneficiary of affirmative action. Britt points out that both Tripp and Thomas wanted only the benefits of the choices they made, and insisted that they did not deserve the other consequences. “Which, as Tripp suggested, reveals them to be a part of us all. The worst part.”
Carolyn Hax writes an advice column called “Tell Me About It” for “the under-30 crowd.” I haven’t qualified for that demographic in quite some time, and the dating/engagement/job-hunting/parents driving me nuts/what are the duties of a maid of honor questions are blessedly far from my current list of woes. Despite that, or maybe because of it, or maybe because Hax is just so good, I get a huge kick out of her advice. Just like Britt, she is warmly sympathetic but isn’t fooled by those who insist that their situation is “not of my own making.” Today, she tells a depressed single 26-year-old in a dead-end job and an apparently dead-end relationship that she should feel good about her situation. She is depressed because her life actually does stink, which means it is all fixable, and changing any one of her circumstances will make a big difference. Because she is currently a secretary and does not have enough money to go to college, Hax advises her to get a job in a university so she can get a break on tuition. But, she wisely concludes, “If going to school is the emotional equivalent of rearranging the furniture, see a doctor. The sadness might well be on the inside, and that can be fixed, too.”
Finally, I have to tell you about my current favorite music video. Kacey Jones sings a hilarious song about her ex-husband in which she rhymes “quitter,” “I’d like to rub your face in kitty litter,” and “you had to go and boff the baby-sitter,” with the title of the song: “But I’m Not Bitter.”
