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More from Tim:
We should probably share with XX readers Slate’s rough consensus that the censored word in “Joey doesn't want me. S- this campaign, I'm quitting” was Screw. Why the Journal would omit the word screw here I can’t explain. On the very same day, the Journal quoted Dylan Lauren, daughter of Ralph Lauren and founder and CEO of Dylan’s Candy Bar on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, describing her daily carb intake this way: “"I have to have breakfast otherwise it screws up my whole day. ...” Six days earlier, in a Journal excerpt of Donald Ray Pollock’s book, Knockemstiff, the author’s father was quoted expressing the following opinion of motion pictures: “Screw a bunch of make-believe.” Indeed, it’s hard to see how anyone could publish a newspaper or magazine about the world of business without printing the verb screw on a fairly regular basis. But for some reason the editors omitted screw from Solis Doyle’s quote. Unless it was a different word. Other candidates suggested by Slate staffers included stuff, shove, stop, sauté, shore up, and sod.
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The pertinent fact about Patti Solis Doyle's explanation for leaving Hillary's campaign (that her little boy cried for Daddy instead of for her) seems to me to lie outside its factual veracity. It's probably a fictionalized condensation of something that's happened many times, to Doyle and to every working parent, especially men (who, if they quit their jobs over a toddler snub, get less moral credit for it than we do). Though I can identify with the pain of being the (momentarily) rebuffed parent, the unspoken assumption that the mother must be the child's default choice (or be a bad mother) makes me want to say, boo-frigging-hoo. So Junior wants Daddy in the middle of the night? Great, more sleep for me!
What really makes me smite my forehead is Doyle's choice to use the anecdote now—and make no mistake, true story or not, the woman is cannily using it to protect herself and her boss. It's getting downright painful watching powerful women shoot feminism in the foot in their attempted support of HRC's campaign. Thanks a lot, Patti, for making the rest of us sound as if we're crying wolf when we talk to our bosses about needing flextime or extra sick days. If "my baby needs me" becomes the new "it's my time of the month," an all-purpose cop-out available only to women, that's just one more way to convince the misogynist wing of Hillary-haters (and, paranoid as Erica Jong may be, they're out there) that we're incapable of holding down the big jobs—like, say, president of the United States.
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Granted, Tim, the timing is convenient for Patti Solis Doyle's mommy crisis. But couldn't both versions of events be true for Hillary's former campaign manager? Say your life's work is going down in flames—to the point that One Life to Live seems more realistic all the time, and that storyline about waitressing in Paris, Texas, not altogether unappealing. And just when you're at the absolute snapping point, the one bright spot in your life ... wants Daddy? Not that this is a historical first, no, but when you're overwrought, I could see it being a moment of clarity, just as Hillary needed to make a change. (And as Paul Begala said on CNN the other night, when a campaign is in trouble, you can't fire the candidate, so somebody else has to take the hit.)
"The kids needed me'' may be poll-tested, but it's also a narrative I can't say no to—unless, and this is absolutely unfair—a man is telling the tale. For instance, I heard George Allen on the radio Tuesday saying how it was worth losing to Jim Webb because his 9-year-old daughter made him pancakes last Saturday, and that I found pukatrocious.
As for the crazy goddesses, I'm just as fond of them all the same as I was of my Aunt Ginny who spoke to dead people; they've earned those off-the-meds moments, and may even feel they are required. Though snits like that do suggest that somebody's power is being threatened, which is why I also take them as a sign that the abortion lobby worries that Obama—who is 100 percent pro-choice, despite Hillary's claims to the contrary—might fail to get into the kind of big pointless fights that raise a lot of cash for interest groups.
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A guest post from Timothy Noah of Slate's "Chatterbox" column:
It's the recently that provokes my skepticism. Are we to believe that Solis Doyle's 6-year-old reached his mommy-deprivation limit at precisely the same moment that Solis Doyle's candidate began to falter in the polls? That would be a remarkable coincidence.
Emily Bazelon responds:
I am with Dahlia on this: I find traveling to be the hard part of working. Tim, you also must be right that the timing of the story is too good. I can't decide whether to be offended because the mommy narrative is being used as a transparent cover or grateful that another working parent is saying out loud, as Karen Hughes did before her, that some demands are just too great. I loved it when Mark Warner gave spending time with his kids as a reason not to run for president, making this about fatherhood, too.
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