I'm sorry, but I've heard more than enough interviews with Nadya Suleman, the single mother of octuplets plus six other children. NBC and Ann Curry (one of my TV favorites) scored a coup by getting an extensive interview with her and a first look at those tiny babies. but they've stretched it thin. I will not judge Ms. Suleman, though I'm quite sure I'd have made different decisions than she did, and I worry about the future of all 14 children, no matter how much she loves them. I also worry about the cost to taxpayers, especially since she lives in California which is near bankruptcy. But the interviews have almost been an attempt to justify, to explain her, and while I want to sympathize--I understand the love of babies as much as anyone--I'm tired of it.
On the other hand, I'm not at all tired of Michelle Obama. We actually haven't seen much of her on TV since she's become First Lady, but a few clips tonight showed her setting her own path, in an unselfconscious manner, slowly creating a public personna for herself--but oh so slowly. From all reports she's not only well educated and smart, she's charming and most charismatic (a trait she shares with her husband). I'm most impressed, but, hey, she comes from the South Side of Chicago. That of course can't explain it all, but in a broad generalizaton I'd say young black women who grew up there either did nothing with their lives or with great determination rose above the crowd. I'm a fan.
I meant to be rereading my second mystery tonight, but I got distracted by a PBS program called, "Looking for Lincoln." In a sense, it was about deconstructing (a literary term that I hate becuase it always puzzles me a bit) the myth about Lincoln--the Great Emancipator apparently believed strongly that slavery was wrong but he didn't necessarily believe in the equality of the races nor that blacks should vote, serve on juries, etc. It was fascinating to hear Lincoln scholars, mostly men who have devoted their professional lives to the study of Lincoln, talk abut him as a human being, his strengths, his weaknesses, his fight with depression. Doris Kearns Goodwin was prominent on the program and toward the end she talked about the subject of her new book--Lincoln and his team of rivals. It made me think of President Obama, who has appointed a bipartisan cabinet. There's a cartoon that shows the statue of Lincoln with his arms raised in the air, shouting "Yes!" and an attendant telling a tourist, "He's been that way since the election." Tonight's program made me think he might not have reacted that way to the election results, but as one historian pointed out, he was a product of his time. His beliefs about racial equality were shaped by his rural midwestern upbringing and mid-nineteenth-century culture. A truism of history that people too often overlook--you have to judge people according to their time and place in history. Fortunately for the country, he was the right man in the right place--and he hated slavery. So he did indeed change the course of our national history.
Back to rereading "No Neighborhood for Old Women."
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