Stop Drop and Remove Foot

CBS White House reporter Bill Plante laments: "But if it were up to Dick Cheney, he wouldn't tell us if our shirts were on fire, for heaven's sake."

There are so many comments that COULD be made about this off the cuff whine, but I'm not sure there's enough bandwidth. I would like to point out, however, that a reporter's job is to find and report the story, not have it spoon fed to him like a toddler gobbling mashed peas. Come to think of it, some of what we've been reading in newspapers and seeing on network news closely resembles those same mashed peas once the toddler has "processed" them.

Scarlett Says: Psst, Bill, you've already crashed and burned.

Movement from Feminism

My mother is a strong woman. She raised two children while traveling the world at the behest of my father’s military career. She has several undergraduate degrees, a master’s degree and a rock solid commitment to excelling in her field of employment. She’s a Christian and a Southern woman- in every sense of those two words. Her sense of family is boundless. I would never characterize my mother as a feminist.

But it was this same woman who told me, shortly after the birth of my first child, that there was no reason I had to give up my career to have a family.

I was struck dumb by that assertion.

There are many careers that are conducive to having a family. There are even those rare paragons of super-womanhood who manage to make the most stressful and time consuming job mesh with the dictates of motherhood. I’m not a superwoman and 14 hour days with a 2 hour commute as bookends were not my idea of how I wanted to spend my children’s infancy.

Life is about choices. Our options aren’t always what we’d like and our decisions aren’t always perfect, but we do have choices to make. I chose to leave behind a high profile, high paying, career to work on my own schedule, at my own pace, and spend more time with my children. I definitely won’t rise to the pinnacle of my one-timer career path, but I’ll be happy with myself and my family because I’ve made the choice that is best for us.

Feminism taught our mothers to seek self-worth and self-fulfillment through competition with men. I don’t need to compete with a man, or in a “man’s world” to value my position and goals in life. My personal choice was to seek fulfillment through realization and compromise. I don’t need to be judged by “what I do” outside of the home. I know my talents, I know my strength and I know that I was gifted in my career path and left of my own volition.

I see my self worth reflected back in cherubic smiles and belly laughs. There was a reason to give up my career for my family- and I’m happy I made the right choice for the right reasons.

Scarlett Says: Thank you Karen Hughes for your example.

Dear Cindy Sheehan

In ancient and medieval times a woman who had lost a husband or sons in war was quietly sheltered by her surviving family. If her grief turned to psychosis she was sent, in the Christian world, to a nunnery to live out her days in the peace and seclusion of the convent. It was understood that her "madness" was through no fault of her own and that she was a creature to be pitied and succored in her grief. However, it was also understood that her extreme protestations of grief could not be allowed to become a sickness that leached through the countryside sapping morale worse than any plague.

Cindy: get thee to a nunnery.