Check out Meghan Daum – novelist, essayist, newspaper and
magazine columnist.
I believe that regular L.A.
Times opinion contributor Meghan Daum is “right on” in her ideological
perspective.
That’s because she thinks quite a bit like I do.
It’s funny the way that works, isn’t it?
I wonder. Is it even possible to “get into” an opinion writer
whose ideas diverge significantly from your own? Or conversely, to not feel a kinship with a writer whose ideas line up substantially with your own?
If the answer is “No”, I know with the first example – you just
don’t read them. But in the second
example, reading someone with who you consistently agree, what is going on there
that is actually worthwhile? Could you
not be equally illuminated taking a nap?
I’m exaggerating.
(For effect.) It’s nice to have
allies. It makes you feel less
crazy. Or at least crazy, with company.
I have a stack of blog post ideas sitting on my desk, some
have been around for a long time. I retain
them, thinking that some day I will get to them. But so far, they remain unwritten. And all for the same reason. Which is.
I have not discovered what I consider a satisfactory “Angle of
Incidence”, an approach to deliver these indispensible insights, opinions and identifiable
concerns in a manner consistent with the stylistic tonality of Just Thinking…
In other words – those words being the words I use when I am
conversing with myself on such
matters – I have the “What” – the “what” being the idea – but I do not have the
“How” – the “how” being the appropriate “delivery system.”
So I leave them alone moldering on the stack, not ready to
toss, but still unworkable, their prickly content withholding an acceptable direction. This failure speaks to my limitations – or at
least a subsection of my limitations
– as a writer: A self-imposed mandate to,
at least minimally, entertain. And a
hearty aversion to being viscerally disliked.
Meghan Daum artfully, as her writing is skillfully crafted
and easy to digest, and courageously just “goes for it.”
Her not infrequent target?
Her own side.
More specifically, their excesses.
Talk about “asking for it.”
What comes to mind – because I am reading a book about Ruth
Bader Ginsburg – is a recollection concerning Associate Supreme Court Justice Ruth
Bader Ginsburg, who is not generally at the forefront of my mind unless I am
reading a book about her. But this
anecdote fits the narrative, so I am putting it in.
Throughout her long and laudable career, Ruth Bader Ginsburg
has been at the forefront of the struggle for equal justice and opportunity for
women. No doubt at it. The woman’s got the “cred.”
Despite her relentless feminist advocacy, however, Justice
Ginsburg famously – to those who are aware of it, “obscurely” to others who are
not – expressed misgivings about the
sweeping nature of the Supreme Court’s landmark Roe v. Wade (1973) abortion rights decision, favoring, instead, a
decision invalidating the extreme Texas anti-abortion legislation that originally
precipitated the dispute, and then proceeding – assisted by the elected legislatures
– as opposed to the unelected Supreme Court – incrementally towards the
ultimate objective. In her own words,
“If it {the legalization of
abortion} had gone ‘step-by-step’,
the court and the public would have reacted in a more positive way than it
did.”
And the backlash against it would have been less tumultuous.
A matter of opinion, to be sure. But you can imagine its unpopularity in some advocacy
circles.
“We got it. Shut up!”
Meghan Daum backs similar unpopular perspectives in
virtually every column she writes.
Random Column Headlines: (which she probably didn’t
make up, but still.)
All Trump Gropes Are
Bad, But They Aren’t All Equally Horrible
Political Correctness
Is Back In Hurricane Force
Mansplaining? Windbags Come in Both Genders
Random Quotes:
“The idea of loving
someone no matter what they do is overrated, not to mention largely
impossible.”
“When you talk about
not wanting children, it is impossible to avoid sounding defensive, like you’re
trying to prove the questionable beauty of a selfish and too-tidy existence.”
In her most recent L.A.
Times column, questioning the ultimate usefulness of prioritizing “identity
politics” (and then watching identifying “White Folk” hoist them on their
ideological petards) – Meghan Daum,
marked by the inevitable scar tissue, wrote…
“… I was called out
for questioning the usefulness of identity politics. Those who issue such calls will derive some momentary
satisfaction from attacking me, but they’ll be wasting their energies on
someone who is not remotely their enemy.”
A tiny sampling of an
oeuvre, I think, well worthy of investigation.
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