Pop Culture » mamapundit

Blossom gone birthin’ berserk

Jul 222010

Remember Mayim Bialik? The actress on that TV show “Blossom” back in the 90s? Well, since leaving childhood starletdom behind, she’s grown up to become a PhD neuroscientist, as well as an outspoken advocate for all kinds of parenting ideas with which I agree – like breastfeeding and co-sleeping, etc. She’s apparently also really into homebirthing, and in a recent interview on the topic with a writer for SELF Magazine, she discussed her views on birth and birth choices. Included in the interview is this bizarro quote from Bialik:

“There are those among us who believe that if the baby can’t survive a home labor, it is OK for it to pass peacefully,” she writes. “I do not subscribe to this, but I know that some feel that … if a baby cannot make it through birth, it is not favored evolutionarily.”

Ummmm…..huh, WHA???? Are there really “those among us” who believe this? That’s some scary stuff there. It sounds an awful lot like a nutty, pseudo-scientific offshoot of the belief held by some very religious parents that if prayer and massage won’t heal their children of things like cancer and diabetes, then God must not want those children to live.

I liked the writer’s response:

I think about my appendectomy, back in 2003. Had I not made it to the hospital in time, I would be dead. What would it be like to refuse medical intervention? I’d call my family, say my good-byes. “I’m sorry,” I’d say. “But I’m not evolutionarily favored. It’s time for me to go.”

HospitalTV

May 272010

One thing about spending a month straight sitting in a hospital room is that you watch a lot of TV. I don’t generally watch much TV at all, so I am catching up on all the shows I never see…or never HAVE seen.

After all of this TV watching, I’ve come to one conclusion, and it’s this: Nancy Grace is actually a long running and rather brilliant piece of performance art. I’m sure of it.

1978 Revisited

Nov 262009

I love this home movie made by some kids in Cape Cod in 1978. I recognize the King Kong toy they used to play the part of… King King. My little brother Robert had the same remote control dinosaur toy.

If I were David Letterman’s publicist….

Oct 022009

I must say that I am not really getting the PR strategy behind having David Letterman announce the specific, wildly distasteful details of the whole extortion/infidelity thing DURING his show.

I understand that his PR people were attempting to preempt the media feeding frenzy that was bound to erupt today by having him put it all out there first. I’m sure their thinking was that if the celebrity subject of controversy admits right up front and fairly specifically to the behaviors that are the subject of the controversy, he’s effectively obviated aggressive “investigative reporting” into the matter by the National Enquirer et al. (Call this the “What Have We Learned From John Edwards’ PR mistakes” approach.)

But doing it on his show like that was awkward, tacky and just plain bizarre. It disrespected his audience, who tuned in to relax at the end of a long work day, but who were then rudely and without warning jolted into full wakefulness with this weird, TMI confession about unpleasant aspects of Letterman’s sex life. (Really, no one …NO ONE – no matter how huge a Letterman fan – wants to think about David Letterman having sex, at all, ever, with anyone. )

If I were Letterman’s publicist, I think I would have instead advised pushing out a carefully worded, first-person statement to the media yesterday, offering a more general, yet still clear acknowledgement of his transgressions, followed by a basic mea culpa, and wrapped up with your standard (yet effective) “my attorneys advise me that I should not address this matter further or more specifically, so this is the last you will hear from me about it…”

It’s quite possible that his lawyers, publicist and network execs had no idea he planned to do overshare in the middle of his monologue. I say that it’s possible because that seemed like such an ill-advised way to handle the matter. But if someone did recommend to him that he should spill his guts on-air like that, I’d love to know what their strategic rationale was.

My prediction is that the other shoe hasn’t yet dropped with this story. Why? Because it seems unlikely to me that someone with a relatively high level of experience working in national television and media (the alleged extortionist is reported to be an accomplished network TV news producer) would believe that he could succeed in a high-dollar extortion attempt if the behaviors targeted for blackmail were just general, run of the mill, super-famous-middle-aged-guy-cheating-on-his-wife type stuff. And in fact, Letterman wasn’t even actually married until less than a year ago.

Yep, I’m thinking the worst may be yet to come for Mr. Letterman’s reputation. I hope not, for the sake of his wife, his child and for the people whose jobs depend on his continued ability to draw advertisers. But if there is yet more wrongdoing that David Letterman needs to get off his chest, I sure hope he won’t deal with it by suddenly broadcasting the video evidence in the middle of his monologue.

First fall weather makes me dream of Seventeen Magazine’s 1983 Back to School Issue

Sep 272009

Tonight feels like fall, and when I was a teenager – between the ages of about 13 and 17 – that first hint of fall weather meant only one thing: the arrival of the much-anticipated Seventeen Magazine Back to School Issue. The magazine, which would land in our rural Tennessee mailbox each September, was a wondrous thing that represented all the yet-to-be-revealed, but undoubtedly exciting possibilities for my life ahead.

This particular issue of that magazine during the 1980s was as ponderously and gloriously heavy as a giant, glossy phonebook. Its heft came from the enormous ad revenue that packed its pages, an abundance of riches that the downsized print media industry can only dream of today. But those were the glory days of magazine advertising, with Guess, Fiorucci, Esprit & Bennetton all vying for my adolescent attention.

My sister and I would linger longingly over every square inch of every page of the magazine as soon as it arrived, savoring each fashion-forward image. We generally spent the most time with the full-page Ralph Lauren ads, with their P.G.-Wodehouse-meets-Bret-Easton-Ellis tableaux of bored-looking 20-somethings (so 80s fabulous). Some of these Lauren ads ended up adorning my bedroom walls.

The Laura Ashley ad pages somehow smelled exactly like the actual Laura Ashley Shoppe -surely it had an extra “e” on the end? – in Nashville. I’d love to figure out what marketing magic Laura Ashley’s American advertising agency employed in the 80s. It was some kind of masterfully persuasive sleight of hand (subliminal, maybe?) that somehow managed to convince an entire generation of 15 year old girls that they really did want to dress exactly like explosively floral tea cozies or alternatively, just like Victorian toddlers removed temporarily from the nursery to enjoy a gentle stroll around the garden with Nanny.

I loved, loved, loved my bright red cotton, Laura Ashley dropwaist middie sailor dress, which I honest-to-God wore in public with a straw boater hat, complete with grosgrain ribbon flapping behind. All I needed to complete the look would have been an absurdly oversized lollipop (and had the Laura Ashley advertisement in the pages of Seventeen Magazine suggested that such a thing would be the perfect complement to my boldly ambitious attempt at Sloane Ranger chic, I would have happily carried giant candy on a stick wherever I went.)

Today, fall means something else to me: cold weather coming soon (hate it), Christmas shopping to plan (and afford), less daylight to get things done… But I do sometimes enjoy remembering back to a time when that first cool day was all it took to open me up to the gorgeously photographed possibility that corduroy knickers – perhaps paired with argyle socks and suede oxford saddle shoes from Bass – could make all my dreams come true.

Jody Powell, Amy Carter & Me

Sep 152009

I was sad to read tonight that Jody Powell died of a heart attack. And I was surprised to learn that Mr. Powell, the White House Press Secretary under President Jimmy Carter who went on to become one of the partners in powerhouse Beltway PR firm Powell and Tate ( the “Tate” is Sheila Tate, Nancy Reagan’s former press secretary) was only 65 years old when he passed away today. That means he was only in his mid 30s when he came to DC from Georgia and braved, then won over the aggressive White House Press Corps of that era.

By all public accounts, Mr. Powell was a truly nice man, and I believe it, because he was awfully nice to me.

In 1978, I was a budding news and political junkie living in Bell Buckle, TN. While other little girls in my elementary school class were playing with Barbie Dream House, or experimenting with their mother’s set of Clairol hot rollers, I was more likely to be sitting in a tree in the backyard re-reading about the exploits of Woodward and Bernstein, or maybe flipping through the pages of “The Boys on the Bus.”

During that particular stretch of my childhood, we were allowed to watch some TV (for long periods here and there, when my parents would decide my little brother and sister and I weren’t reading or playing outside enough, we had a TV-free house). I particularly loved the smart, literate Saturday morning news pieces for kids that CBS ran between cartoons, reported by Christopher Glenn.

In these Saturday morning pieces, and on the evening network news, I loved seeing Jody Powell do his job, explaining President Carter’s policies. In our household full of Democrats, with two parents who were journalists, Mr. Powell’s job looked just ideal to me. I didn’t know whether there had ever been a girl White House press secretary (there had not, and would not be for another 14 years, when Dee Dee Myers finally broke that barrier), but I figured I’d aim to be the first.

So I wrote Mr. Powell a rather lengthy letter on the special, new stationery I had gotten for Christmas, the flowery blue paper with my name and address printed at the top. In the letter, I explained to him how I thought that being White House Press Secretary looked far more interesting than being President, and I explained how I intended to be the first girl to land the job. I also asked him whether Amy Carter – who, like me, appeared to be a bookish 10 year old girl with really bad glasses – liked living in the White House.

My parents gently cautioned me that the very busy Mr. Powell might not have time to respond to my earnest letter, but he did, telling me that he appreciated my letter, and that he hoped I would aim even higher than being White House press secretary. And included with his response was an autographed, 8 by 10 photo of Amy Carter, playing with her cat.

I cannot tell you how excited I was to receive this letter. And the photo of Amy and her cat hung on my bedroom wall until it was finally replaced with a poster of Duran Duran.

I think the letter and photo may still be tucked away in a drawer at my parents’ house, along with some other treasured autographs I collected as a child, including Miss Lillian, The Fonz, and both Ponch and John from CHIPs.

Godspeed, Mr. Powell. And condolences to the Powell family on their loss.

How Ted Kennedy and Sarah Palin are alike

Aug 262009

How Ted Kennedy and Palin are the same: Kennedy was the original partisan litmus test of the modern political era; no one was neutral or indifferent about him. People either idolized him, or hated him with foamy-mouthed rage. Sarah Palin is the current, iconic partisan litmus test, inspiring the same extreme reactions in one direction or the other.

The comparison I am making is strictly about the extreme, emotional partisan responses each of these people has the ability to inspire in Americans. Lots of politicians are liked or disliked by “the other side,” but very few become iconic representations of partisan anger and passion like Kennedy and Palin are. Very, very few. Both Kennedy and Palin transcend who they actually are, what they’ve actually done or what their views actually are in the way that people feel about them.

However, when it comes to the two individuals themselves, and their own partisanship, there is a big difference. Ted Kennedy – love him or hate him – is recognized across both aisles as a guy who knew how to work effectively with those in Congress who totally disagreed with him in order to get things done. His views were partisan, but his collegial relationships and on-the-job working style were not. He belonged to an old-school style of partisan politics that allowed titans of both parties to bash heads on the Senate floor all day, and then go out for beers together after work. And that’s why I suspect that Teddy Kennedy, Tip O’Neill and Ronnie Reagan are at this very moment, sitting around a table together at the celestial pub, tossing back and few, and regaling other patrons with hilarious Irish talltales.

It’s a life-threatening illness, not a character flaw

Aug 102009

I cannot recommend the documentary “Boy Interrupted” – currently airing on HBO/HBO On Demand highly enough. If you know a parent who has a child of any age who suffers with mental illness or addiction – or both – today would be a good day to reach out and offer them some love, support and kindness.

And be sure to watch this important documentary – and encourage others to watch – to gain more empathy and learn less judgment for parents of kids with mental illness & addiction diseases.