Years of House Work / Representative Mom
Schroeder, Pat & Molinari, Susan & Burkett, Elinor
BOOKS IN REVIEW House Mothers 24 Years of House Work...and the Place Is Still a Mess: My Life in Politics Pat Schroeder Andrews McMeel / 244 pages / $24.95 Representative Mom: Balancing...
...She alludes to burn-out but quickly establishes herself as an elder stateswoman in the making, teaching at Princeton, serving as president of the Association of American Publishers, and thinktanking at the Institute for a Civil Society...
...Or is there another much deeper, more fundamental reason behind it...
...Their most interesting common ground is their loathing of Newt Gingrich...
...That hatred and that intolerance are fueled by Arab-Moslem fanaticism and intransigence and unwillingness to accept diversity in the region...
...Most of their friends seem to be economists, and after a few chapters it becomes clear that the phrase "a competent economist" is, coming from the Friedmans, akin to a public kiss on both cheeks from de Gaulle...
...Of course not...
...Never again would he run for office because the time and travel demands interfered with the free exercise of his paternal instinct...
...In retrospect it seems natural that Friedman and Hong Kong were destined to find one another...
...Arab-Moslem Fanaticism and Intransigence Are they the root cause of Mid-East turmoil...
...Act rushed to Friedman's table—seeking his autograph...
...She writes "The Misanthrope's Corner" column for National Review...
...Islam's hatred against the West...
...The Bush-Quayle ticket: "What the two of them had in common was their trust funds—they were both members of what I call the lucky sperm club...
...The fact is that war is endemic in the Arab world and that the Moslem Arabs have been waging war against each other and against their non-Arab neighbors for centuries...
...Shortly afterward she and Paxon had a drunken fight in a Staten Island bar and she began screaming, "Forget it...
...I n his own memoirs, James Cagney revealed that though he was known for his gangster roles what he really considered himself was a hoofer...
...The real cause of the never-ending turmoil in the Middle East is the unremitting desire of still most of the Arab-Moslem states to destroy Israel, their inability to come to terms with its very existence...
...Later she wore the suit for Chinese children at the U.S...
...Both books writhe and heave with that terrible earthbound ordinariness of women that Nietzsche deplored when he said, "Wives and children have destroyed more artists than the cholera...
...Of course not...
...What he doesn't tell you is a little flourish that Cowperthwaite revealed to me over a lunch I had with him some four decades after that fateful encounter...
...I'd rather be home...
...She claims he offered her a cigarette lighter inscribed "F--k Communism—John Wayne" that she declined to accept, much to the disappointment of her husband, who pointed out how valuable it would be someday as a celebrity artifact...
...Her first husband was John Lucchesi, a Staten Island limo service operator, whom she married when she was 30 after having a panic attack on the eve of the wedding...
...Molinari's labored explanation of why she suddenly quit Congress to take a job in television is a study in truth through denial...
...All of her anecdotes are crafted around her self-image as a feminist Scourge of God with a cute sense of humor...
...Schroeder, who reheats a lot of leftover one-liners, claims that "My children thought a balanced meal was holding a hamburger with both hands," and excuses her messy housekeeping with her tiresome pun, "I was doing House work elsewhere...
...waylaid the errant baby and, also ignoring the rule, crossed the chamber to return her to her mother...
...They would mess it up...
...She tries to explain how it all came to this, but her tangled account of political infighting makes as much sense as the annexation of Schleswig-Holstein...
...We shared a hug," Molinari gushes, "then looked at each other and laughed...
...The ceremony was spoiled by her father's incredible faux pas...
...Both brag about being terrible cooks and housekeepers and take pains to make themselves sound like Oscar Madison...
...It matters not at all that Schroeder is a Colorado Democrat and Molinari a New York Republican...
...Schroeder is careful to note that her daughter was "a very precocious age two," but that means nothing coming from an American mother...
...It's out of pure joy that I'm doing this," he said in a choking voice...
...Instead they were left to be run by a Scots finance minister named John Cowperthwaite, whom Friedman concedes probably comes closer to his ideal than even Ronald Reagan or Margaret Thatcher (if only because his power was more concentrated...
...We Americans are reluctant to criticize or even to discuss the religions of others...
...Strong women can't be driven out, and she's a strong woman...
...The authors have such similar stories to tell and so many attitudes in common that it's hard to remember which book you're reading...
...Was she burned out...
...Such distinctions have no meaning on the barren heath of the mediocre female mind, and that is the terrain we are asked to traverse...
...BOOKS IN REVIEW House Mothers 24 Years of House Work...and the Place Is Still a Mess: My Life in Politics Pat Schroeder Andrews McMeel / 244 pages / $24.95 Representative Mom: Balancing Budgets, Bill, and Baby in the U.S...
...Daddy Dearest invaded her first press conference and took it over, upstaging her entirely...
...The most oppressive similarity between their books is the smug satisfaction they take in having created a Congress that is sinking helplessly into the muck of "women's issues" in the most literal sense...
...She has the worldview of a teenage diarist, unblessed by analytical thinking or even simple staying power...
...My attention span simply isn't that long...
...She began seeing Bill Paxon but when he started getting serious "I panicked and broke up with him...
...If economists are to have groupies, I suppose it is only fitting that they be in Hong Kong...
...Molinari leans heavily on the phrase "total chaos" and defines dinner at home as Chinese take-out eaten straight from the cartons...
...The atmosphere is humid—and in Molinari's case, fetid...
...First, Hong Kong comes closest to what a Friedmanite society might look like...
...During a debate on funding the National Endowment for the Arts, Molinari's daughter Susan Ruby escaped from the GOP side and crawled over to the Democrat side...
...Her trademark is a condescending, heavy-handed sarcasm that she mistakes for slashing wit...
...Short and blond, she worried constantly that people did not take her seriously, yet in a self-thwarting move that seems unconsciously designed to court an unserious image, she became a high-school cheerleader...
...After attending college close to home she worked for the Republican National Committee until her father urged her to run for the Staten Island seat on the New York City Council in 1985...
...I then said something like, "But the people at the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank don't understand how it works," doubtless listing all the other economists I had discussed the issue with...
...But, beginning with their expulsion from Spain, a long decline set in that lasted until the early 20th century...
...This idiom, like "chow down," is customarily used only by teenage boys and young enlisted men traveling in packs...
...Was she driven out by GOP conservatives who had had enough of her pro-abortion, anti-gun "moderate" stances...
...We can see the handwriting on the wall, except that it's on letterheads...
...Box 590359 ^ San Francisco, CA FLAME is a 501(c)(3) educational institution...
...I told Mr...
...Moslem Arabs obsessed with Israel...
...They met in the middle...
...That decline was the more bitter, because it was inflicted by the despised "infidels...
...The 20th century brought national independence to the Arab states...
...Ha-ha...
...Blinking back tears, he told astounded reporters that he was through with politics, finished...
...It proved to be a vintage performance...
...Decline and rise of the Arab Moslems...
...Re-elected to the City Council, she was just beginning to enjoy her job when "my father threw a monkey wrench into it all by announcing that he was considering giving up the congressional seat he'd held for almost a decade...
...The child piped, "I want to be a congresswoman All of her anecdotes are crafted around her selfimage as a feminist Scourge of God...
...Your tax-deductible 33B contribution allows us to publish these important messages...
...spread fingers like a queasy juror looking at autopsy photos...
...But is that the real reason for the turmoil and for the violence...
...It was something that had to be remedied by whatever means...
...She was walking up the aisle on his arm when suddenly he stopped...
...He did just that, deciding to run for the gritty job of Staten Island borough president so that Susan could run for his vacated seat...
...Islam is a world-wide religion, but it originated in Arabia and it survives in Arabia in its purest and most virulent form...
...Congress would be a better place if members wore bunny suits instead of power suits...
...After a few questions from the floor, the press conference concluded and then came something I'd never seen in two decades of reporting from three continents: The entire Hong Kong press corps WILLIAM MCGURN is a member of the Wall Street Journal's editorial board...
...members' side, the Vernon Jordan side, reserved for those who get paid huge sums for being listed on the left-hand side of letters...
...My father asked me to go with him as his 'date.' When we got to the Lincoln Bedroom, the President showed us in and offered to take photographs of the couples on Lincoln's bed...
...Every time he beat me to the punch with the media, he taught me to move quicker...
...The focus on the Palestinian plight is designed to divert attention from the many domestic problems and inter-Arab conflicts, and to direct the Moslem-Arab frustration against Israel, the "infidel Western outsider...
...Schroeder's humor is celebrated in feminist circles but it's the kind of humor that, were she a man, would result in vacation postcards that say, "The scenery is beautiful, wish you were her...
...I'm not running for governor...
...Molinari comes right out with the S-word and also uses an expression that, while not obscene, is nonetheless jarring coming from a woman: Instead of going somewhere, she "drags ass...
...The 27-year-old Susan won the election—and the sobriquet of "Guy's Doll" from the New York media...
...The Arab Moslems did in their ascendancy give rise to a substantial civilization...
...The eighties: "No one knows how manyminks gave their lives for Ronald Reagan's inauguration...
...A really important and pressing matter was at hand: Susan Ruby needed her diaper changed...
...The policies of the Arab countries are dominated by Islam...
...In terms of their professional work, Hong Kong has played only a minor part...
...Meanwhile, Rep...
...In Two Lucky People, their aptly named memoirs, Milton and Rose Friedman cover an extraordinary amount of ground, from Rose's birth in what is now Ukraine and Milton's undergraduate days at Rutgers to the early years at the Treasury, the Chilean controversy and the Chicago school, and Milton's winning of the 1976 Nobel Prize...
...The two discussed a number of other issues, which Friedman recounts...
...In typically matter-of-fact fashion, Friedman recounts looking up Cowperthwaite for the first time during a flying visit in 1955: I then managed to get an appointment with the financial secretary of Hong Kong, John (now Sir John) Cowperthwaite, a memorable meeting that marked the beginning of a long acquaintance...
...embassy's Easter egg hunt in Peking, answering her critics with the observation that the U.S...
...The occasion was the Friedmans' second trip to China, and though I'd followed the couple's writings since my undergraduate days I'd never before seen the great man in the flesh...
...f Schroeder is a miles gloriosus, Susan I Molinari's desperate need to please and placate is reminiscent of Chaucer's Patient Griselda...
...Schroeder uses "scumbags" and "rat's ass" but retreats into a version of ladylike restraint in a chapter entitled "Congressional Bulls--t...
...We consider it a personal matter...
...There are children, children everywhereseen, heard, nasty, brutish, and short...
...Lots of them, each with Schroeder's name on the left-hand side —the board Two Lucky People: Memoirs Milton and Rose D. Friedman University of Chicago Press 66o pages $35 REVIEWED BY William McGurn I t was a bearish Milton Friedman who greeted Hong Kong from the Conrad Hotel in 1993...
...Once they were married he began urging her to run for governor of New York...
...Nita Lowey (D-N.Y...
...For the first six centuries after the Moslems spilled forth from Arabia, they conquered much of the world, with the sword in one hand and the Koran in the other...
...To Schroeder he's merely a neurotic prone to projection ("If he accused someone of a certain behavior it usually meant he was doing it himself"), but Molinari strongly suggests that he's insane, citing his identification with Napoleon, his excited claim that Mongolians in yurts are reading the Contract With America, and those times when "He'd call Bill and other members of the leadership and weep openly while talking about resigning because saving the world was simply too heavy a burden for him to manage...
...Forget it...
...Electra rides again, but not for long...
...That is the reason that the 21 Arab states, among them the richest countries in the world, with a combined population of more than 200 million and with a land area greater than that of the U.S., have concentrated obsessive ferocity by military, economic, ideological, political, diplomatic, and any other means to destroy the tiny Jewish community of Palestine, and its successor, the Jewish state of Israel—only 5 million people, in a country just one-half the size of San Bernardino County in California...
...He had stopped beside their pew to greet them because "he couldn't resist being Guy Molinari...
...The suggestion that Israel divest itself from its historic heartland, the 2,362 sq...
...If I came up with a good line about an issue, he'd steal it and make it his own ....Or we'd agree not to tell reporters something and, suddenly, the information would appear in the New York Post....Later I'd find out that he had actually sent out a press release....But every time my dad stole a line from me, he was acknowledging how clever I was...
...When she realized her baby was missing, Molinari panicked and went looking for her in defiance of the time-honored rule that representatives never cross the aisle in the middle of a debate...
...One day the florist asked why I was always sending flowers to women...
...It would also be valuable as proof of this story...
...He immediately replied with the answer that I had myself reached...
...But there is little of the hand-rubbing that Cowperthwaite mentions...
...I never knew how to thank them, so I would send flowers...
...So concludes this assessment of Declining and Falling Made Easy...
...The high point of Susan Molinari's life was keynoting the 1996 Republican National Convention while her husband and father sat in the gallery taking turns holding her now-famous baby, Susan Ruby...
...Susan won the seat and basked briefly in the knowledge that "my father's friends, men who had patted me on the head and indulged me as a teenager, were suddenly my peers," but then the bad cop struck again...
...It was quite a come-down for him...
...Asked what she thought about the idea of a father-daughter ticket, she quipped luridly, "If Bill and Hillary can be President, why can't Guy and Susan be governor...
...T hat's the general idea, now to the nuts and bolts...
...Molinari is an exposed nerve, but Pat Schroeder is a slick babe with a spin...
...He kept her constantly off-balance and unsure44 She refers to Dick Armey as a 'chainsmoker,' so presumably he's the villain of the piece...
...Congress Susan Molinari with Elinor Burkett Doubleday / 291 pages / $23.95 REVIEWED BY Florence King R etiring congresswomen Pat Schroeder and Susan Molinari have come out with Beltway memoirs under two separate titles, but they could just as well have been published as one book called Declining and Falling Made Easy...
...For the last five decades, the world has been convinced, mostly because of unrelenting Arab propaganda, that the conflict between Israel and the "Palestinians" is the root cause of the constant turmoil in the Middle East and that Israel should make "concessions" to the Arabs...
...Ideology, even party loyalty, became irrelevant...
...Closing the gender gap: "Maybe in the year 2000 male politicians soliciting the female vote will wear `I feel your pain' high heels and empathetic pregnancy pillows in their trousers...
...She never really nails down her reason...
...When Colorado's Cherry Blossom Princess needed a male escort for the festival, Schroeder donned a bunny suit and did the honors as Peter Rabbit...
...like my mother so I can say `f--k' and `s--t' and not get in trouble," then turned to Schroeder and said, "I told you I didn't want to come...
...Injured pride had to be salved...
...Both are beset by men behaving cluelessly, men who don't take them seriously, and men who are "threatened by strong women," a category in which they persist in placing themselves thanks to a shared inability to grasp the definition of nerve-wracking...
...A less dense woman would have kept it to herself, but her eagerness to display her great sense of humor blinds her to the petty cruelty of her admission: "If our kids grumbled about doing their own laundry, I had a lowly trick: I'd ruin one of their favorite items with a little bleach in the wash...
...She refers to Dick Armey as a "chainsmoker" so presumably he's the villain of the piece, but it doesn't matter because the jaw-dropping part of her book is her story of life with father...
...The kind of mother Schroeder is comes through loud and clear in a blithe confession about the problems of juggling career and homemaking...
...Nothing soars here, nothing...
...Two other fundamental events occurred: 1) The discovery of the world's largest oil deposits under the Arabian peninsula, and 2) The creation, in 1948, of the state of Israel, which ever since its birth has been the concentrated focus of the hatred and venom of all Moslem Arabs, a hatred that unites them, that even surpasses their hatreds against each other, and that has launched them into five disastrous wars against Israel...
...Acts of tenor in the United States, Argentina, England, and Israel have sobered many who had believed the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to be the cause for the unrest in the Middle East...
...But the hatred of the Moslem-Arab world against the West, especially against the United States (the "Great Satan") and Israel (the "Little Satan"), can only be explained by comprehending the psychology and the principal religious tenets of Islam...
...From Pat Schroeder wiping apple juice off herself at her swearing-in to Susan Molinari's baby crawling down the House aisle, the storied chamber now resembles the women's restroom at a Greyhound bus station...
...In the interests of what is lately called full disclosure I should state that I'm getting a procurement bonus from the French Foreign Legion for every man who reads it...
...West Bank," and from the Golan would lead to strategic suicide...
...What are the facts...
...Both are "pissed off" a lot...
...Two Lucky People strikes a similar note...
...Four days after George Bush was inaugurated he invited twenty couples to a dinner and a tour of the White House private quarters...
...Her need to be upbeat leads her into clichés about "making choices" and "controlling my life," her need to be trendy sends her off on obsessive tangents about career versus motherhood ("I just lay there looking at Susan Ruby with utter wonder"), and her need to come across as average and uncomplicated produces a self-portrait for the record books: "Growing old in Congress, being one of those wizened veterans who practically dies on the House floor, would never have fit my temperament...
...Just as well —CBS fired her in June...
...This horse wants to be in the stable with the colt...
...This ad has been published and paid for by FLAME Facts and Logic about the Middle East P.O...
...Her wedding story belongs in a Miss Manners column, but her Lincoln Bedroom story provides new material for Aeschylus...
...I'm a baby boomer raised on television...
...For even when Mother England took a wrong turn after the war, the yellow people of Hong Kong were fortunately not thought worthy of socialism...
...In short order Friedman attacked the Pudong area of Shanghai championed by Deng Xiaoping as "a Potemkin village built for a reigning emperor," growled about a Peking which continued to look to Japan for an economic model despite having Hong Kong on its doorstep, and held up a business card from an official he'd met that listed five or six private side businesses in the upper left-hand corner, calling the mix of government and business "an absolute prescription for corruption...
...The only child of a semi-invalid mother who was unable to have more children, Susan was taken over by Guy Molinari and made to guess what he expected of her while he played both roles in a good cop-bad cop head game...
...Since both are officially liberated they don't bother to watch their language, but their vulgarity is uninspired and their scatologisms cliched...
...Of course not...
...The conservatives sat stock-still, pale and shocked, she notes proudly, and later complained to the media that she had violated their sensibilities...
...The struggle over the Equal Rights Amendment that consumed the seventies gets about two pages, but hey, it lost, so what can you say...
...Soon after her arrival in Congress in 1973, a group of conservative Southern Democrats invited her to a prayer breakfast, "perhaps thinking it would tame me...
...When she emerged as a fierce opponent of the Vietnam war, John Wayne paid her a visit to keep her on track...
...She was no sooner settled in her new job than two more low points came her way: Bill Paxon's ostracism from the House GOP power structure after his part in the failed coup to topple Newt Gingrich, followed by his sudden announcement that he, too, was quitting Congress—not to take a new job, but to spend more time with Susan Ruby...
...Did she step aside to give her husband center stage as the politician of the family...
...of herself, refusing to utter one word of praise when she brought home straight A's, yet encouraging her to follow his footsteps into politics, "although I suspect he wouldn't have done so if he'd had a male heir to his mantle...
...Recalling the time Oliver North named her one of the 25 most dangerous people in America, she says: "I like to imagine this brave marine sleeping with a nightlight because I'm on the prowl...
...Bill Paxon, who, she complains at one point, is "too nice...
...That, in a nutshell, is the sad tale of Susan Molinari, once a comer but now a goner, stuck with a husband who thinks he's Stella Dallas...
...She has the bumptious egotism of the miles gloriosus, the stock character of the braggart soldier in Renaissance literature...
...FLORENCE KING'S most recent book is The Florence King Reader (St...
...Forgive a spinster's ignorance, but do two-year-olds speak in such complete sentences...
...Even the rape of Kuwait by Saddam Hussein's Iraq was explained as being a step towards the "liberation of Palestine," a claim so bizarre, so patently absurd, that it can only be comprehended and given credence by a mind obsessed with the ideology of Arab Islam...
...Well she might, for he got his kicks from planning her future, "a future he was sure would include the presidency...
...Except when she discusses her obstetrical history—unabridged evocations of pain, blood, and suffering at the hands of medical misogynists—she skimps on details and avoids dwelling too long or too deeply on anything...
...Such was Cowperthwaite's conviction that he would not allow the government even to keep GDP figures,lest they be used to justify a case for intervention...
...For those of us who know the Friedmans by their popular economic works and policy advocacy, the book is a reminder that their highest priority was always scholarship and academe...
...Her book is one long, snide wisecrack, except that it's not very long: The print is primer-size in keeping with her intellectual level...
...Only when that will be overcome can peace and tranquility finally come to the Middle East...
...The low point came less than a year later when she suddenly quit Congress before her term was up to anchor "CBS News Saturday Morning...
...She rather liked the idea, but so did her father, who told the press, "Molinari and Molinari would make a good ticket, but we can't agree on which of us would be which...
...But to those of us who have known it as home, the Friedman shadow looms large here, for two reasons...
...the enemies who caused this humiliation and this injury had to be destroyed...
...He actually pulled out a Polaroid camera and, two by two, we paired off for our special photographic session...
...To have Israel as an independent country in the middle of the Arab-Moslem world is utterly intolerable to them...
...This is not a fall, this is a rise...
...the good cop had sacrificed his career for his daughter, or so it seemed...
...Here is her ultimate rationalization of life with Daddy Dearest...
...This is the most unintrospective claim since Nero called himself a great artist...
...It is only with that understanding that the "strategic decisions" of Saddam Hussein, even with his armed forces at the edge of destruction, can be explained...
...Islam believes itself to be in possession of the holy truth, in the name of which any act of violence is permitted and encouraged...
...Both women are nutty and both bolted, but Schroeder is by far the more obnoxious...
...She begins by apologizing for not being an interesting abused daughter in the dramatic Christina Crawford mold, but "nothing much happened to me that was neurosis-provoking...
...She thought he was overcome by the thought of losing her, but then she saw Robert and Elizabeth Dole seated among the guests...
...Everybody knows that Bill saw her as a future president...
...It began with her overbearing father, Guy Molinari, former Staten Island congressman and New York GOP powerhouse, who has done everything possible to test and torment her and keep her coming hack for more, and extends in a twisted way to her husband, The American Spectator September 1998 71 Rep...
...The real cause of the never-ending turmoil in the Middle East is the unremitting desire of still most Moslem-Arab states to destroy Israel...
...More to her taste is the flippant anecdote: "I did have great neighbors in Vir70 September 19 98 • The American Spectator ginia I could call on if my housekeeper collapsed...
...Written in sections alternately by Milton and Rose, it chronicles their life in considerable detail: We learn of Rose's first roast, Milton's first attempted kiss (which Rose declined), the plumbing on their summer house, etc...
...Just when you think she can't possibly get any blinder, she does...
...Everything is played for laughs...
...Our rivalry was a game of pride, our private game, an affirmation of love and respect that only a daughter who goes into the family business can enjoy...
...Cowperthwaite my puzzle [the link between the Hong Kong dollar and pound sterling...
...Competition for media attention was already a tradition between us," she chirps uninsightfully, "and he got plenty that day complaining about my crazy sneakers, unconventional coats, and `superior jogging prowess.'" Now divorced, she invited her female roommate to be her date the first time she was invited to the White House as a member of Congress...
...So unassuming is the tone that even though the FriedLucky the Nation That Has Such People 74 September 1998 • The American Spectator...
...Second, and doubtless for the same reason, when he writes about Hong Kong, it is as close as Friedman gets to a public display of affection...
...The financial secretary replied, as I recall, "Better they shouldn't...
...Equally suspect is her claim that at a victory party after her initial election to Congress in 1972, a reporter she fails to name asked her daughter, then two, what she wanted to be when she grew up...
...Martin's...
...Cheerleaders don't get burned out, and she's a little bundle of pep who "jumps into my sweats" when the jogging hour strikes...
...But, as much as the Moslem Arabs hate each other, most of them are united in their greater hatred against the "infidel Jews" and their tiny country, and they have built vast war machines for the ultimate "jihad" to nuke the Jews, to poison them by chemicals or biologicals, or to chase them into the sea...
...The obsession of the Moslem Arabs with Israel is totally irrational...
...Imagine," she carols, "this little gnat, me, was such a worry to the hawks that they sent John Wayne after me...
...Asked to say a few words, she proposed an Eleventh Commandment: "Thou shalt not bulls--t thy colleagues...
...When he [Friedman] heard about [what we were doing in Hong Kong]," says Cowperthwaite, "he sat in front of me almost rubbing his hands in glee...
...Susan Molinari is so bereft of self-knowledge and introspective power that one is tempted to read this book through 72 September 1998 • The American Spectator You deserve a factual look at...
Vol. 31 • September 1998 • No. 9
