I was eager to use my position to fight that battle. As managing editor, I had a real say in what kinds of stories we were going to do, pushing the team to cover things like sexual assault in the military; dating violence, after UVA lacrosse player Yeardley Love was beaten to death by her boyfriend; the plight of Afghani girls who dared to attend school. I did a 60 Minutes piece on college freshman Beckett Brennan, who’d been raped by three basketball players, and how terribly she was treated by the police and the university.
I also made sure that not-so-subtle sexism didn’t seep into the newscast, always on high alert when our three male news writers described Hillary. More than once I asked Jerry, “Would you describe a male candidate that way?”
When Hillary lost, I used my daily commentary to talk about the misogyny I had witnessed, pointing a finger at “all the people who crossed the line and all the women and men who let them get away with it.”
That caught the attention of high-strung Keith Olbermann, who, in a regular segment on his show Countdown, named me that week’s “Worst Person in the World.” I took it as a compliment.
70
If Jay Were Here
I WAS IN LONDON covering the G20 summit. After an exhausting day of speeches and breakout sessions on the breezy topic of the world economy, I called home to see how things were going there.
Ellie picked up. I heard cheering in the background. At that very moment, she was checking various admissions portals on her computer, getting her college acceptances: Yale, Harvard, Williams, UVA…there was laughter, the clinking of glasses—Lori Beth and our wonderful housekeeper, Rose, had opened champagne. Dancing broke out. I could hear it in Ellie’s voice—complete happiness and relief.
I was so proud of her. If only I could have been there.
PARENTING ALWAYS POSED challenges but even more so once we got into the teen years. Yes, certain terrors like choking, drowning, and wandering off with strangers had subsided, but they were quickly replaced with new ones involving the mysterious inner lives of adolescents—the social turmoil, the pressure to achieve. I was blessed with extraordinarily grounded girls who didn’t court danger. And yet, like anyone else, they had their struggles. And sometimes I wasn’t there to help them as much as I should have been.
My mother was always there for us. She lived in a perpetual state of readiness to rush to our defense, find solutions, intervene.
It was different for me. Work obligations definitely got in the way, but I was also aware of how situations could be complicated by the fact that I was a public figure. When Ellie was bullied in high school, I proceeded cautiously. I asked the administration to handle it, then stayed out of the fray, knowing my involvement could lead to a juicy item in the tabloids. That would have made the problem even worse, especially for Ellie. At the time I remember thinking, If Jay were here, he’d storm over to that school and raise hell.
When Ellie went off to Yale, Lori Beth moved out. Carrie was too busy and too independent to need a live-in nanny, and Lori Beth was ready to do other things. I’d be indebted to her forever—by now, she was family. Meanwhile, Brooks had been spending so much time at the apartment, I suggested he just move in. Somehow, in a spasm of really bad parenting, I neglected to discuss it with Carrie. Which meant she had to handle the requisite teen angst with a 30-something man-boy strolling around the apartment shirtless. Even in front of her friends.
Please forgive me, Carrie.
71
Hockey Mom
IN THE WEE hours of August 29th, 2008, the phone in my hotel room rang and rang. Or so I’m told—I’d taken an Ambien and was dead to the world. My team nominated my producer Brian Goldsmith for the unenviable task of waking me up. He got the key from Lauren and was now looming over me with a big scoop.
“They’re saying John McCain has picked a running mate,” he told me. “It’s Sarah Palin, the governor of Alaska.”
“Who?”
“Yeah, good question.”
We’d been in Denver covering the Democratic National Convention. Towering Greek columns had been erected at Mile High Stadium as the backdrop for Barack Obama’s soaring oratory as he accepted the party’s nomination. Republicans would go to town on what they viewed as the pomposity of it all.
It had been five exhausting days of going nonstop until 11:00 p.m., waking up early to do hits for CBS This Morning, grabbing interviews, and getting ready for the evening news while reporting from the convention. I was desperate to sleep in before heading to St. Paul for the Republican National Convention. Instead, we took off that morning and spent the day frantically scouring the Internet and working our sources for any and all shreds of information on Palin. We had detailed binders on everyone but her.