Doug was talking about Hillary Clinton always being in the news, and I was saying stuff like Hey, I never see her in the news, but then I remembered that last weekend, I read something in The Washington Post about a new book by the lead NYT reporter who covered her campaign.
And then, having read that, I read a piece by that reporter, Amy Chozick, in the NYT itself, sharing observations about her experience.
And the part that really struck me was this:
In July 2013, Jill Abramson, the former executive editor of The New York Times, put me on the “Hillary beat” ahead of the 2016 election. It was 649 days before Mrs. Clinton would announce she was running for president again, 1,226 days before she would lose to Mr. Trump…
No, not that part. That part’s normal enough, although it’s a little weird that she’d counted the days and all. But then the piece continues:
Every major life decision in my 20s and 30s — when to get married, where to buy an apartment, whether to freeze my eggs until after the election — had revolved around a single looming question: What about Hillary Clinton?…
Really? You let what most of us would consider to be the most important things in our lives be dictated by what this stranger did and what you’d have to do in order to be prepared to cover her?
Amy Chozick
Hey, I know back in my reporting days, almost four decades ago, I wasn’t covering politics on that level, but the difference between the way I approached the job and the way she did makes me feel like a member of another species. Back in 1978, my editor was like, I want you to go travel with this gubernatorial candidate next week, and then follow his opponent the following week.
And I was like, yeah, OK, sounds like more fun than what I’d be doing otherwise. And it was. But I didn’t rearrange my life in order to do it.
The idea of making such decisions based on how it affected my readiness to cover one person boggles my mind….
The name of Amy Chozick’s book is Chasing Hillary. Writing about it in The Washington Post, Carlos Lozada said, “Yes, she chases Hillary. But it is Chozick who gets caught.”
Yeah, no kidding…
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“Every major life decision in my 20s and 30s — when to get married, where to buy an apartment, whether to freeze my eggs until after the election”
Why is she waiting to freeze her eggs? Is she that afraid it’s going to take her past menopause to find a man?
I don’t know. But modern medical technology certainly has given people some weird things to think about…
I suspect it’s more to do with the age at which your eggs are supposed to be most healthy, if you want a healthy baby.