Monday, January 19, 2004

Short Cuts

Stand By Your Man And Tell The World He Bores You

Dr. Judith Steinberg Dean arrived in Cedar Rapids at the eleventh hour of her husband's make or break run to be mayor of Iowa, or whatever, in a blue twin set I distinctly recall giving to Good Will in '79. This was her first time on the campaign as she had been seeing patients in the suburban Vermont medical office she used to share with her husband - or so they say. It's hard to figure out exactly when he practiced medicine.

After a brace of interviews in which she tried to describe a frantic personal life that held no extra bits of time to support and encourage her husband's political quest (24 book club meetings a year, grocery shopping near midnight, taking care of a clearly demanding 17 year old son and a daughter who no longer lived home) it appeared that most women weren't buying.

Columnist Kathleen Parker - one of our favorites here at LCom - suggested Mrs./Ms/Dr. Dean is N.I. - Not Interested. May we add to that and say it sounds as though this is a case of wifely sock-it-to-him raised to a national level.

In the past decade we have gone from a First Lady who was the back-up-the-rented-van de-facto president to the prospect of a First Lady who has found to perfect way to make an emotionally abusive husband get the message.

A man who is capable of spending two years screaming at the nation certainly has spent some quality time screaming at his wife. Please note the People magazine item about her need for heat in their Vermont home that he didn't want to pay for. ("You want heat? Huh? Huh? Okay, kiddo. You pay for it." To which she probably countered, "Okay, okay, you never get off the damn phone. You can pay for that." Crank this domestic contretemps up several notches and you get Ms. Dean saying, "You think you're such hot stuff and want to run for president? So go, already. Get it out of your system but count me out." We suggest that she is way beyond Not Interested.

It must have been his visit with Jimmy Carter (the one yesterday where Jimmy made a mouth-corner mumble to the press that Dean invited himself) that got her attention. If ex-presidents were willing to give him some time perhaps she should too. Perhaps there really was something serious going on in the married part of her life that she would get sucked in to. The Deans won't spend money on cable TV so up until recently it was hard to tell.

So there she was late Sunday afternoon telling a raging mob of Deaniac cultists-in-training that she was "Judy Dean in case you were wondering." No one was wondering. They knew who she was and it wasn't helping. She only stayed a few hours and then whisked back to her life in Vermont. "She's got patients she needs to see," a Dean strategist said.

She also has a big heating bill to pay and an old score to settle.

-Lucianne