Spouse in the house
Michelle Obama is just leaving Winston-Salem State as we speak/write/blog. Pretty powerful speaker. I’m not sure when the sea change happened with spouses campaigning so actively for their better? halves. I guess to some extent it’s been going on for years. Nina Totenberg of NPR fame has a book out about first ladies and their value to the team, but my sense is that the overt and persistent politicking is a fairly recent phenomenon.
It raises some interesting coverage issues. Our approach so far has been that the candidates themselves are bigger news than their spouses. No surprise there. But with essentially four weeks until primary day, we could see numerous trips to Winston-Salem from the candidates and their spouses. One of the things that I find interesting is how much attention Winston-Salem is getting. I think that’s a bit unusual. In the past, many candidates were content to hit Greensboro and let that be it for the Triad, the idea being that PTIA was a convenient gathering place for the TV trucks and press types and you could hit several birds with one stone. I’ve often thought that Winston-Salem/Forsyth County is politically different than Greensboro/Guilford, and the candidates apparently think so as well.
Good read: On an unrelated topic, the Pulitzer prizes were announced yesterday. Lots of good stories/articles. For sheer enjoyment, here’s the winning features entry, about an experiment involving a world-class violinist and a DC train station. It’s looooong, but very funny and meaningful.
Update: OTTERBLOG was wrong. It’s Cokie Roberts, not Nina Totenberg who has the new book out about first ladies. Sorry about that.
Your host is Ken Otterbourg, the managing editor at the Winston-Salem Journal. It's a forum to discuss the media, from
According to a Roosevelt biography, Eleanor Roosevelt was a big part of his presidential campaigns.
Thanks for sharing that. I knew she was a powerful advisor etc. Do you know if she campaigned independently?
That’s actually a metro station, not a train station.
I read that feature when it was in the Post originally and loved it then. I didn’t read the other nominees (and don’t even know who the other nominees were), but I thought that feature did a good job of showing that Gene Weingarten isn’t all shtick. The man has mad talent. Ditto Joshua Bell.
Weingarten is fantastic. His chats for the Post are always good, his stories are without exception incredibly well done and once or twice a year he writes a story—like the one that won the Pulitzer—that just makes you shake your head and grin at how good it is.
One of my favorite quotes attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt is
“ Do one thing every day that scares you.”
A marvelous proposition indeed for those that care to dare.
wow.
That is an amazing, almost heartbreaking story. Thanks for pointing it out.
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