my best social manner

[hedda62]

This is so Alys Vorpatril I can't stop smiling: Judith Martin (aka Miss Manners) on covering national and international news under the guise of the Washington Post's "For and About Women" section in the 1960s.

Meg Greenfield, who later ran the editorial page of The Post, once wrote in Reporter magazine that it was “a common saying in Washington that if the President were to declare war at the [Woman’s] National Democratic Club, The Post would run the story on the society page.” Her thesis was that to keep up with what was going on in Washington, it was necessary to read For and About Women, and she reported that President Kennedy and then-President Johnson were among our regular readers.

Yet the insults keep coming — 45 years later! — about the supposedly pathetic, laughable excuse for journalism from which Style sprang.

That smug view of the past is rather like the popular belief that Victorians were too inhibited to indulge in sex: It fails to explain how we got to where we are now.

Comments

[philomytha]

Oh, that's wonderful, and yes, so very Lady Alys ♥

[hedda62]

She would totally do the "Oh really?" with the social smile and then tell Simon while dancing, and no one would quite figure out how the news escaped.

[minutia_r]

Miss Manners is a stone-cold badass, and she has a delightful way with words; I am still snickering at that last sentence.

And I had not previously considered the idea, but she and Lady Alys would get along extremely well, wouldn't they?

[hedda62]

I would be almost scared to put them in the same room, that's how well they'd get along. :)

[featherwizard]

Fascinating article. I especially like how Ms. Martin calls out people who dismiss women's contributions, especially those who should know better.

I've always wondered why people are so quick to dismiss women of previous generations. Especially feminists, who fall into the same old trap of deriding women who came before - or women who live now - when they don't meet some perfect ideal.