In 1921, a young woman named Elizabeth Anne O'Hare McCormick sent a note to Carr Van Anda, who was the managing editor of The New York Times, asking him if she could send articles from overseas (2). He replied, "Try it"; when she sent him an insightful piece about Mussolini, he hired her (2). By 1936, she was known as the first woman to regularly contribute to The Times' editorial page(2).
In 1928, she published The Hammer and the Scythe about her travels to the Soviet Union(2). Throughout her daring travel experiences and interviews, she did not often write notes, because she said note-taking "makes people too cautious" (2). She certainly was not a cautious person; rather, she seemed to sparkle with mischief or joy when she stirred up people's expectations. In 1952, she attended one Republican convention wearing a white silk dress decorated with donkeys, the Democrats' symbol; the next week she attended a Democratic convention wearing a white silk dress decorated with elephants, the Republicans' symbol (Sheehan, Introduction).
Her hunger for information, for connection, for understanding led her into the company of men and women few could imagine meeting, and her zesty spirit rose to meet each new challenge she faced. As The World at Home
She wrote about politics and about U.S.-European relations, about war and about the Depression, about American life and, most importantly, about humanity.
Her passion for justice led The Times president and publisher Arthur
According to James B. Reston, McCormick had "a rare gift of sympathy for all sorts of people, a sense of the relationships between the event of the day and the history and aspirations of her country, and, above all, a religious conviction which enabled her to see things in the ultimate perspective of life itself" (Sheehan, Introduction).
McCormick continued writing until weeks before her death on May 29, 1954 (1). When she died, president Eisenhower issued the following statement: "Mrs. McCormick was a truly great reporter, respected at home and abroad for her keen analysis and impartial presentation of the news developments of our day. She will be greatly missed by all the members of the newspaper profession and the hundreds of thousands of readers who followed her column in The New York Times" (2).
Unfortunately, as is often the nature of good column writing, McCormick's work fell into the dusty, paper-bound pages of history in a world increasingly defined by technology. She actually picked up on the effects of technology on Americans in 1932, and, if one considers those who read political columns "citizens", she foretold her own work's doom:
"The contemporary American is not primarily a citizen. Since the beginning of the century he has been a man in a hurry, so diverted and distracted by new things, new speeds, fabulous opportunities for personal expansion, that he has lost his early zest for citizenship" (Sheehan 116).
McCormick's audience flitted on to other things after her death, and the time period that she had documented so lovingly and carefully passed. The
I disagree. I concede that finding information about McCormick is difficult; only a handful of Websites mention her name, OhioLINK carries one book about her, The New York Times offers her articles for hefty fees, and Amazon.com's McCormick books are mostly unavailable or are selling for more than $20 per book.
Her topics, however, strike an eerily similar picture to today's culture of confusion and alienation. She tried to unite the individual pockets of American people, such as those in the South and in New England, with her writing about their common struggles, but the cultural flavors and differences she noted in her column exist to this day.
McCormick noted the great divide between the rich and the poor, especially in her columns about the South. The divide between the working class and the politicians began to lead to alienation, which is (or, perhaps, depending on this year's elections, was) running rampant in today's society. It is this citizen apathy, she claims, that has led to lower-caliber candidates running the political scene (Sheehan 72).
McCormick wrote, "Named by a small, often unintelligent party group, elected by a majority of a minority, left thereafter to their own devices, or rather to the persistent pressure of other minorities, these are the men from whom is expected the technical knowledge and the statesmanship necessary to steer our course through what amounts to a social and economic revolution" (Sheehan 72). This is precisely the state of politics in today's society. There is such a small voter turnout and minority groups and lobbyists pressure politicians, who often seem more photogenic than politic-competent; yet those of us who are not apathetic expect our lawmakers and politicians to reflect the social changes we so greatly desire. This type of politics, this superficial confusion combined with a vast, voluntary exclusion of most of the citizenship, is opening the door to a more centralized government than ever before, which is, perhaps, a spreading crack in the foundations of democracy. McCormick agreed with me on this point, and fifty-six years before my birth, she wrote: "For if democracies die, it will be because of the progressive lessening of popular interest in government; like other religions they begin to die when the form is more impressive than the fact" (Sheehan 74).
Three years later, she wrote, "America is not a happy country, though by contrast with others just now it seems buoyant and gay. It is befuddled to its depths by new ideas, tormented by doubts, worried by the debts piling up… My own impression is that people are so weary of the confusion of the world, growing with each year, that they are creating, or striving to create, some semblance of order in their own live" (233-234). This statement could have appeared in an editorial this morning. Americans are bombarded with advertisements and new products and new information, tormented by the war, worried about personal and national debts and are either oblivious or confused about America's place in world politics; to escape these problems, they turn to individual distractions, such as their jobs, video games, television or the written word.
They have lost faith in their leaders and they are disillusioned with a war they once rallied to support.
Despite feeling World War II was necessary, McCormick never gave up on those affected by the war, especially those who were defeated and those individuals who faced unspeakable horrors. She could have been their patron saint, the woman who refused to ignore their pain. She wrote of the
She writes that the "American military government has taken the lead over other occupying powers in turning over responsibility to the Germans"
Is such development possible in a war-torn world? McCormick notes that ending dictatorships and regimes leads to unfathomable destruction of cities and people that might never fully recover. She writes, "You don't have to go back very far to see how much easier is the work of destruction than the job of reconstruction. To blow a town to bits is an affair of minutes or hours; to put it together again takes years. And structural rebuilding is the least of the complications. Anyone who has seen the ruin left in the wake of this war knows how small a part of this immense devastation is physical" (Sheehan 341). We must see and understand those words today; those who advocate for our immediate withdrawal overlook the fact that we have done the work of minutes and hours, but not of years. We have destroyed, broken, and torn apart Iraq; to leave it at that would be a monstrous, evil move on a so-called compassionate country's part. The greater and more trying task we now face is to heal both the physical layout of Iraq and the broken psyches of the Iraqis; that is the very least we owe a country we invaded and ravaged, even if the invasion was meant to liberate Iraqis from a cruel dictator and to attack terrorists. Our soldiers did not die to destroy Iraq; they died to save it and to save their country. Is a country that abandons what it destroys worth dying for?
McCormick brought the human element to war and to all of war's vast implications; I cannot help wondering why the American people do not have a
McCormick should not be a forgotten relic of a bygone era, but a torch of hope, like the Statue of Liberty, for this failing one.
Works Cited
1. "Elizabeth A. McCormick." Ohio Historical Society. www.ohiohistorycentral.org. Accessed 2 May 2008.
2. "Obituary: Anne O'Hare McCormick is dead; member of the Times Editorial Board." 30 May 1954.
www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/bday/0516.html. Accessed 2 May
2008.
3. Sheehan, Marion Turner. The World at Home-Anne O'Hare McCormick. Alfred A. Knopf. First edition. 1956.
4. McCormick, Anne O'Hare. "American Responsibility in Germany." 17
November 1946. Accessed 11 June 2008.
http://www.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/opinion/1946mccormick.pdf
5. Hall, Aileen. Women Studies 200: Women and the Family. Ohio University. Spring 2007-2008.
No comments:
Post a Comment