Below, I mentioned the “holy trinity” of race, class, and gender — or the once-holy trinity. Class has been pretty much phased out, and race is undisputed king. (Sexual orientation is pretty high up, too.)
A reader sends an interesting letter about changes he has witnessed on the left over the decades. It begins, “In my red student days, ca. 1948, an editorial in The Worker (the Sunday edition of the New York Daily Worker) addressed its readers in the form ‘you and your wife’ — assuming that women need not concern themselves with serious political issues.”
Class was king in that era. And doesn’t the word “wife” sound antique? I have written about this before, and it is a strange and vexing topic.
Let me quote a column from September 2003:
I’ve told this particular story before, but I retell it, for a present purpose. When I was in college, a kid from the dorm came back one night and announced, “I said ‘the president and his spouse today’ — and I wasn’t even trying. It just came naturally. I didn’t have to block the word wife at all. It just came out: ‘the president and his spouse.’” He was beaming, grinning, delighted to have been successfully programmed.
[By the way, that young man grew up to be a very important figure in the national-security apparatus of the Obama administration.]
Okay: Recently, Newsweek quoted Teresa Heinz Kerry, who said, “People out there need simple things. Like, ‘Mrs. Reagan says, Just say no, so maybe I can.’ She was also a good wife — a good spouse, I mean — in terms of pushing the president, or not pushing.”
. . . a good spouse, I mean . . . What is wrong with people? Why are they so allergic to the words “wife” and “husband”? What wonderful, divine words they are, bursting with meaning! Husband! Wife! Say ’em loud and say ’em proud, and don’t be intimidated.
(Like I have to tell you that, Impromptus reader?)
One more thing: People out there (need simple things). Isn’t that perfectly Kerry?