R.I.P. Marcia Lieberman
Last Sunday, Joe Lieberman's mother, Marcia, died at age 90. He's been sitting shiva for her the past week.
One thing that's nice about the national Democrats is how genuine, messy and warm, their family lives always seem. This isn't fake-able stuff, at least not past a point. Public life is hard; your motives, your character is constantly in question, challenged in the most public forums. The opportunities to exploit, disappoint or neglect your loved ones must be endless. Their responsibilities to you and your career are thrust upon them, not requested. Hollywood celebrities, and any number of Republicans and rightwing talk show hosts, not to mention countless million private citizens haven't been able to pull off that elusive thing we all want: the happy family life. Yet, at least in my political lifetime, Democrat after Democrat seems to have managed it. Not necessarily in the most orthodox ways: Kerry went through a divorce with his first wife, but remained on good terms with her. The Edwards lost their first son in a car accident; Dick and Jane Gephardt's daughter, a gay and lesbian issues advocate, occassionally pushed on her father's Missouri social conservatism; Tipper Gore wrestled with depression. But in all cases, the really impressive thing was that the Big Dems (almost) uniformly managed to create stability around themselves and to produce children who liked them, who immersed themselves in their careers, who turned out well.
There's a double standard of course. Democrats have to get the family values thing right in a way that, to quote Howard Dean, the "white Christian party" doesn't. Republicans got the ultimate gift in the culture war from Ted Kennedy at Chappaquiddick. But much more unfairly, they also got to renew their their culture and values warfare, with the salivating help of the Washington Press Corps, against the Clintons, or what became popularly known as The Clenis.
That the Clintons became the new antithesis in the "moral" or "family" values debate is probably the biggest irony, and most depressingly narrow-minded bit of CW, in modern American politics, largely because of what "family values" got boiled down to during the debate. According to Douglas Brinkley's biography of Jimmy Carter, when Bill Clinton famously shunned the Carters at the 1993 inauguration, it was to retaliate against some clunky critical remarks Carter had made to the NYT's Alessandra Stanley about the Clintons' decision to send Chelsea to private school in Washington. There's something comforting, even admirable in the idea that nothing could drive Clinton into a vindictive rage like criticism of his childrearing or his child. But in the family values debate that grew in Washington during the 90s, that was all irrelevent. "Family values" came to refer only to sexually active adults, at least so long as they're beautiful and/or powerful enough. The Clinton marriage is famous for Bill's infidelities (and was a long time before Paula Jones et al), and for the more sinister possibility that he's a bit of a sexual predator. Yet Bill and Hill as a couple always seemed to thwart the storyline somehow. They were above it, managed to remain tantalizingly private and composed even in the face of the Starr Report and Clinton's awful televised apologies and the Barbara Walters interviews. We just don't know, even now, what it was really like, what Hillary really thought, what really got said. We shouldn't know, because it's not any of our damn business. Privacy, and the dignity that privacy confers, is a family value. And maybe that's what drove them all so crazy in the late 90s, trying to find "monkey business" where -- a few concensual, extra-marital blow-jobs aside -- no such thing, in spirit at least, existed.
Anyway, as Clinton's original accuser in the Senate, Joe Lieberman had an obligation to provide a decent chapter in the volume of Democratic family values stories. And his mother provided richly. Marcia Lieberman, whose husband died in 1986, was the Elizabeth Edwards of the 2000 campaign -- the indespensable human accessory that comes with the ticket (how much would you give to trade it Lynn Cheney for Mrs. Edwards?) Marcia's son might be a bit of a hack from time to time and too hawkish for activist Democratic primary voters. She certainly couldn't save his sorry-ass 2004 campaign. It might even be true, as at least one leftwing journalist has alleged, that she can and regularly did cry on cue. Nevertheless, she was the best thing Gore-Lieberman 2000 had going for it. Garance Franke-Ruta wrote about it it at the beginning of the 2004 cycle:
Those who follow Sen. Lieberman's campaigns cannot help but learn about the senior Lieberman -- or Baba, as she is often called, using the Yiddish word for grandmother. She's been his volunteer liaison to Connecticut's senior citizens since 1988. The senator peppers his speeches with anecdotes about her and what she's told him. Her first cameo in the 2000 race came during Lieberman's speech accepting the vice presidential nomination from Gore. After the speech, in Stamford, Baba asked her son for a ride home -- a ride that involved a 50-car motorcade -- and then charmingly insisted that then-Vice President Gore, also in the cars, come in for cheesecake and coffee. Marcia Lieberman, dispenser of warmth and wisdom, quickly became an iconic figure in Sen. Lieberman's stump speeches and debates with Dick Cheney.
During a race in which the Democrats struggled to regain their footing on family-values issues, trotting out Baba and the whole close-knit Lieberman clan helped quell fears about Democrats again subjecting the country to the trauma of presidential scandal. The Los Angeles Times described her as "the quintessential Jewish mother."
Baba, for her part, quickly won over the press corps and the Gore-Lieberman campaign staff. Where Gore's mother, Pauline, was a sophisticated lawyer, senator's wife and power player in her own right, Baba, a bakery truck driver's wife with a high-school education and a modest home, came to exemplify the decent, unpretentious working class of yore. And she wasn't afraid of playing the archetypal Jewish mother for effect. When CBS assigned a reporter to follow her one day in Florida, she tried to play matchmaker for the young man. In September 2000, she sent care packages wrapped in brown paper to reporters. Prepared with a little help from the Gore-Lieberman press advance team, they included bagel chips, lip balm, an apple, tissues, postcards for reporters to write their mothers and a handwritten note that read: "Please be kind to my son! Enjoy. Marcia Lieberman (Joe's mom!)." The care packages generated the following inimitable correction in The New York Times:
"A report in the Campaign Briefing column yesterday about gift packages sent to reporters by Marcia Lieberman, the mother of Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, misspelled the brand of bagel chips she included. It is Manischewitz, not Manishewitz."
Precious? Over-the-top? Absolutely. But modern political campaigns, espeically the competitive ones, are all about fakery and manipulation and that strange, quintessentially American mix of self-idealization and self-humilitation. You can't do it, you can't fake it, without desire, and your family can't fake it for you without love. Marcia Lieberman was a obviously a pro at that. 600 more votes in Florida and her death last week would have been a national tragedy.
One thing that's nice about the national Democrats is how genuine, messy and warm, their family lives always seem. This isn't fake-able stuff, at least not past a point. Public life is hard; your motives, your character is constantly in question, challenged in the most public forums. The opportunities to exploit, disappoint or neglect your loved ones must be endless. Their responsibilities to you and your career are thrust upon them, not requested. Hollywood celebrities, and any number of Republicans and rightwing talk show hosts, not to mention countless million private citizens haven't been able to pull off that elusive thing we all want: the happy family life. Yet, at least in my political lifetime, Democrat after Democrat seems to have managed it. Not necessarily in the most orthodox ways: Kerry went through a divorce with his first wife, but remained on good terms with her. The Edwards lost their first son in a car accident; Dick and Jane Gephardt's daughter, a gay and lesbian issues advocate, occassionally pushed on her father's Missouri social conservatism; Tipper Gore wrestled with depression. But in all cases, the really impressive thing was that the Big Dems (almost) uniformly managed to create stability around themselves and to produce children who liked them, who immersed themselves in their careers, who turned out well.
There's a double standard of course. Democrats have to get the family values thing right in a way that, to quote Howard Dean, the "white Christian party" doesn't. Republicans got the ultimate gift in the culture war from Ted Kennedy at Chappaquiddick. But much more unfairly, they also got to renew their their culture and values warfare, with the salivating help of the Washington Press Corps, against the Clintons, or what became popularly known as The Clenis.
That the Clintons became the new antithesis in the "moral" or "family" values debate is probably the biggest irony, and most depressingly narrow-minded bit of CW, in modern American politics, largely because of what "family values" got boiled down to during the debate. According to Douglas Brinkley's biography of Jimmy Carter, when Bill Clinton famously shunned the Carters at the 1993 inauguration, it was to retaliate against some clunky critical remarks Carter had made to the NYT's Alessandra Stanley about the Clintons' decision to send Chelsea to private school in Washington. There's something comforting, even admirable in the idea that nothing could drive Clinton into a vindictive rage like criticism of his childrearing or his child. But in the family values debate that grew in Washington during the 90s, that was all irrelevent. "Family values" came to refer only to sexually active adults, at least so long as they're beautiful and/or powerful enough. The Clinton marriage is famous for Bill's infidelities (and was a long time before Paula Jones et al), and for the more sinister possibility that he's a bit of a sexual predator. Yet Bill and Hill as a couple always seemed to thwart the storyline somehow. They were above it, managed to remain tantalizingly private and composed even in the face of the Starr Report and Clinton's awful televised apologies and the Barbara Walters interviews. We just don't know, even now, what it was really like, what Hillary really thought, what really got said. We shouldn't know, because it's not any of our damn business. Privacy, and the dignity that privacy confers, is a family value. And maybe that's what drove them all so crazy in the late 90s, trying to find "monkey business" where -- a few concensual, extra-marital blow-jobs aside -- no such thing, in spirit at least, existed.
Anyway, as Clinton's original accuser in the Senate, Joe Lieberman had an obligation to provide a decent chapter in the volume of Democratic family values stories. And his mother provided richly. Marcia Lieberman, whose husband died in 1986, was the Elizabeth Edwards of the 2000 campaign -- the indespensable human accessory that comes with the ticket (how much would you give to trade it Lynn Cheney for Mrs. Edwards?) Marcia's son might be a bit of a hack from time to time and too hawkish for activist Democratic primary voters. She certainly couldn't save his sorry-ass 2004 campaign. It might even be true, as at least one leftwing journalist has alleged, that she can and regularly did cry on cue. Nevertheless, she was the best thing Gore-Lieberman 2000 had going for it. Garance Franke-Ruta wrote about it it at the beginning of the 2004 cycle:
Those who follow Sen. Lieberman's campaigns cannot help but learn about the senior Lieberman -- or Baba, as she is often called, using the Yiddish word for grandmother. She's been his volunteer liaison to Connecticut's senior citizens since 1988. The senator peppers his speeches with anecdotes about her and what she's told him. Her first cameo in the 2000 race came during Lieberman's speech accepting the vice presidential nomination from Gore. After the speech, in Stamford, Baba asked her son for a ride home -- a ride that involved a 50-car motorcade -- and then charmingly insisted that then-Vice President Gore, also in the cars, come in for cheesecake and coffee. Marcia Lieberman, dispenser of warmth and wisdom, quickly became an iconic figure in Sen. Lieberman's stump speeches and debates with Dick Cheney.
During a race in which the Democrats struggled to regain their footing on family-values issues, trotting out Baba and the whole close-knit Lieberman clan helped quell fears about Democrats again subjecting the country to the trauma of presidential scandal. The Los Angeles Times described her as "the quintessential Jewish mother."
Baba, for her part, quickly won over the press corps and the Gore-Lieberman campaign staff. Where Gore's mother, Pauline, was a sophisticated lawyer, senator's wife and power player in her own right, Baba, a bakery truck driver's wife with a high-school education and a modest home, came to exemplify the decent, unpretentious working class of yore. And she wasn't afraid of playing the archetypal Jewish mother for effect. When CBS assigned a reporter to follow her one day in Florida, she tried to play matchmaker for the young man. In September 2000, she sent care packages wrapped in brown paper to reporters. Prepared with a little help from the Gore-Lieberman press advance team, they included bagel chips, lip balm, an apple, tissues, postcards for reporters to write their mothers and a handwritten note that read: "Please be kind to my son! Enjoy. Marcia Lieberman (Joe's mom!)." The care packages generated the following inimitable correction in The New York Times:
"A report in the Campaign Briefing column yesterday about gift packages sent to reporters by Marcia Lieberman, the mother of Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, misspelled the brand of bagel chips she included. It is Manischewitz, not Manishewitz."
Precious? Over-the-top? Absolutely. But modern political campaigns, espeically the competitive ones, are all about fakery and manipulation and that strange, quintessentially American mix of self-idealization and self-humilitation. You can't do it, you can't fake it, without desire, and your family can't fake it for you without love. Marcia Lieberman was a obviously a pro at that. 600 more votes in Florida and her death last week would have been a national tragedy.
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