Posted on 01/24/2014 6:21:11 AM PST by Kaslin
"I came from a place of struggle," insisted Texas gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis after The Dallas Morning News revealed that key details of the life story she had successfully shopped to the mainstream media were false. She wasn't a 19-year-old mom when she was first divorced, but 21. She lived with her second husband in the very comfortable Mistletoe Heights neighborhood of Fort Worth, Texas, not in a trailer park made famous by a thousand admiring profiles. She lived in the trailer park for just a few months. One of Davis' struggles, apparently, is with the truth.
Davis isn't the first politician to campaign falsely as an up-from-poverty candidate. William Henry Harrison, scion of a wealthy family, campaigned in 1840 as the "log cabin and hard cider" candidate against Martin Van Buren. It worked, though Harrison didn't live to relish his success. The story about his two-hour inaugural address, which caused him to catch pneumonia, is probably untrue -- he didn't fall ill until three weeks later. It may have been the snakeweed or leeches that gave him the septicemia that killed him, or it may have been the office seekers, who reportedly crowded the White House to the point he couldn't find a place to rest when he felt sick.
You might suppose that reflections on the Internet age -- and the impossibility of hiding the truth -- will now follow the tale of Harrison's successful deception. Not really. What's surprising about the Davis tale is that someone actually took the trouble to question her account, because her "narrative" appeals so strongly to the liberal imagination. We just love the "little woman who conquers the world' stories, especially if (well, OK, only if) she favors abortion throughout the nine months of pregnancy, a higher minimum wage and universal pre-K.
Davis did grow up in difficult circumstances -- her parents divorced, and Davis went to work early. She also made poor decisions, moving in with a boyfriend at the age of 17. Her story of working hard to better herself, first at community college and then at Texas Christian University and Harvard Law School is a tribute to her tenacity and intelligence.
But it requires a pretty calculating coldness to omit from her story husband No. 2, Jeff Davis, the lawyer she married when she was 24 and lived with for 18 years. It was he who paid her tuition at TCU and Harvard Law, cashing out his 401(k) and borrowing money to do it. It was he who cared for her two daughters while she went to Boston to study law for three years. And it was he who got custody (with no contest) after the divorce. He notes ruefully that she left the marriage at a key juncture: "It was ironic," he told the Dallas Morning News, "I made the last (Harvard) payment, and it was the next day she left."
No outsider can ever know what goes on in a marriage, and it isn't our place to speculate, but Davis herself made her single-mother-beats-the-odds personal story a key part of her campaign. Just before the Dallas Morning News story broke, Davis was the subject of a fawning profile on the "Today" Show. Maria Shriver introduced the story of the plucky gubernatorial aspirant over chyrons touting "Doing it all" and "On her own two feet." Her personal story, we were told, "resonated across this country." Davis visited the trailer park with Shriver and spoke of having to scrape together enough money to keep the lights on, sometimes working two jobs. Her 18-year marriage to a man who committed himself to her welfare and went into debt to help her achieve her career goals was practically airbrushed out, mentioning in passing -- "she married again for a time" -- to explain the appearance of her second daughter. The rest is Harvard triumphalism and her star turn filibustering an abortion law in the Texas Senate.
Davis achieved success the way most successful people do -- through hard work and the support of a loving family. She, and the press who lionize her, seem all too eager to suggest that she somehow did everything all by herself. This false heroic tale is a common trope on the left these days -- women doing it all by themselves. It's more than partisan hackery. It reinforces the very damaging notion that women don't need husbands. Many, many women are swallowing this propaganda and acting on it. They, their children and our society are suffering mightily as a result.
You can take the skank out of the trailer park, but you can’t take the trailer park out of the skank.
These hot blondes really have it tough.
Not as tough as the well-to-do men they con into being their sugar daddies.
She is screwing an Austin city councilman now.
Wendy Davis's Struggles
Unbelievable.
Wonder what her kids think of her.
What are the poll numbers on her?
Believe or not, I think that’s the “proper” form from the current style guides.
I, of course, refuse to use anything that goofy, and stick with the classic Davis’ vs. Davis’s.
The story’s writer doesn’t necessarily create its headline. (That goof clearly got past at least one editor, though.)
She forgets her scholarship to Slow Joe University.
You may be right. I looked it up.
According to The Chicago Manual of Style, 14th edition, Section 6.19, one uses s' for plurals. For proper nouns, Section 6.24, one uses s's for proper nouns.
This is not what I was taught as a child.
There are exceptions to the rule in 6.24. Section 6.26 specifies that when using possessives for the names "Jesus" and "Moses" one uses Jesus' and Moses'. Section 6.27 provides dispensation for polysyllabic names ending in an unaccented es pronounced as "eez." One would certainly not say "Demosthenes's" as one pleases (cue Ogden Nash).
Down 15 in a Dem poll from November
This shows heads-up ball play by Texas Republicans. Davis may be so damaged that she ends up not just a loser but also without a political future.
You don’t have to tell the truth to fool the American people ad nauseum.
I think her pole numbers are about sixty dollars per dance.
Don’t forget “Walked to school in 4 feet of snow uphill both directions”.
Don’t forget about her Indian “princess” grandmother. LOL! All DemocRATS have one of them.
ROTFLMAO!!!!
Ugh. How does she continue to have a column?
The original article in the Dallas Morning News was by Wayne Slater -- a liberal thru-and-thru.
It was an attempt to get the truth out in a friendly, soft-focus kind of way and dispose of it -- making it "old news" before the opposition could exploit her narrative as an egregious gold-digger's lie.
It backfired. And poor Wendy's dreams were shot out of the sky by friendly fire...
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