Posted on 01/08/2009 1:52:14 PM PST by presidio9
With her Camelot pedigree and Park Avenue address, Caroline Kennedy is not exactly the average American woman. But many women identify with her impulse to enter the work force after two decades of child rearing.
Kennedy's bid for the Senate has reignited the "mommy wars" between mothers with careers and those who take a break from paid employment. Like Kennedy, many women face resentment when they return to the work force after raising kids and doing volunteer work.
"She's a Kennedy, but she's a lot like us," was the headline of a Dec. 28 column by Anne Glusker in The Washington Post. "If you strip away the glamour, the name and the money, then Caroline is ... me. And many of my friends."
Kennedy, 51, graduated from Columbia Law School but never practiced law. She raised three children, wrote and edited several books, served on the boards of public service organizations and worked as the unpaid chief of fundraising for the New York City schools.
Now that Kennedy's three children are adults or nearly so, she is opting to get back onto the career track, though on a much grander scale than most women.
Some experts who study women's careers see Kennedy as a potential model for women without her connections.
"My research shows that almost 40 percent of women do take an off ramp and do all kinds of things in the private sphere, whether it's saving the wetlands or running the PTA," said Sylvia Ann Hewlett, president of the Center for Work-Life Policy and the author of "Off Ramps and On Ramps: Keeping Talented Women on the Road to Success." "But none of that gives them much credit in the world of work."
Critics of Kennedy's sudden interest in the Senate see a dilettante with a
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
I would think the term “re-entry women” would be offensive itself.
“If you strip away the glamour, the name and the money, then Caroline is ... me. And many of my friends.”
And nowhere near being selected as the next senator from NY
I remember there was a SNL skit about 20 years ago where Sheryl Tiegs was on a talk show and an audience member told her that she was out of work and her husband left her and she had no money. The actress portraying Tiegs told her to start her own clothing line at KMart like she did.
Then again, if Caroline had been in politics all along, in stead of performing busy work like soliciting donations and editing books for the New York Times (the only book she has ever written all by herself is "A Family Christmas," a collection of poems, prose and personal notes from her family history) she very likely would have made it to Senator from NY a long time ago. Had that happened, Hillary Clinton might be a lawyer these days.
Wasn’t JFK Jr. supposedly planning to run for this seat? That’s what’s going on here — Caroline is “re-claiming” RFK’s seat for the family.
Of course it’s much better to doll it up with an image of Mom still smelling of Pine-Sol and with flour on her apron, just trying to re-enter the workforce for a few years before the grandkids come along.
Their hypocrisy knows no bounds.
I WAS hungry....heckuva way to lose weight.
I can totally relate.
After raising 3 kids, my wife is going to nursing school so after she graduates she can.....Wait a minute, what the ——,
Most of us were not born with a silver spoon in our mouth and this is nothing more than the Kennedy Mafia trying to run our government. Most of all, Obama is the puppet of the Kennedy's and Soros.
Everyone always wanted to blame Soros, but I've been in the same room with Teddy Kennedy and all he did was rant about how important the Courts were over and over again.
Teddy was obsessed with power then and he'll haunt us from his grave because of his obsession for power. Teddy is truly his father's son.
“He’s Stalin, but he’s a lot like us,” was the comment by SolidWood at Freerepublic. “If you strip away the name, the origin, the crimes, the hubris and the tyrany then Stalin is ... me..”
Except that Caroline has the glamour, the name, and the money so, no, she's not just like normal people.
I’ve been thinking about getting a job when the kids start high school- God knows we could use the money
But I’d settle for starting as a Lt Governor, an Undersecretary of Defense, or maybe being appointed to a Congressional House seat
BTW, after doing 20+ units per semester, I eventually graduated with straight A's and then finished a Master's Degree. All without the help of the “reentry” ninnies.
In my experience, people who are in the habit of saying “you know” every few seconds are the worst kind of narcissists. The are so in love with hearing themselves talk that they are afraid to give the listener 2 seconds of silence to interject.
GLAMOUR?????
WTF is glamourous about Skeletor?
Perhaps the qualifications are comparable (Kennedy's might even be a tad better), but he ran for office in an election. I really don't think House and Senate seats should be subject to appointment, except on a very short-term basis, just long enough to hold a special election. And state law should preclude anyone appointed to fill a seat temporarily from running in the special election.
As for Kennedy's "fundraising experience", it may or may not have been meaningful. Judging by her media interviews, she certainly doesn't seem to have developed polished presentation skills. And it's entirely possible that her fundraising activities consisted of calling up her rich friends and saying "I'll donate $X to your charity if you donate $X to mine". And that's exactly the sort of "fundraising" we do NOT want Senators to be engaging in.
And what books did she write? Unless they were serious, substantive non-fiction (not "What it was like to grow up as a Kennedy"), and actually researched and written by her rather than a ghostwriter, they don't count.
So far as I can tell, she is best compared to women who never entered the world employment at all before raising a family and doing a bit of volunteer work for a few decades, and her desire to enter it now is better characterized as a "late entry" than as a "re-entry".
The only honest thing that AP-Obama said.
They can't even get her name right:
Caroline Kennedy
Correctly, it's Frau Schlossberg, the granddaughter of Nazi collaborator Joe Kennedy.
The fact that she lives in Castle Grayskull?
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