FAMED COLUMNIST A BOZEMAN GRANDMA

Ten Questions For Pulitzer Prize Winner Ellen Goodman

By Todd Wilkinson, 1-18-07

Today's America has grown up and come of age reading Ellen Goodman. The Pulitzer Prize winner, whose nationally syndicated column appears weekly in 375 newspapers across the county, is for good reason regarded as the grand dame of newspaper commentary.

While Goodman typically takes a generalist's approach to penning her columns for The Boston Globe, she is perhaps most astute when it comes to sensing the feelings, struggles, and dreams of people who have to work for a living, especially women. In recent years, Goodman has cultivated a special personal affinity for the West. Her daughter, Katie, and son-in-law, Soren Kisiel, live in Bozeman, Mont. where they founded and oversee the nationally touring Equinox Theatre Company known for its improvisational and skit comedy. Think of the Equinox as Montana's own version of the famous Second City Theatre Troupe of Chicago. At present, Ellen and Katie are exploring a possible mother-daughter book collaboration.

When Ellen is in Montana, she assumes a different role other than scribe -- that of grandmother. Recently, she made a public appearance at the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman, where New West caught up with her.

NEW WEST: What is your take on President Bush's recent speech and his plan to send in more troops to Iraq?

ELLEN GOODMAN: I listen to him and kind of throw up my hands, quite frankly, because what are 20,000 more troops going to do? Nothing. The only person who thinks that it's going to do any thing is the President—if, in fact, he really thinks it's going to do any thing. He just doesn't know what else to do. And, by the way, a lot of us are in that situation of not knowing any good way out because there isn't any good way out.

He [Bush] got us into something that we never should have gotten into. It's extraordinarily frustrating and upsetting. Upsetting sounds like such a wimpy word but it's infuriating and it makes you feel powerless because he's still the Commander In Chief.

The new Democratic majority and the Speaker of the House [Nancy Pelosi]—they can all come out and rant about [sending in more troops] but he's the Commander in Chief. And he can put those 20,000 more troops in whether we like it or not.

NEW WEST: What ever happened to the Feminist Movement?

GOODMAN: It's interesting because everybody talks about the feminism of the seventies as if that was the Golden Age. In fact, far more people subscribe to the ideas of feminism today than did in the '70s. I remember that there were times when the feminist movement amounted to 40 people in a loft in Lower Manhattan.

There are many more people today who believe in the tenets of the women's movement, and there are far more women in the work force than ever before. But, at the same time, the "movement" and this idea of a group of people protesting and pushing for gender equality, has really shrunk. It's smaller and it's scattered. Although a lot of things were accomplished, and an agenda laid out like the 10-Point Program in the 1970s, I really feel like, in some ways, we lost sight of the prize. Some of the objectives of feminism have been lost.

You have a younger generation that, to a certain extent, looks at the problems they are facing as coming out of feminist success rather than feminist failures. For example, women in my daughter's generation are all working AND looking after the kids, feeling incredibly stressed out because they can't afford or don't have access to quality daycare. They're saying to my generation: 'Boy, thanks a lot!" In fact, the women's movement didn't get the other half of the job done.

NEW WEST: How would you assess the state of the media today compared to when you began in 1965?

GOODMAN: The media today is a huge word. It's interesting because I have a little press dog tag from the first Presidential convention I ever covered in 1972. We all wore tags then that said, "PRESS." By 1980, we were wearing tags that said 'MEDIA'. Print became "print and television" and television was trumping print, or so the TV people liked to say. Now both print and television are part of a much-bigger thing that includes on-line journalism; blogging—which is not journalism but a whole 'nother hybrid creature; all kinds of crossover radio; Internet, and satellite. It's this incredible new world in some ways.

We all know that print [the circulation of newspapers and magazines] has been shrinking and it's in some financial trouble, although still making a profit. We're also witnessing the expansion of blogging, but one of the interesting things is that there's still only a relatively small number of real professional journalists.

By and large, the people that we're still counting on to provide counterviews of what's happening in the world are reporters—plain old reporters—who still have their boots on the ground. We talk on the one hand about this new media world and the revolution of the blogosphere and all of these people providing so-called analysis but what are they analyzing? They're analyzing what this shrinking group of reporters is producing through investigation, and interviewing people and witnessing in real life. The only people doing the hard work are old-fashioned, largely print-paid journalists, but fewer and fewer of them have health care, fewer have pensions, fewer have jobs because the industry is consolidating and papers continue to go out of business. The whole new era of information gathering is resting on the head of an inverted pyramid.

NEW WEST: Finish this sentence. Bozeman and Montana are...

GOODMAN: I think Bozeman and Montana—both of which I love—are in many ways wonderfully engaged in both environmental issues and entrepreneurial issues. There's a nice synergy going on, a real sense of things growing rather than shrinking. And politically, it changed the country this year. By the way, it was women from Montana who made a difference. Women voted for Tester: 52 percent of women to 48 percent of men. Jeanette Rankin is alive and well. Montana is very engaging but very cold!

NEW WEST: Identify a few of your vices.

GOODMAN: Chocolate, coffee....are you noticing a theme?

NEW WEST: If you could interview one despot in the world, who would it be and why?

GOODMAN: Assuming I would get out alive, Osama bin Laden. He'd be the most fascinating. I probably would start by asking him if he'd like to come to America on a tour and see what it is actually like.

NEW WEST: What good book have you recently read that you would recommend?

GOODMAN: I really like The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan; The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 by Lawrence Wright, and the stories of Mary Gordon.

NEW WEST: If there's a legitimate knock that conservatives have on liberals, what is it?

GOODMAN: It isn't necessarily a knock that conservatives have on liberals but one that liberals have on themselves and it can actually be applied to both sides. The legitimate knock one side has on the other is that people, citizens in this country, are stuck in a food fight of polarity. Throwing ideas at each other but not listening to each other. We've reached both ends of the Bell Curve politically. That's where we are and it's a real problem.

NEW WEST: What's the profoundest thing about being a grandma?

GOODMAN: Logan (her grandchild).

NEW WEST: What subjects are you planning to tackle in upcoming columns?

GOODMAN: Ha! Who knows?! It's a week-by-week thing. They [columns] come to you as you go along.

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