Not Attached, Not Indifferent

The presidential campaign through a Catholic feminist lens

Hey friends! Just a reminder that we had a last-minute cancellation for our New Feminism Pilgrimage and still have one spot left for our trip to Poland this October. Sign up here!

When I was in undergrad at at UW, lugging my giant North Face backpack around campus and chewing my gum loudly in the back corner of freezing cold Vilas Hall classrooms, I had dreams of being CJ Cregg.

CJ Cregg, the intelligent press secretary from The West Wing, seemed to have it all. She was smart! She was articulate! She was quick on her feet! She was making a difference int he world, one press conference at a time. Stick a camera on me, baby. Let’s do it. I double-majored in political science and mass communication, dancing between the idea of being a political reporter and a political spokesperson (the fact that so many of my classes for those two career paths were the same should tell you a lot about the current state of American political media, but I digress!) I dipped my toe in reporting with an internship at a prominent newspaper (hated it) and tried my luck in political PR with a press internship in a well-known politician’s office (didn’t hate it, but didn’t love it). If you would have told me that at 31 years old I’m a mother of three, paying my bills with fiction writing and a glorified blog, I would be thrilled. But a small, shallow piece of me would have winced at the fact that I didn’t have a White House press badge.

Because I still think, at the end of the day, that democracy is important. Even with all of the Breitbart bullshit and mudslinging lies and obnoxious entrepreneurs with zero foreign policy experience (“and it shows”).

And I guess that’s why I found myself watching the GOP debate recap Thursday morning.