I have comments on
this article.
"Dr. Steinberg has stood by her husband's side at a political event exactly once"
Why "exactly once"? For melodramatic emphasis, I suspect. "Once" means "once." "Exactly once" is silly. Is the measure of "one" in doubt - did the number require extensive research, and does it settle an irritating ambiguity? It reads like an attempt to tone down "only once," which is worse, since it more obviously attaches negative connotations to "once."
"skipping"
Twice Dr. Steinberg "skips" important events. Skip is a good word - for small children (who leap and bound) or deceitful adults (who skip out on the bill, or skip church). If you "skip" an event, the unavoidable connotation is that you left in a hurry or in secret, or that you failed to attend when you were expected. Dr. Steinberg "skips" her husband's "birthday-party," a family weekend retreat, and "the emotional repatriation ceremony of his brother's remains." Ms. Wilgoren introduces Dr. Steinberg's constant presence at home as an "unusual" constant absence from her husband's side, and this is accurate. She crosses the line, however, when she describes this absence as "skipping" important family events. If Ms. Wilgoren knows for certain that Dr. Steinberg disappointed her husband or her family by establishing false expectations that she would attend these events, then she should provide this information to support her charge of "skipping."
"Dr. Steinberg, she said, fits nowhere."
This is cruelly worded. Who is Myra Gutin? Who is she to say that another professional woman has no place in this world? If this is not Myra Gutin's point, Ms. Wilgoren should have finished this sentence with the necessary, and decidedly more neutral, conclusion: "Dr. Steinberg, she said, fits nowhere in her classification scheme."
"puttering around"
Dr. Steinberg walks aimlessly and idly about her home, working up a list of chores for her husband to do when he returns? First, if one is puttering around, one is doing nothing - one cannot putter around and draw up a list at the same time. Second, this suggests the evil stereotype of the wife who needs upgrading. While Dr. Dean works night and day, his wife wanders their home in a housecoat and cannot be bothered to "put on her face." "Puttering around" is another cruel choice of words.
I am glad Ms. Wilgoren includes this sentence without comment: "I'm very happy doing what I do," she said. "He's happy doing what he does. I think that he's doing a great job, and I think that he thinks what I do is a great job." This does not fit the portrait of the previous paragraph, which describes an aimless, un-made-up, lonely wife, who consoles herself with solitary meals of "bananas" and "low-fat fudge bars." Coupled with the sneaking suggestion that Dr. Dean should be unhappy when Ms. Steinberg "skips" "emotional" family events, this might lead many readers to suspect Dr. Dean's marriage is dysfunctional.
The end of the article provides some welcome balance - a happy ending - to the gossipy coverage of their absence from one another.
I'm not convinced the article shows evidence of malicious intent. Rather I would criticize Ms. Wilgoren for attempting to write analysis that reads like melodramatic gossip reporting. This is not People magazine we are talking about - this is the New York Times for goodness sake.
Good analysis does not read like good fiction, and the attempt to create and relieve tension over the issue of Dr. Steinberg's absence was ill-conceived and unfair to her family. To illustrate - there are many stock narratives that we could use to describe Dr. Steinberg's decision to stay at home. In many, many families the husband is away from home for long stretches of time and the wife "keeps the home fires burning" and "sacrifices" her time with her husband to "hold down" a job and "provide a stable home" for her school-aged children. If Dr. Dean was a traveling salesman, a truckdriver, or even an overseas news reporter, the knee-jerk reaction might be to celebrate Dr. Steinberg's role as a homemaker.
I'm not suggesting that Ms. Wilgoren should have made such an analogy. I think that any attempt to milk the "story" here is unfair considering that there are plenty of facts to report. The scholarly opinion can be included without this kind of framing, and eliminating the gravitational pull of the play on stock tales of married life would lead to a more objective and fair selection of the necessary "colorful" adjectives.