Meow - and not in a good way!

My Samantha who is.......................... not the least bit catty! Good girl, Sam
Let me start first by saying I’ve never seen a Barbara Walters interview or watched The View. I don’t have an opinion of her one way or the other. In fact, most of what I know about her has been from old Saturday Night Live parodies - remember Barbara WaWa? I think her recent book has made news primarily because of her revelation of a long-ago affair with a then-married Senator which was tres tacky on her part: first for having the affair and second for writing about it.

Caitlin Flanagan reviews her book, “Audition” in the June issue of The Atlantic and her review has "meow" written all over it. The first paragraph of the review says this about Ms. Walters: "Too often, a tiny nut-brown hand waves vaguely in the air....." Tiny nut-brown hand???? Is that a reference to her age? With a little luck the reviewer may live long enough to have a “nut-brown hand” – tiny or otherwise. Not everything that happens with aging is beautiful – sorry.

How about this one? "Barbara Walters did not earn exclusive interviews with some of the most important international figures of her heyday by revealing to them a deep intellectual engagement with foreign and domestic policy. Nor did she do it by deploying pulchritude – minus the lighting and makeup, she has always looked like the love child of Madeleine Albright and Spiro Agnes." Isn't Ms. Flanagan clever? That rates a double "meow."

Am I being too sensitive? Some of the remarks in this review seem like personal attacks rather than a focus on the book. I was always taught that if you can’t say something nice about someone, don’t say anything. Oh, wait - that would mean you would attack the book on its merits. In my opinion that makes for a more fair review of what a book review should be – a review of the book, not the author's looks. "Meow"