We at InkWell are always pleased and flattered when other writers quote our witty material–but we’d certainly appreciate some attribution.
As InkWell readers know, The Other Charlotte and I haven’t been able to get enough of The Night Naomi Wolf Showed Howard Bloom Her Poems. (For the latest thoughts from TOC and me on Bloom’s alleged roving hand 20 years ago, see here and here.) And last week, as I reported, libertarian Catholic blogger Kathy Shaidle e-mailed me to post her own recollections of a recent TV appearance by the hotblooded feminista: Here’s part of the excerpt from Kathy’s e-mail that I posted on this site on Monday, Feb. 23:
“Did you catch her on the Dennis Miller panel a few weeks ago? She and David Horowitz had a bizarre run-in. He turned on his stool to face her while she was making a point and she snapped, ‘Don’t try to shut me up!’ He looked flabbergasted: ‘What did I do?’ ‘It is all in your body language,’ she snapped again, indicating his movement in his chair. In the voice you’d use when foolishly trying to reason with a child or young teen, he replied, ‘But Naomi, during the commercial break, you instructed me to face you the next time you spoke. I was trying to do just that.'”
Then this last Saturday, Feb. 28, U.K. Telegraph columnist Zoe Heller weighed in with an account of very same TV confrontation between Naomi and David. Strangely enough, Heller remembered the incident, including the exact words of Naomi and David, nearly exactly as Kathy remembered them–which is odd, because Kathy tells me that she didn’t rely on an official transcript of the chat-show conversation and reported strictly from her weeks-old memory. Here is what Heller wrote:
“The other night, I came across the writer Naomi Wolf participating in a TV panel discussion about the Patriot Act. When one of her fellow guests, David Horowitz, turned in his chair to look at her, Wolf angrily broke off from the point she was making, to upbraid him.
“‘Don’t try to shut me up!’ she shouted. Horowitz looked at her, mystified. ‘What did I do?’ he asked. ‘It’s all in your body language!” Wolf said, indicating the movement he had just made in his chair.
“‘But Naomi,’ Horowitz replied in some confusion, ‘you told me during the last commercial break that I should turn and face you the next time you spoke. I was trying to do just that.'”
So my question is: Do great minds–Zoe’s and Kathy’s–have the same photographic memories? Or are we at InkWell, not to mention Kathy Shaidle herself, perhaps due a little credit from the Telegraph for a new Naomi narrative? Hey Zoe, we may be mere Yanks over here (well, Kathy’s actually a Canadian) but we’re not dumb.
Kathy adds graciously, “I’m very amused and flattered and not at all ticked off about this.” My sentiments exactly, but hmm….
And just for a bonus feminista memory from blogger Daze Reader, here’s the famous story about when Andrea Dworkin got drugged and raped at age 52 by a French waiter!