Word: bombecks
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...this time the women of Bomburbia were changing. The housewives of Cushwa Drive had divorced or taken jobs, and Bombeck, somewhat ironically, was almost the last stay-at-home mom left on the block. The winds of feminism had swept through town, ruffling feathers. One evening, Bombeck recalls, she drove into town with some other women to hear a lecture by Betty Friedan, author of The Feminine Mystique. "She started talking about yellow wax buildup and all that, and all of us started laughing." Friedan shook her finger and scolded them; these were supposed to be demeaning concerns, not funny...
Vexation at poor tactics and abrasive personalities was one thing; conviction was another. Bombeck knew which side she was on. Her success had allowed the Bombecks to move to Phoenix. But in 1978 she gave up her $15,000-a-shot lecturing sideline and began a two-year stump tour in favor of the Equal Rights Amendment. She hit senior citizens' centers, parking lots and Laundromats. Some of her fans wanted to hear her jokes but not her political views. The Lieutenant Governor of one Southern state patted her on the head and said she should be home having...
...Bombeck took the ERA defeat hard, and still does. She has little respect for younger women who opposed the amendment. "The young ones are coming up with an attitude that says we got it all," she reflects. "The older women know we don't. My mother's generation still remembers when women didn't think it was respectable to drive alone...
...second defeat seems not to trouble her. In 1980 she sold a television series called Maggie, based on one of Bombeck's typical housewives, to ABC. Living in a Los Angeles apartment during the week, Bombeck got up at 5 each morning to write her column and by 9 was at a desk at Universal City Studios writing TV scripts. Bombeck never quite learned to love speaking show biz-"That line doesn't work for me, sweetie" and "Trust me"-and Maggie sank without a trace after eight episodes. The lines were funny but somehow the show wasn...
Humorists do not cry, much, and Bombeck returned to life in Arizona without a backward look. Her children are on their own now (Bombeck gives a heartfelt "whew!" and wipes her hand across her forehead). Betsy is a computer retailer in Los Angeles; Andrew, who served in the Peace Corps in Liberia, teaches gifted students in Scottsdale, Ariz., and Matthew works at an advertising agency in Los Angeles while he writes television scripts. They all agree that family life was warm and normal, not the succession of disasters that Bombeck still thinks she brought on their heads...