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Jun 20, 2022Liked by Nancy Rommelmann

The bit about contempt and divorce comes from John Gottman's work; contempt is one of the four horsemen that indicates how communication between two people has become so disrupted that it cannot be repaired, and hence is a key indicator of a couple who will eventually divorce.

I heard an interview with Mark Andreessen today where he remarked on how the sorts of people who are good at building successful companies are used to always being right, and that partnerships often foundered during growth if both co-founders couldn't find a way to let others be right sometimes. Our online twitterverse is populated by people who have something to say and believe their opinion is valuable/the correct one, and then given that journalists make their career knowing more than the rest of us/telling us how it is, it's no wonder many fall prey to the perils of contempt like Sonmez.

Thank you for sharing your bittersweet memories and your daughter's father's artwork with us, it is an anecdote for contempt imho.

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Thank you, and yes, always more pie xxx

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Oh my gosh, I am crying. What a beautiful way to look at this issue. I know in my soul that love is our answer, but it is so important to see it written. Love you and your voice Nancy!! Keep writing and making more pie!!

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Nancy, you are such a thoughtful writer. This is the most interesting and, not coincidentally, the saddest, take I've seen on what happened at the Post and what that points to in the sickness of our communities.

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I appreciate your willingness to extend grace to Sonmez. One of the things that attracted me to the @politicalmath account is how he talks about grace and its extreme absence in so much public discourse these days. But in Sonmez’s case, my question is, has she earned that grace? In Christian theology, grace is something God gives us, regardless of whether we deserve it. Maybe it’s wrong of me to look at someone this narcissistic, petty, and vengeful as deserving of that. But people don’t turn into sociopaths overnight; it seems pretty clear to me that she’s all too familiar with the clubs and spears of Mean Girls, and enjoys and reflexively uses them. She comes off as a child never told “no”, someone long into adulthood who hasn’t escaped eighth grade, and is not above manufacturing victim status to wield power.

Well, the Nazis thought they were victims, too.

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