From the Mailbag: “An Advice Column is Not the Place for Political Pontification”
I haven’t done a “From the Mailbag” post in a while and today I have not one but two letters from my inbox to share. Both writers take issue with the same column — “Where Can I Find a Decent, Much Younger Woman?” — and for the same reason:
They argue that, as an advice columnist, my job is to strictly give advice and not to pontificate on politics. In short: I should stay in my lane. In a shock to probably no one, both of these LWs are dudes, and one must assume new DW readers. I’m sharing their letters unedited.
First of all disclaimer!! I give you the right to put this on your site how you see fit. I DO NOT give you the right to give my contact info out in any way.
Now thats out of the way I feel the need to write this letter to you in regards to the response you gave to Morning Quickies: “Where Can I Find a Decent, Much Younger Woman?”
First off you were very rude to the person in question. He reached out to you to get some advise and you completely destroyed his hope. Aside from that you also gave bad advise. Though it is much harder in his place to find love due to all the good ones are usually taken by the time you are 35 years old, you could have offered some hope to him. Your response came off as being “you got no hope stop chasing youngsters for sex.” I can tell you that no, this is not the case. Maybe he was looking for love and not lust with the addition of having young fun like going out on the town. most 45 year old women are not really into this. I don’t mean to tell you how to do your job but clearly you haven’t been in the “dear abby” game for a long time.
Secondly don’t bring politics into the matter. referencing a trump rally clearly defines you as a definite democrat. Honestly your going to lose more readers than gaining.
And lastly there are good/nice guys out there that are just looking for love, maybe due to them being hurt in the past or it never worked out. So the next time someone reaches out to you for advise/help go easy on them, you never know when someone will rip apart your response and feed it back to you on what you are doing wrong. I doubt you will read this at all but if you do best wishes to you in the future and your dear abby opinion section.
Your letter makes a strong case for a minimum IQ qualification to vote. (I’m not in favor of any more voter suppression than already exists; I’m just saying your letter makes a case for it is all).
Recently you posted a column about a man who only wanted a woman 10-15 years younger than him. You rightly admonished him for being shallow and superficial.
Where I part with you is when you told him to seek out Donald Trump supporters. You told him to go to a Trump rally to find BS-type people. I think that was inappropriate. Of course, it’s your column, you have the right to write what you want. You also have the right to your political opinions. But, in my opinion, an advice column is not the place for political pontification. For full disclosure, I’m not a Trump supporter, but I did prefer him to his Democratic opponent. There are things I like about Trump and things I don’t. I don’t suffer from Trump Derangement Syndrome. That being said, if you wrote the same about Hillary supporters I still would’ve thought it was inappropriate.
Politics has infected every part of life and I’m sick of it. I’m as political as anyone, but there are times I don’t want to deal with politics. An advice column is one of those places. For you to paint a broad brush on all Trump supporters was especially disappointing. You have a lot of influence. To impugn half the people of the US is just plain wrong. There are good people who support Trump and there are jerks who support Trump. And vice versa for Democrats.
I enjoy reading your column. I just hope you stay away from politics.
Trump wishes it were “half the people in the US” who support him.
Here’s the deal: I lie awake some nights worried about my kids’ generation’s future, wondering what will remain of our planet as they raise their own children, hoping it wasn’t a selfish mistake bringing kids into a world that is rapidly losing the resources necessary to support its current population, let alone a growing one. Trump supporters are so quick to point to the economy – a “booming” economy that Trump was lucky to inherit from Obama — as a testament to his effectiveness as a leader. Well, WTF good is a strong economy — which is tenuous at best — when the leader of the free world continues rolling back regulations that provided any hope we might have in avoiding an environmental apocalypse? Are you planning to enjoy your new Land Rover on Mars?
Look, I totally get that you’re sick of politics; I am too! You know what I’m sick of more? People who chose a fucking reality TV sleaze bucket to run our country and then complain when anyone mentions it. Since my punishment for your bad choice is to helplessly watch as my country and planet is destroyed, you’re just going to have to deal with being called out for it in places where you’re trying to actually escape politics for a few minutes. Sad!
***************
Follow along on Facebook, and Instagram.
If you have a relationship/dating question I can help answer, you can send me your letters at wendy(AT)dearwendy.com.
LOL. I’m so sick of Trump supporters whining like babies when they get called out for it. To paraphrase an old saying “Vote for a lying, racist, homophobic, misogynist moron, get branded a lying, racist, homophobic, misogynist moron.” This isn’t hard, people. You made your choice, now own the consequences. God knows the rest of us do.
Yes. Stop trying to hedge like, yes, I voted for Trump because I couldn’t stomach voting for a woman, and also because I’m racist, xenophobic, homophobic, and a moron, butttt I don’t like *everything* about him, so I’m not a trash human being. Yes you are. You’re trash, and you’re responsible for trashing our constitution and democracy. Own it.
I love the first letter. Tries to tell us that there are no good women left over the age of 35, but somehow doesn’t t apply that to the man in the letter.
I noticed that too. While saying that Wendy should be more kind and considerate he managed to insult all women over the age of 35.
For the LW, women over 35 have learned the hard way to not put up with garbage. They’ve learned to stick up for themselves. They’ve learned to drop a guy who doesn’t meet their needs. They’ve learned to dump guys who appear to just want to use them.
All of my friends are over 35 and we go out frequently. We actually even have fun when we go out.
Nailed it. The hypocrisy !
I met my husband when I was over 35. I was closing on 37 when we met.
Shhh…. please don’t let him in on the secret that I was a year past my expiration date!
“Honestly your going to lose more readers than gain”
Heh. He certainly hasn’t read your comment section, has he?
“You’re entitled to your opinion, but I am going to tell you why you’re wrong.” – both of these ‘men’ can fuck right off with their mansplaining bullshit.
“Politics has infected every part of life and I’m sick of it.”
Here is a PSA to everyone who says dumb shit like this: politics are not just some opinion you have that doesn’t affect anything but feelings. Politics become policy. Like stripping away abortion rights. Or raising taxes. Or crafting a legal system that allows the wealthy to get away with a slap on the wrist and forces the poor and otherwise disenfranchised or oppressed people to wind up even poorer or losing their liberty entirely.
How convenient for you that you can separate the two. That kind of privilege doesn’t come for free. It’s just it’s not you who has to pay the price for it.
/r
So, I guess now is the time to bring up the INCREDIBLE (white, straight, cis, male) privilege involved in being able to say “you know what, I’m sick of politics and I think everyone should just stop talking about it” and just, you know, opt out for a while. That is really fucking easy to do when none of your rights is on the line. That is really fucking easy to do when no one is trying to control the medical decisions you make, or whether you can be fired from your job because of what pronouns you use, or whether you are shot dead for *existing as the skin color you are*. How nice to be able to opt out of politics, just shut it off and not care for a while who is in charge, because it has NO material affect on your life whatsoever. But, you know Wendy, your terror at the thought of decisions being made that affect your life and the lives of those you love is killing my blissful ignorance. So stop.
Also, I’m confused how it is possible to not be a supporter of someone you VOTED FOR. By definition, when you voted someone into office, you support them. You cannot get to have your cake and eat it too by claiming his rapey, lying, quid quo pro incompetence squicks you out and also voting for him to run the country. It’s an all or nothing decision.
All of this, yes. But to clarify: the LW who said he was sick of politics is, surprisingly, not a white male. Just as white women voted for Trump in droves, I guess there were a handful of black men who did as well and this is one of them. It’s mind-boggling, really.
I mean, to be fair. I’m tired of politics.
We’re all tired of politics. I would love nothing more than to read the news and not be worried about who next on the list to have their rights stripped away, which relationship with a long time Ally has been destroyed on a whim, what institution and long valued norm has been trampled.
WOULD LOVE TO JUST NOT HAVE TO HEAR ANY OF IT. WOULD LOVE TO LOOK AT CAT VIDEOS ALL DAY.
But you know, for most of us, there’s a personal impact to be concerned, or you know, we care about other people who maybe are of a different gender, race, income or background than ourselves because, you know, they’re human beings.
Right? I’d fucking love to go back to 2010 or whatever when I had the free emotional bandwidth to give a fuck about TV shows and pop culture and the time to be pissed off about season finales. Unfortunately, what with the world burning and all I don’t have that luxury.
I’ve never been that person who didn’t have kids because “the world’s a mess, blah, blah, blah” – I made that choice for other reasons years before Trump – but damn if I’m not relieved I don’t have them now. I can’t even imagine the pressure of raising children in this shit show.
I think a lot of these Trump voters never liked hearing about politics. It was boring and hard to understand, and they thought “politicians” like Hillary were smarty-pants and corrupt (despite no corrupt conduct having been found). They wanted to dumb it down by having a (fake) businessman / “reality” TV actor in the White House. They don’t know or care about the constitution or the consequences of it being destroyed by someone like this in office. They just think Trump is a gas.
Yes! He’s entertaining. They can’t wrap their heads around anything else.
I think when certain people say they are tired of politics, what they really mean is they are tired of having to think how they have personally enabled this rapist to be president. You voted for him. You vote for representatives who support him. You still support him, but you’re too afraid to admit you’re also a disgusting trash person.
I love it when Wendy or anyone else mentions how much they hate him. It shows me there is still some some humanity out there.
I have to say I’m pleased as punch to hopefully see some articles of impeachment for Christmas. Happy Holidays!
People cite the economy as a credit to Trump, but the U.S. now has a $984 billion deficit. The deficit has doubled year over year since he took office. Why is that bad: deficits usually SHRINK during economic growth; they don’t get bigger. He’s cutting taxes for the rich, and our kids will pay for that.
The republicans love deficits until a democrat is elected president and then all they can think about is the deficit and how it is destroying the country. This happened when Reagan was president and then again under Bush and now with Trump.
The 2016 deficit was $585 billion. The deficit hasn’t doubled yet, hardly doubled every year. Obama recorded 4 years with deficits over $1 trillion; 3 of those well over. If you’re going to use numbers, please use accurate ones.
It was indeed $585B in 2016.
2009-2012 it was higher because of spending to counteract the recession that Bush caused.
It was much lower during Obama’s 2nd term, after he, you know, repaired the economy and got us out of recession.
It hasn’t doubled year over year since Trump took office, but it’s increased a lot. From $6B to $8B to $1T to projected $1.1T in 2020.
If you’re going to use numbers, please use all the relevant accurate numbers and the context behind them.
Oh @FYI your statistic is lacking significant context…. Obama inherited that deficit… and within four years reduced it significantly. So yes, for four out of 8 years the deficit was over $1 trillion – but it was the FIRST four years of his term, not the second. So yes accuracy would be beneficial to the argument.
It actually has doubled from where it was in 2016 (Obama) to where Trump will be in 2020, that is accurate.
This is a blog. It was created by a particular individual, and is funded by advertisement. Wendy is not a public figure, she has not authority to make you pay attention to her, she is not using public funds so she’s not forcing anyone to support the work she’s doing if they don’t want to. She, on her own initiative, created and curates the content on this blog to her liking. It is both her right and responsibility to come up with the content here.
If you don’t like what she offers, that’s totally fine. You can vote with your eyeballs and stop reading it. Wendy is not owed your or anyone’s attention, so if you don’t like what she’s writing you can…not read it.
You, just like she did, can use your own initiative to create and curate a website that encapsulates your own point of view, and you, just like she, will have to see whether or not that can sustain the interest of anybody else.
Just, the gall to say “An advice column is not a place for political pontificate”!!!
This website is a place for whatever Wendy wants it to be. She created it. If its not to your liking, no problem.
Exactly this.
Look, was it a random cheap shot (for lack of a better term) in the middle of the reply? Sure. Could the reply have been made without it and still more than made the point? Sure. But that’s the beauty of NOT WRITING THE SITE: my opinion on her response doesn’t matter. I have no doubt Wendy will weather my disappointment at her going for low-hanging fruit just fine 🙂
Yeah I mean it can be fun when we have differing opinions, from her or from one another, and argue in the comments, but to insist something doesn’t BELONG here?
If Wendy brings it in, it belongs because this is her creation. I appreciate and enjoy the forum created, but it’s not mine. There’s no law that says if you have an advice column website it must meet these criteria or else you will be shut down.
If this site ’s so out of step with what you are interested in reading, that’s fine, you’re not her audience. Wendy I’m sure has lost and gained readers over time given what she chooses to put here, and that’s her prerogative.
If a dwindling audience becomes a concern for her (which I don’t see her stats, I don’t know what her audience size looks like or if she really cares that much whether it shrinks or grows), she can make the choice to switch up what she’s doing to chase an audience.
Or not.
This is 100% her bus to drive.
Everyone else has the same freedom try doing what she does.
Sorry, LWs. Internet sites are a community. They have their own standards and customs and people join or avoid based upon these community standards, topics of discussion, tone of comments, and general intelligence and reasonableness of posters. Clearly this isn’t the site for you. The guy Wendy commented to felt entitled to a 15-20 years younger woman, because older women, those if not his own age at least closer to it, didn’t meet his high standards. He expressed this entitlement in a rather crude, entitled way, much as LW#1 does. I think the answers to his unrealistic entitltement were spot on. Most 35 and younger not only wouldn’t date him, they would regard him as more than a little repugnant. Referring him to some un-named site for Trump groupies likely was good advice and steered him to more fertile hunting ground, although I doubt young Trump-supporting women are that interested in dating obnoxious men who are old enough to b e their fathers.
LW1: “advice”.
As in, “This is an advice column, which I advise you not to read, since it bothers you so much.”
Don’t stop there, Kate! LW1’s entire letter was rife with misspellings, poor grammar, and faulty logic. He begged to be corrected. And, if at the age of 45-plus, still hasn’t learned basic writing skills, he’s got no chance at all with most of the women I know.
I have a limited amount of time in the morning when I usually do my “Dear Wendy-ing”. I have more time, now, so I’ll just say: Making friends with commas and capital letters wouldn’t hurt him, either.
Let’s be honest. He’s one small step away from deciding he needs to order a mail-order Asian bride from one of those sites promising beautiful, submissive, young women, whose only interest in life is pleasing a man and treating him like her king and rightful ruler.
“He reached out to you to get some advise and you completely destroyed his hope.’
So you think it is better to be dishonest and give him false hope and skip pointing out the hypocrisy of not wanting to date women his own age but being angry when younger women don’t want to date men his age.
Besides, no one, not even Wendy, can get young women to date old men that they want nothing to do with.
Careful, Wendy, you don’t want to be be reported to the Internet Ombudsman again…
LOL. That is all.
I read a comment on another site right before the 2016 election that went something like this:
“I’m not going to call you a white supremacist or a racist if you voted for Trump. Because I don’t know you, and I don’t know what’s in your heart or your head.
What I do know is this: if you voted for Trump, you’re A-OK with racism and white supremacy. You think it’s a perfectly acceptable quality in the President of the United States. You don’t find his open racism and his refusal to disavow the Klan, Nazis, or white nationalism the least bit objectionable. Because if you did, you wouldn’t have voted for him.”
Don’t forget about grabbing women by their pussies, too. People who voted for him are ok with that also.
I am “out” Politics does not belong in an advice column. Certainly bullying readers is inappropriate and condescending. I am an independent by the way. You should seek counselling for your misguided rage. I am sure you are not in the business of rapidly losing readers but you just did. I hope you find peace.
Ok, boomer.
Hey now… I’m a boomer. We consist of millions of people born over an 18 year time span, so it’s not as if we all have the same things in common.
It’s just a shorthand way to be dismissive of someone; I say it to people who are my age, too and I was born in 76, nowhere near the baby boom.
Give me a break. If someone is acting like a stereotypical boomer (hello, who votes Republican?), it’s fine to call it out.
Congratulations on being “out,” Terry! Exciting!
Yay! A flounce!
Sashay! Chantay!
Do you understand that when you operate your own independent website like Wendy’s- you can literally put anything you want on it. She’s not rapidly losing anything. How is Wendy bullying? Is she forcing them to visit her site and read her writing?
Also, why are there quotes around “out?”
Please call the Internet Police and report her.
I almost hurt myself with the combined eye-roll/bark of laughter at LW1’s ridiculousness. He’s not going to advise you on how to do your job…then proceeds to do just that, poorly. Sadly, there is probably room on the internet where columnists advise men that it’s their due to get all the things they want (and thus must deserve!). Happily, this is not that place. Keep on rocking’ it Wendy, and thank you for caring. Same shit keeps me up at night.
These guys are acting like she went on some raging rant here. It was a one-off line. Granted, there’s been some passionate Trump discussion on this site, but this post is just not an example. And again, Wendy ain’t losing any readers. And if she is, I doubt they’d be ones she’d want to keep. Not her target audience at all.
It seems like to the letter writers that the one sentence was raging rant. I guess when one is overly emotional, hysterical even, that one mean old sentence can be a lot to take.
I live and work in a pretty conservative area. The things I’ve seen is that Fox News for decades, ever since Bill Clinton was elected, portrayed Bill and Hillary as criminals. The Democratic party never refuted this or did much of anything to prove those charges as false. So you get to an election with Hillary as the democratic candidate and most of the retired conservative population think she should be in prison and isn’t just because of connections and cronyism. They don’t actually question whether she didn’t anything illegal. They consider her crimes to be a fact.
Those same people watched Trump on “The Apprentice” and considered him a incredible business person, a self-made millionaire. They see his brashness as a guy who won’t put up with anything. They see him as the one person who is willing to do what needs to be done. They see the trade embargo as him at least trying to save jobs. They see the wall as trying to improve safety.
When it was time to vote they saw it as a choice between a crook or a superb businessman.
Their ability to overlook all the pussy grabbing is beyond me. I think in their generation there was a general outlook that that’s just the way men are.
I live in a conservative area, too. And, honestly, the Republican vitriol of the Clintons is just insane. There comes a point when rational persons just can’t be bothered arguing with the Fox Propaganda Machine. The fact that they fell for Trump just proves the party failed and the propaganda machine won out. The GOP is no longer a political party. It’s a cult. And should be treated accordingly.
Yeah, George Conway has said to people that Kellyanne is in a cult.
I love that they talk about Trump Derangement Syndrome, while bringing up HRC (who hasn’t been in politics for 3 years) every other breath. Their anger and hatred toward her is boundless.
I’ve dated older women and younger. I understand but somewhat disagree with your opinion of men looking for younger women. Truth be told, I enjoy your opinion. Thanks and keep up the good work.
As to the politics thing: yes I agree completely. I would salute you even if I didn’t. I like the way you express yourself. It’s fearless and relatable and thought provoking.
Thanks bunches, Theo
#lockhimup
So, first he says that “all the good ones are taken by age 35”, then he insists that 45 year old women are not up for fun and it’s NOT TRUE AT ALL that a man past 40 can’t find a younger partner.
Dude… escort service workers don’t count.