We're Idiots, Babe: Women, Bullying, Politics, and You - Page 4

I would like to think this is old news but just in case, just in case this is at all political, let me clear the deck, because it may be that politics has to do with this and if it does, well let’s clear that up right away. I’m marginally politically involved. Let me tell you how: I knew Maureen Sullivan Stemberg, who was married to Staples founder Tom Stemberg. I had known Maureen for many years and had become good friends with her.

I worked as a ghostwriter/speechwriter and unofficial publicist for Stemberg and besides that, was a good and close friend. And I had been reading about her divorce off and on for ages from stacks of boxes that lined her Copley apartment years back because I was interested in what happened to her because frankly, when she told me, I couldn’t believe it. Not at first. I don’t know a whole lot about the law: I didn’t know about the precedent-setting Bowser v Bowser, and divorce communal property. I did not know about equal equity split division in Massachusetts – we had long discussions about this. What I really didn’t know was about Mitt Romney or who he was at all. But what I found out was that he had been involved in her divorce proceedings and had testified on the stand. She and I spoke about this – and I've written about this before. About what I saw, about what Romney said during that trial.

Maureen asked years later if I would co-write (and it would be ghostwritten) a book about her marriage, her life, her illnesses, her courage through various illnesses and her life and circumstance, and in it – a small fraction of the book – she would talk about then-presidential hopeful Mitt Romney. It was to be a relatively small part of the book, but obviously, had the book been written pre-election time, it would have helped sell the book and made a difference in the election. Honestly, I’m not sure. I felt there were other stories there besides Romney – that, really, the book was about her and about other women – we could speak to that.

I kept good notes and tapes from our meetings that took place one long summer and winter but Sullivan and I could never agree on terms. We just kept spinning our wheels. No matter what progress I felt we made, we seemed to get nowhere in the final account and so we stopped.

Article Author: Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti

Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti is a published writer in both the United States and Europe. She is widely known for her music commentary, particularly her writings about Bob Dylan about whom she runs a highly-trafficked site. …

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