Summary Of What I Did To Morris Udall
“What I did to Morris Udall”: A Critique Molly Ivins wrote an apologetic piece in 1994 entitled “What I did to Morris Udall.” Ivins was a columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram when this column was published in the editorial pages of The Times. However, Ivins did not start at the top; she had to work to earn her spot. Ivins had an opportunity to earn her spot when she was assigned a job to create a political profile on Morris Udall in the New York Times Magazine, as other writers were doing for the other candidates that would be the democratic representative for the presidential elections. This writing job is what she writes about; flashing back to the time when she did who she believed to be not only a decent guy, but a great politician
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wrong.
She was able to write “What I did to Morris Udall” from her personal experience. She used the position of power she maintained at the time as a nationally-syndicated political columnist to admirably confess a crime she believe she committed against Udall when she was in the beginning stages of her career, and believed that the only thing writers were supposed to do was to bring out the negatives (Ivins144). She was able to build up her career, but she had also been one of the factors in stopping Udall’s from advancing by writing nothing but the little negative things, which she had to dig in the dirt for, to write a memorable profile on him, instead of the thousands of positive aspects she could have easily wrote about him.
The author presented her information for her column in a story format. Which was a wise decision; it kept her from using complex jargon that the average reader would not understand. However, when she did bring up jargon, she added in a footnote. She did this to help her audience better understand why she would compare the person to Morris Udall without adding onto her actual essay. In her story, she started with present day time, and then she wrote about what is now history between her and Udall. She created this work to not only grant a deserved apology to Udall, but to say sorry to the American populations, who in her opinion were robbed of what could have been a better presidency than Carter delivered (Ivins 145). She was did a stable job with presenting the cold hard facts which she had gathered about him when she first wrote of him. However this time, she focused on the many positive things she could easily say about him. With the facts, and the passion she seemed to put into the writing when she had the chance to say “I am sorry,” she achieved her goal of apologizing for putting her own career above another decent man’s career.
While Ivins does a great job trying to make a clear point that she was truly sorry for what she had done to Udall, she cannot take back the professional errors she has already made.
She does not need to make more professional errors trying to fix the situation. She had done what she intended to do; she had gotten herself to be a named journalist. However, to me, audience is a big issue, she was writing for a 1976 election when she made her first wrong. It took her all the way up to 1994 to apologize for her wrongdoings. By that time, Udall’s political profession was over, and she could not do anything about it. If the audience for the piece she had wrote in 1994 does not include the people affected by the election of 1976, what was the point? She may have lost readers because of the irrelevance that it had to today’s world. This essay is aged, but I am not aged, therefore it did not make sense to me. Until I read this essay, I personally had no idea who Udall was; I could not even tell a person what number of president Jimmy Carter was for the United States. A red flag should have hit Ivins square in the forehead about the audience she was reaching out to when she wrote the words: “He’s retired now, victim of a sad, slow, wasting disease” (Ivins 145). At that point, she should have evaluated the conditions of the present: he was retired, and no longer a part of not even Arizona’s government systems. She should have challenged herself with the question: Why would the entirety of America care what I have to say to Udall as an apology? However, it does take guts to apologize not only privately, but publically as a writer for a mistake she had
made.
Molly Ivins wrote a truly apologetic piece aimed toward the people affected in the 1976 Democratic presidential nominations, including Udall himself. She presented cold, hard facts that she had gathered in a personal experience with Udall many years prior to the essay. These facts explained why she was wrong to write so negatively about him when she was put in the position to create an opinion for the nation to see of him. However, Ivins used her heart instead of her head when she published this apology because she failed to think about her audience, she knew who she wanted it to be, but she did not realize who she was truly going to be writing to when it was published in numerous columns across America.
wrong.
She was able to write “What I did to Morris Udall” from her personal experience. She used the position of power she maintained at the time as a nationally-syndicated political columnist to admirably confess a crime she believe she committed against Udall when she was in the beginning stages of her career, and believed that the only thing writers were supposed to do was to bring out the negatives (Ivins144). She was able to build up her career, but she had also been one of the factors in stopping Udall’s from advancing by writing nothing but the little negative things, which she had to dig in the dirt for, to write a memorable profile on him, instead of the thousands of positive aspects she could have easily wrote about him.
The author presented her information for her column in a story format. Which was a wise decision; it kept her from using complex jargon that the average reader would not understand. However, when she did bring up jargon, she added in a footnote. She did this to help her audience better understand why she would compare the person to Morris Udall without adding onto her actual essay. In her story, she started with present day time, and then she wrote about what is now history between her and Udall. She created this work to not only grant a deserved apology to Udall, but to say sorry to the American populations, who in her opinion were robbed of what could have been a better presidency than Carter delivered (Ivins 145). She was did a stable job with presenting the cold hard facts which she had gathered about him when she first wrote of him. However this time, she focused on the many positive things she could easily say about him. With the facts, and the passion she seemed to put into the writing when she had the chance to say “I am sorry,” she achieved her goal of apologizing for putting her own career above another decent man’s career.
While Ivins does a great job trying to make a clear point that she was truly sorry for what she had done to Udall, she cannot take back the professional errors she has already made.
She does not need to make more professional errors trying to fix the situation. She had done what she intended to do; she had gotten herself to be a named journalist. However, to me, audience is a big issue, she was writing for a 1976 election when she made her first wrong. It took her all the way up to 1994 to apologize for her wrongdoings. By that time, Udall’s political profession was over, and she could not do anything about it. If the audience for the piece she had wrote in 1994 does not include the people affected by the election of 1976, what was the point? She may have lost readers because of the irrelevance that it had to today’s world. This essay is aged, but I am not aged, therefore it did not make sense to me. Until I read this essay, I personally had no idea who Udall was; I could not even tell a person what number of president Jimmy Carter was for the United States. A red flag should have hit Ivins square in the forehead about the audience she was reaching out to when she wrote the words: “He’s retired now, victim of a sad, slow, wasting disease” (Ivins 145). At that point, she should have evaluated the conditions of the present: he was retired, and no longer a part of not even Arizona’s government systems. She should have challenged herself with the question: Why would the entirety of America care what I have to say to Udall as an apology? However, it does take guts to apologize not only privately, but publically as a writer for a mistake she had
made.
Molly Ivins wrote a truly apologetic piece aimed toward the people affected in the 1976 Democratic presidential nominations, including Udall himself. She presented cold, hard facts that she had gathered in a personal experience with Udall many years prior to the essay. These facts explained why she was wrong to write so negatively about him when she was put in the position to create an opinion for the nation to see of him. However, Ivins used her heart instead of her head when she published this apology because she failed to think about her audience, she knew who she wanted it to be, but she did not realize who she was truly going to be writing to when it was published in numerous columns across America.