There is something about ambition; the way it gnaws at you, morphs into its own beast eats you from within, then chews you up from inside and when it's done with you, you'd be so lucky if you even recognize yourself.
In Susan Page's biography of Barbara Walters, Rulebreaker, Walters' ambition is forceful, it's desperate, thorough, and at some point maybe a little pathetic. And yet, I came out of it with full respect for the force of this person, who was a fearless pioneer for women in broadcasting, even when she didn't necessarily want to be.
Barbara Walters began her professional career in television in 1953; a year when women weren't even allowed to get credit cards without their husbands. Walters started her career at a time the field was overwhelmingly male and the odds were so drastically stacked against her that you'd almost have to be mad to want to venture into it. And yet she did. Because we always need frontrunners, radicals to pave the way for millions of others. Her original on-air co anchors would bully her; not to mention the onslaught of commentary on her speech patterns, the way she looked, what she wore among other nonsense. And nevertheless, she would persist.
A democratic senator from Rhode Island, John Patore, once called her a "little girl." He called a woman, who had by then spent dozen years working her way up at NBC to become the nation's top rated morning show, a little girl. How do you surmount that? How do you quiet the storm of harassment, defy odds, and just keep going? Somehow, Barbara Walters did.
Because she did, she inspired others to do. Jen Psaki, who would later be Press Secretary for Joe Biden, used to negotiate with her parents to allow her stay up late to watch Barbara on ABC's 20/20. People wanted to be Barbara Walters. And apparently, she would often say in response, "you have to take the whole package."
And for Barbara, it was quite the package: a product of a dysfunctional marriage and family (inattentive parents; a suicidal and financially reckless father who almost gambled away his daughter's life savings; an anxious and emotionally reckless mother; and a severely disabled sister, all of whom Barbara was responsible for from a young age); three failed marriages; and years of estrangement with her child who battled addiction. And it makes me wonder is that what it takes to be successful? Turmoil, instability, chaos?
One thing that struck me was that Barbara Walters was gutsy (oh chile this women interviewed brutal, tyrannical dictators) but she was not confident. Apparently, she second-guessed every single thing. So much that her second husband joked that the inscription on her gravestone should reflect her perennial indecision: "on the other hand, maybe I should have lived." Too often, we think before we can aspire for the big thing [whatever it may be] that we have to be fully ready; we have to be confident, forceful; we have to have conquered impostor syndrome; we have to be IT. But sometimes you can do it afraid. You can say it while your voice is merely a whimper. You can try it while you break out in hives. As long as you do it, anyway. Barbara did it anyway.
As with most heroes, Barbara was a ball of complexities. She did not just have to work in toxicity, often times, she herself was a source of it. She had an obsessive competition with Diane Sawyer, all of which culminated in drama that makes for good network episodic TV. She never called herself a feminist, never aligned herself with her female colleagues at NBC or ABC when they fought for changes against sexual discrimination, and never was an advocate for women. It was so bad she said her breakthrough would have happened with or without the women's movement. While I started this by dreamily painting the way she paved the way for so many women, it didn't seem like she wanted to. It became clear she only cared about herself and that it just inadvertently also cleared the way. She was focused on HER own career. Indeed, she saw other women's gains as her loss.
She worked doggedly, tirelessly. She worked and worked and worked. She learned her job and the job of everyone around her, cultivated relationships, understood public relations. None of it was ever enough for her. No matter how high profile she became, no matter how much money she made, she never seemed to enjoy or relish it. She was at some point so pathetic that she would be envious when women "easily" got things she ferociously fought for. Once, she saw that a room had been designated for Joan Lunden to use for her little kids when she worked, and Barbara was angry no one did that for her when she adopted a newborn. She wanted to conform so bad and make it out, but got angry when others fought for better. In reading about her life, you were simultaneously impressed and repulsed by the destructive force that was her success.
When she welcomed a baby through adoption after several unfortunate pregnancy losses, she never even took maternity leave. She took her home on a Friday and went to the office on Monday. She never mentioned her child on air for months. And then never even thought to bring her into the studio. "It would be like bringing in a puppy that wasn't housebroken," she once said. It's not even that she was a horrible mother; on her nurse's day off, she would hurry home when her show ended to spend the day with her daughter. In the summer, they rented a vacation home in Long Island; she kept a baby book; she limited travel time to devote to the baby. The problem was she just saw work as sooo important. Later when her child had grown up, Barbara said children would always leave, but a career would be forever. An odd twist of that usual expression.
They hated her. Oh they hated her so much: all that power! And yet, they needed her. They respected her. But they also griped about her; how she blurred the line between news business and show business. BUT she walked her own path. I can't imagine how difficult that must have been.
Once, Andrea Mitchell attended a party at Barbara's house and she mentioned that after working tirelessly, she managed to score an interview with Castro in Havana commemorating the fortieth anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Barbara heard this, turned around and arranged her own interview with the Cuban leader. She did this to her own friend because in Andrea's words, "nothing gets between Barbara and a 'get'." Not only did Barbara want to be ahead of Andrea, she wanted Andrea out of the way completely. She told Castro that it had to be just her. She would ask Deborah Roberts all the time what she was working on and whenever Roberts told her, the next thing her story would be shut down because Barbara was now doing it. She welcomed Diane Sawyer to ABC by trying to steal the first guest from her new show: Thomas Root who had been at the center of bizarre, "headline-grabbing" mystery. In 1989, the comms lawyer flew his Cessna 210 Centurion out of Washington National heading to North Carolina. Later he radioed that he was struggling to breathe and then military jets and helicopter tailed his plane as he headed down the eastern seaboard on auto pilot for four hours (800 miles). It then crashed into the Atlantic ocean near the Bahamas when fuel ran out, and Root managed to survive as rescuers pulled him out of the water. But the real plot twist: he had an unexplained gunshot wound in his stomach. So, as you can imagine, this was an extremely important guest. Barbara stole this. It seemed like Barbara was particularly obsessed with Diane, complaining to her friends that while everything had been so hard for her, Diane always had things easy: personally and professionally. Diane had a successful marriage, she was lovely and charming, and network executives adored her.
As petty and pathetic and trivial as Barbara was, she also made remarkable strides, succeeding in getting the leaders of Israel and Egypt to get a joint interview for the first time. Such was her dedication: pouring all of herself into her work, charming heads of state, and daring to be what so many before and after her couldn't ever. She was also very human, very generous. She would send congratulations to other women who landed big jobs or major interviews on personal stationery. She gave them advice during tough times. She hired women as well as men for top jobs on her team. She promoted their careers even after they left her team. She gave her female friends generous gifts and proffered advice from lessons from her complicated life, and especially on the perils of balancing a career and motherhood. She used her connections to make sure her friend (Nancy Shevell McCartney) got access to the best doctors at Sloan Kettering when she was diagnosed with breast cancer in her mid-thirties.
Once, as a child--about seven or eight, she complained about constant stomach pains not because she had them but just because she wanted her parents attention. She just wanted them to care about her. And because, of course, it was nonexistent pain, a diagnosis was elusive. Eventually, one doctor recommended taking out her appendix. Wild as that was, Barbara welcomed it.
"I always felt I was auditioning, either for a new job or to make sure that I could hold on to the one I had. No matter how high my profile became, how many awards I received, or how much money I made, my fear was that it all could be taken away from me." - Barbara Walters
Throughout this biography, it was never quite clear what her why was. Why? Both formidable and worrisome. It does beg the question: when you have these enormous goals and ambitions, is it ever worth it to stop and ask, why? Why do I want this? Could there ever be a need to tie your entire identity to your career as to be so pathetic? How can one's self worth be so tied to work that it bleeds into everything?
In a sense, it worked for Walters. She WAS somebody. No one else has risen as high as she did in the television business. She shaped the kind of stories worth telling; how questions are asked; she interviewed such a wide range of political and global leaders than any other person (man or woman). She proved herself. She started The View at 67 and didn't relinquish her seat at the table till she was 84.
She was a GROUNDBREAKING person, especially for someone whose father wrote on his daughter's college application, "Barbara is a very normal girl with normal interests." She was far from normal. And yet, one is tempted to ask, of Barbara, would normal have been so bad? Because extraordinary seemed like it crushed her. When the sun was setting, friends who hung with her recalled how unhappy she was. How angry she was. How resentful. She just didn't seem to have any satisfaction in the life she lived, the storied career. All that was left was bitterness and a juvenile dismissiveness of women who came after.
As with most powerful people in America, she refused to leave the spotlight. Even when her dignity and hard won reputation were at risk; even when her interviews started to lack the vigor they once had, she clung to power relentlessly.
But eventually.
Towards the final years of her life, she was tended to by her chief of staff and paid caretakers, after having pushed away many of her close friends.
I came out of this biography deeply inspired but also filled with pity for this person whose life was far from fulfilled. I suppose the lesson is not to forgo ambition or extraordinariness, but to wholly pursue contentment. You must always ask yourself, when is it enough? What makes it enough?
When she retired, ABC named its headquarters after her. The brass plaque read "The Barbara Walters Building" in gold letters on a black background. She gave a gracious speech at the ribbon-cutting ceremony but soon afterwards, she complained to a reporter that the plaque was too small. There was nothing more pathetic in all 90 something years of her life.
While her parents and sibling's headstones had beloved, hers didn't have that descriptive. Instead it said, "no regrets. I had a great life."
And somehow, I have a hard time believing this.
Love,
I
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