I really enjoyed reading this book from beginning to end, and I am not a liberal. Ms. Feinman Todd explores herself psychologically, throughout the book, which I appreciated. I think it builds trust and character in a human; when they can be real with their audience. It is something I try to do myself with my posts.

To say she has been humbled is putting it lightly. It isn’t so bad when you are being thrown under the bus by a girlfriend or boyfriend, teacher or boss. But when that person is Bob Woodrow (Watergate fame) and Hillary Clinton, yeah, that is a bit of a hiccup.

Part way into the book, I actually looked her up online as I thought she looked familiar. Not because of this infamous 15 minutes but I thought she might have been to the California Writer’s Club bi-annual conference perhaps. This is when I read the part about the hiccup, when her book was reviewed by her old “boss” at the Washington Post – where she got her start in life as a researcher and subsequent “ghosting” gigs. Needless to say, they blamed her and of course stood up for their top writer. One more reason to never trust the media. I learned this by being a social worker where you can’t speak out for the children you are responsible for. The media just makes things up, or covers their ass.

As I noted, she shared herself quite openly in this book. It is not hard to see how a young woman, looking up to a highly revered reporter – whom she has put on a pedestal – would trust him over her own intuition. How many times have women succumbed to the charms of a man. The prisons are filled with women who have committed an act for a man, very rarely is it of their own volition.

I write about narcissism all the time, on my psychology page. This is what I specialize in – survivors of narcissists. Not saying Bob is a narcissist, just saying that it is interesting when people don’t take responsibility for their actions. To think people are that naïve – well, they are, sad but I am trusting the little guy over the big guy. I mean, even if she went to see Bob and blurted out confidential information – a bigger person, who knew he was her mentor, would have counseled her and kept it to themselves. But, Bob isn’t a psychotherapist who retains confidential information. Although he did for “Deep Throat,” but only his name, not the confidential information. You never reveal your source. He is a big time reporter that gets people impeached. I am sure by then (late 90’s), he had become a bit big for his britches. How I am looking at it, was it really that important that the American people knew that Hillary was into psychics? BFD. As Kenny Rogers said, no when to hold them and no when to fold them. Personally, I would never trust the guy. Luckily, I doubt I will ever have to.

The complete title of the book (published 2017) is “Pretend I’m Not Here.” The secondary title, “How I worked with three newspaper icons, one powerful first lady, and still managed to dig myself out of the Washington swamp.” Quite a mouthful. I picked it up on sale at the Worthington Library for the title, not the secondary byline. It is easy to get the point when the book is written by a woman.