A little background on me and Fox News and Dana Perino … of course Dana is mainly known these days due to her Fox News affiliation. I remember when she was George W. Bush’s press secretary. Then, like many former political animals, she ended up at Fox. When I first began watching Fox News, maybe a decade or so back, it was with such joy. I’ve learned that I can very quickly tell when a reporter/book/whatever is biased by my own feelings while observing. If I start to feel annoyed, stressed, or like my blood pressure is rising, I know it’s because a supposed “news” source is coming across in a subjective way, usually in a direction I don’t feel is factual.
Fox News was a breath of fresh air after having only the big 3 networks, CNN, or PBS as news sources which almost always leaned left. One thing that did crack me up was the way the women on FNC were dressed — always in, um, “form fitting” dresses that were usually short and low-cut. The women wore bright colors and were usually pretty too. I found this kind of eye-rolling and annoying. I mean, it’s great to be pretty and all, but the men on FNC looked and dressed like men anyplace else. The whole look of the women came across as a little sexist to me, and if you know me you know I’m not one to make that charge frivolously. The years passed. I came to love Bill O’Reilly’s show and I miss it to this day. I like Tucker Carlson; Sean Hannity gets repetitive and to me rarely breaks new ground. The one FNC show I watch regularly is “The Five,” probably because it’s on while I am making dinner.
Dana is on this show, and I’ve always viewed her as fairly vanilla — ie, playing it safe with pretty moderate comments and views. I’ve loved Kimberly Guilfoyle and Dagan McDowell, both of whom impress me with their intelligence. Among the men, I like Jesse Watters, and absolutely love Greg Gutfeld. Gutfeld shares my type of humor and he is wickedly smart. At the end of the show, the hosts will share little things, which increasingly seems to be that they’ve written a book. As an author, I feel a little miffed at this — it seems like such an obvious ploy for more money. A few of the books seem to have real merit, but most of them just seem like something to do since you’ve made a bit of a name for yourself and therefore have the coveted “platform” that authors are all dying for.
I’ll admit that that’s how I approached Dana Perino’s latest, “Everything Will Be Okay: Life Lessons for Young Women.” I doubt I would ever have read it, but friend and commenter Leona wanted to, so I checked it out from the library for her and since she said it was a quick read, I read it too before returning it to the library.
So, thanks for sticking with me this far. Here’s the actual book review:
I was stuck by Dana’s confidence. Of course, it’s her book, and she’s somewhat famous, but still, she has a very high opinion of herself. In the intro, she describes asking an acquaintance, “Well, how do you think I became Dana Perino?” She goes on to write “I’m grateful that my advice has apparently been helpful to quite a few people,” “Hey, look at me … no Ivy (league education) here!” I guess, given that this is an advice book, she’d have to go into it feeling she had something to share.
The book describes itself as containing advice “for young women from a formerly young woman,” and I’m almost a decade older than the 48-year-old Perino, but much of the advice given seemed very basic to me, really common sense. Read. Embrace change. Be grateful. Maybe today’s 20-somethings really need to read a book stating these things explicitly? Dana tries, in my opinion too hard, to be hip-to-the-young-folks with asides such as “amirite?”, lots of exclamation points, “facepalm emoji!,” etc.
I did enjoy the autobiographical bits in this book; they reinforced my belief that everyone has their own stories, and really, most everybody’s are pretty interesting if you take the time to listen to them (or in this case, read them). Dana has been hugely blessed by a husband who apparently has done a lot in sacrificing his own desires in order to help her build her career.
Now that she is at a fairly high career level, Dana shares her likes and dislikes in the workplace. A few things she doesn’t like in people working for her are wearing UGG boots (they make you shuffle), and saying “no worries.” These examples made me think how hard it can be to work for a boss. It can be next to impossible to know sometimes whether what you’re doing is annoying them. As an underling, MY non-famous-person piece of advice is to study your boss, learn what they like, and do it. This has helped me out a lot.
Dana and I have a lot in common in that we both like achieving and “getting gold stars.” We’re both classic “good girls,” and yet I was disappointed in a few things. She used a few instances of profanity (either in the book itself or describing things she said), and in an incident with George W. Bush, she describes a time when she was asked to write a press release against gay marriage. Perino mentions that being against gay marriage “was a stand that many supported at the time” (WOW imagine how neanderthal people used to be!), but that Bush understood Dana’s pro-gay beliefs and told her she didn’t have to write the release since it contradicted her beliefs. She appreciated his loyalty to her … but this made me sad, particularly because Perino mentions “faith” several times, as well as praying, etc. All this adds to my image of her as a “vanilla” Republican, at best.