The New York Times “Home” section on January 4 featured a profile by Alex Witchel of Edye Smith. Mrs. tured a profile by Alex Witchel of Edye Smith. Mrs. Smith is the mother of two small boys killed in the Oklahoma City bombing. And she has been, per Witchel, “available to the press” ever since. Wait, you s ay, which press? Who’s Edye Smith? Well, you obviously haven’t been reading the National Enquirer, where Mrs. Smith has apparently become a regular tab loid presence . Which is all the excuse Witchel needed.
Her story told us that Mrs. Smith has: visited male strippers’ bars; recently remarried her boys’ father at a ceremony subsidized by the Enquirer; and allowed film crews to photograph her pregnancy tests. Her husband’s daughter’s stepfather is in prison. Edye’s stepfather is conducting “his own” investigation into the bombing; she’s convinced the government is complicit in the tragedy. But Edye has a “disconcerting calm” about that event; she knows she will see her boys again in Heaven.
Thus, the New York Times portrait of Edye Smith, mother of two murdered children: a not-very-sophisticated, lower-middle-class Christian white woman. Witchel wants us to feel sorry for her. But she also wants us to think that Edye is a fool and a rube. Unlike Alex Witchel, who may be a barbarian, but at least knows enough to wear Ferragamos.
