Her answer is a short paragraph, which I have pasted here in its entirety:
“Please accept my sympathy for this sorry situation. Contact the National Domestic Violence Hotline and ask for help to escape the financial straitjacket your husband has you in. Its toll-free phone number is 800-799-7233. Many other women have done this and succeeded, and so can you.”
Really? That’s it?
I don’t read her columns a lot, only when the topic is salacious, but even as an irregular, casual reader, I have seen a trend where Dear Abby (pen name of real-life human Jeanne Phillips) gives really lame answers more often than no.
If that’s all it takes, maybe I’ll become the next Agony Aunt.
I agree this was good advice, but it reminds me of the “Queen for A Day” show. You’d get horrible stories of misfortune, and the solution would be to let the lady wear a robe and a crown for a few minutes and then give her a new washing machine.
And they were thrilled to get a new washing machine. Every contestant knew what sort of thing the prize would be (some large appliance usually, as I remember), and was willing to go in front of a live and a TV audience to parade their woes to win it. Even as a child I was kind of squicked out by that.
OTOH, Carolyn Hax from the Washington Post gives some really great advice. Anyone looking to solve life’s problems via a newspaper column should wtite to her, not Abby
They’ve been made-up formulaic garbage since I was a child in the 1960s.
They’re all of the form
Reader: Dear Abby: I’m an innocent victim of circumstances [as follows]. I can’t possibly change [long list of obviously contributory circumstances and behaviors] because of [stupid reasons]. How can I solve this problem without changing anything?
I read a couple of the advice columns (Dear Abby, Dear Eric which replaced Amy Dickinson, and Miss Manners) and what I’ve noticed in the last couple of months is seeing the exact same question asked of different columnists.
Dear Abby (and for that matter Ann Landers) has from the very beginning been using some form of “seek professional help” as the stock answer for many questions.
Another thing to remember is that all the advice columns are subject to heavy editing by the newspapers that run them, so Abby/Ann/Amy/Carolyn/etc. may have originally written a longer response, only to have the local features editor chop both the question and answer into mush.
I’m not in the habit of reading the online versions of these columns, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they weren’t a good bit more detailed.
I remember reading a book about old-time television where one of the producers of Queen for a Day admitted they only picked contestants who would be thrilled with a new washing machine or something similar. The producer noted that they had heartbreaking letters for people with end-stage cancer, who were looking for shelter from an abusive husband, assistance with a special needs child, or something like that and those were discarded. The show got all its prizes in exchange for product plugs, and if a problem couldn’t be cured with a new washing machine or Amana refrigerator, that woman wasn’t going to be a contestant.
I once met a professional artist friend of my college professor whose mom won a washing machine on QFAD, by citing her woes of raising him, her (could the viewers get the hints?) homosexual son.
Every so often a link to a Dear Abby column shows up in my Facebook feed, and every so often I read it, and I usually end up thinking that probably any random person off the street could do as good a job of answering the question as “Abby” did.
Yes, she may be the best of the bunch. Sometimes the advice she gives is not something I would have come up with myself, but once I read it, it strikes me as apt and insightful. One of her strengths is that she is usually able to consider multiple possible interpretations of the situations described and to avoid jumping to conclusions.
A trend? Hardly. I remember a sendup in National Lampoon back in the 70’s where faux Abby’s response to a long tale of woe was simply “That’s terrible.”
I never saw QFAD, it was off the air, but I grew up listening to George Carlin’s take on it from Daytime Television. It sounds like reality wasn’t any different than George’s!
This reads a lot like what you’d say if you were afraid to give advice. I know I went through my head for advice, and anything I’d say could definitely backfire. It’s the sort of situation where you need a back and forth, asking her for more info and what she wants to do.
That said, you could argue then that you shouldn’t print that letter, if you can’t give advice. Though I guess maybe the idea is that, if they see it, they might actually call?
I suspect it’s just “this is the most interesting story we got.”
Yes, but her advice only touched upon the writer’s financial woes.
If Abby were motivated (and from several other posts here, it sounds like she’s not been motivated since forever), she could have given practical advice on how to deal with the slanderous tales her ex is telling, etc.
I also kind of like her advice. Get in touch with people who have resources to help you, here’s their number. THAT is practical advice on how to deal with her husband, who is spreading lies and making her life awful.
At most, maybe add an apology about not being able to give her other personalized advice on the situation, but this is a situation where the woman needs resources and ongoing professional assistance. She has no money or separate place to live. I’d say “divorce the bastard and take everything he has”, but I’m not going to be there to help her.