"I'm Just Sayin', Dawg," Part 22

One of my first first-person essays as a feature writer for the Detroit Free Press was about Chelsea Clinton, and how young, vulnerable and coltish she looked on Election Night 1992, when her dad won the Presidency.

It was just one of the many times I've articulated powerful maternal instincts I've never really acted on. Watching Chelsea shivering on that stage on that cold Autumn night in Little Rock, I wanted to somehow protect her from what I knew the world could visit upon an awkward pre-teen girl whose every gaffe and growth spurt was about to hit the Associated Press wires on a weekly basis.

I shouldn't have worried. Whatever you think of their politics or personal behavior, you gotta give Bill and Hillary Clinton props for shielding Chelsea from the harsh spotlight. After a few early gibes on Saturday Night Live, the Clintons declared a moratorium, cut off access to Chelsea and demanded that she be allowed to grow up as normally as possible under the circumstances, without being mocked and harassed.

Considering that shy little girl spent 8 years living under that hellish microscope, it's kind of amazing to see how well she's turned out. She's beautiful and smart and accomplished in her own right, and she just got married yesterday, to a nice, handsome man named Marc, the son of former Congresswoman Marjorie Margolies Mezvinsky.

You know, if I'd been more of a power networker throughout my career, I might have snagged myself an invite to yesterday's $2 million nuptials. In 1996, when I was covering social policy on Capitol Hill for Knight Ridder, I interviewed Margolies Mezvinsky, and we hit it off Big Time. So much so that when I invited her to a party at the townhouse I lived in, a half a block from the Capitol, she actually came. And loved my cooking.

Marjorie even said she was going to try and set me up with one of her former colleagues from her stint as a reporter for NBC, a guy named Joe Johns. But it never came together, and we eventually lost touch. THAT'LL teach me. A little more schmoozing, and I might have witnessed that same little girl I wrote about in 1992 walking down the aisle towards her loving, hopeful future.

Oh, well. Guess I better get around to creating one of those for my damn self...

"I'm just sayin', dawg...."