A Tribute to Cokie

We lost one hell of a human yesterday. I can’t help but pause and feel the weight of it; I feel that’s right. And I feel I’d be committing the worst sin of omission by not marking her passing here on the DOG. I am but one of the many NPR nerds and admirers who wish they had gotten a chance to meet her and watch her in action. Cokie Roberts: Veteran journalist, commentator, political scientist, author and trailblazer.

 

Anyone could go on about the innumerable awards she’s received (think multiple Emmys, Broadcasting Hall of Fame lore, a “Living Legends” award granted by the Library of Congress, and many more) for her lifetime of incredible work. And on the side, she authored eight books, six of which were NY Times Bestsellers! It’s undoubtedly crazy impressive stuff.

 

But, what I feel represents Cokie even better than that is this little snippet of a recent conversation between her and NPR host Steve Inskeep on “Morning Edition” from May 22, 2019. Inskeep introduces the segment on the 100th anniversary of the 19th amendment using the seemingly harmless phrase “granting women the right to vote.” The segment hasn’t even started, he’s just getting around to introducing it when in comes Cokie with not one, but six “no’s”:

“No, no, no, no, no granting — no granting,” Ms. Roberts said in her characteristically emphatic style. “We had the right to vote as American citizens. We didn’t have to be granted it by some bunch of guys.”[1]

 

It was one intro to one segment (that wasn’t even technically “hers”) in a lifelong career with NPR and ABC spanning five decades. I’m sure Steve Inskeep hardly batted an eye at the interruption as they’d been colleagues for years. But that correction, seemingly semantic, is everything that she stood for and worked for – the right to speak truth to millions of listeners, male and female – and the right to use her voice to interrupt and correct when it mattered most.

 

One of the reasons (aside from her intellect, wit, grit, eloquence and determination) I think she was so instrumental is that she wasn’t alone. She had amazing female journalist colleagues in Nina Totenberg, Linda Wertheimer and Susan Stamberg. Together they “helped shape the public broadcaster’s sound and culture at a time when few women held prominent roles in journalism.”[2] The NY Times penned a piece in 1994 that described them as the “broadcasting Musketeers”: “Twenty years ago Washington journalism was pretty much a male game, like football and foreign policy.” In fact, it was so much of a boys club Cokie tells us years later in a speech that “For eight months I job-hunted at various New York magazines and television stations, and wherever I went I was asked how many words I could type.”[3] And so it was in the 1970s… women were typists. The NY Times piece continues, “But along came demure Linda [Wertheimer], delicately crashing onto the presidential campaign press bus; then entered bulldozer Nina [Totenberg], with major scoops on Douglas Ginsberg and Anita Hill; and in came tart-tongued Cokie [Roberts] with her savvy Congressional reporting. A new kind of female punditry was born.” These amazing women have become known as the “Founding Mothers of NPR.” How cool is that? I learned that they also joked that they were the “Fallopian Club.” I love this “then and now” shot.


Cokie married an amazing guy in 1966 named Steve Roberts, who had a pretty illustrious career as a journalist himself. And for the next 50+ years, they admired the hek out of each other. I love what he said in a New York Times interview in 2017 – that he was "bowled over" by his wife’s intellect.[4]

And I think that’s how most people felt about her – a deep, deep respect that went far beyond politics. What makes me most sad about her passing is that we, as a society, have fewer and fewer people to look up to who transcend politics—especially women. (This is partly why Ruth Bader Ginsburg has access to any bodily organ of mine she may need to stay alive. Like Ruth,) Cokie had two kids, and my heart goes out to them for losing a powerhouse of mom too soon.

  

One of her regular segments on NPR was called “Ask Cokie,” (God, I hate to write that in the past tense) where listeners would write in with these super interesting, specific and often obscure questions on almost anything in the political arena. This segment just wowed me because how freaking brilliant and worn and confident do you have to be to take on questions out of left field on air? OK, so maybe she handpicked her faves or received them the night before, but regardless, she could have answered questions directly from the audience on live TV (or radio) and she’d be no less prepared, thoughtful and articulate. I have no doubt. But on that segment, without missing a beat, Cokie tapped into her deep well of info on Washington, politics and history to respond with all insight, toughness and poise. To answer questions, she’d draw on details from events or precedent from 30 or 60 years ago, instantly making them relevant to today’s issues. Her breadth of knowledge and depth of understanding was truly remarkable.

 

As a fun little side note, Cokie’s name was actually Corinne. Her little brother supposedly had trouble saying that and out came the moniker that’d see her through the next 70+ years – Cokie. (I get that because my mom’s sister became “Cookie,” and still rocks it to this day.)

 

Wit and wisdom. She was so friendly, charming, thoughtful and while she could come up tough and opinionated, she balanced that steeliness with humor and grace. That’s the Cokie I’ll remember and miss. Someone who let her work speak for itself and who never sacrificed her humanity or dignity for a job. Her dear friend from NPR, Nina Totenberg, wrote a beautiful piece mourning her loss and celebrating her life: “Cokie Roberts was the embodiment of our better angels — whether it was her work for Save the Children or the millions of kindnesses large and small that she dispensed daily, without ever thinking that what she was doing was unusual or remarkable. … To know Cokie was to see the personification of human decency. … People felt such a deep connection to her because she touched their lives. … On a larger scale, she was always the voice of people with less power, and the voice of what is right. … And of course, she was the voice of women. She understood injustices large and small.”[5]

 

I can’t help but post a couple of the pictures floating around that I love best (in addition to those above). I’ll credit each in the caption and make them clickable so you can go to the source if you so desire.