‘Politics Is for Everybody’
While Faye Emerson embraced her femininity throughout her career, she also never shied away from political discussions or, indeed, offering her own perspectives on the events of the day. That said, as Dr. Maureen Mauk explains, “Emerson was not afraid to display her intelligence on-air, but she was careful to play it down when speaking with journalists” (142).
The below sequence of episodes highlight both Emerson’s commitment to intellectual dialogue and her direct engagement with viewers at home—a pioneering idea before the concept of “parasociality” entered the common lexicon. The first episode features Emerson speaking with a series of foreign correspondents from India, Yugoslavia, and Britatin stationed in the United States.
Not everyone admired Emerson’s efforts to engage in more intellectual conversation, though. In the second episode, Emerson responds to a variety of fan letters, including one from a disgruntled writter who admonished her for an interaction with foreign correspondents about geopolitical conflict: “Better stick to the plunging necklines Faye; politics is not for little girls.” Emerson responds with directness, defending her own—and, indeed, everyone’s—right to care about politics.