“‘It’s hard. It’s really, really hard because my husband died by gun suicide,’ said Judy Schneider-Wallace, a former schoolteacher from Seattle.”
Okay, Pierce: bring it, you’ve already broken my heart past repair.
“She and her husband, Paul, were double victims of the economic collapse and of the financial-services vampires who both caused it and then profited by looting the lives they’d already ruined.”
No, Charlie! No more!
“They were in the process of renegotiating their mortgage with Wells Fargo, a process that brought grief to thousands of people across the country whose personal economies already were in tatters.”
Okay. I’m far past the point of being able to handle this.
“While they were wrestling with financial ruin, Paul shot himself to death on the first day of school.”
No. You cannot do that, Pierce. You cannot lead readers down that path to a place so gruesome and grim, even though it is the truth.
I would never do so. And that’s why I’m a baseball writer and Charlie Pierce is, funny names for politicians aside, a real writer. I don’t always agree with him, but does he ever leave pretenders like Chait or Yglesias in the damn dust?
My wife is good at talking to people and hearing their stories; it’s never been a thing I’m skilled at.
