Q and A with Nancy Rommelmann, author and independent journalist
Your work appears in the LA Weekly, Los Angeles Times, New York Times Magazine, Wall Street Journal, and Reason magazine. How did you become a writer? What genre are your books published under?
I'd moved from New York, where I grew up, to Los Angeles to become a movie star in 1986. Thankfully that did not work out. I made a living reading scripts and writing coverage for the agency ICM when I was pregnant with my daughter, and that segued into journalism, which I knew from my first piece, for a magazine called bikini (not about bikinis), that it was all I ever wanted to do. I loved and was very suited to talk to people about their lives.
This was in 1994, when there were many publications employing freelancers, and paying them well. LA is also a place people want reporting from. I got a lot of work and never stopped working.
I write mostly nonfiction, though every once in a while a little fiction will pop out, including a short novel about Hollywood street kids called The Bad Mother, and a story collection, Transportation. I also have two short nonfiction e-books, The Queens of Montague Street, a memoir of growing up in NYC in the 1970s, and Destination Gacy, about my driving cross-country to interview John Wayne Gacy a few weeks before the serial killer was executed. All are available on Amazon.
Robert Kolker, an investigative reporter and author of New York Times bestseller Los Girls, describes your latest book, To The Bridge, A True Story of Motherhood and Murder, this way: "Nancy Rommelmann takes what many consider the most unforgivable of crimes -- a mother set on murdering her own children -- and delivers something thoughtful and provocative: a deeply reported, sensitively told, all-too-relevant tragedy of addiction and co-dependency, toxic masculinity, and capricious justice." Why did you choose the topic of Amanda Stott-Smith throwing her children off the Sellwood Bridge in May 2009 for your latest book?
I had to know how it happened. People do not wake up in the morning and think, "Huh, I think I'll throw the kids off the bridge today." Nothing comes out of the blue. I started following the story the day after it happened, going to Amanda's arraignments, meeting with her defense attorney. I was following, too, the reactions of the public and the press -- and, eventually, the sentencing judge -- which were, "We will never understand how this happened." I understand why people say this. A mother killing her child is a terrifying thing, and emotionally wrenching, and people do not want to go there. This, while they concurrently fill in the narrative; we cannot leave something this abhorrent dangling there, which usually leads -- and the quicker the better, because this is hard stuff -- to two conclusions: evil or crazy. Neither answered my original question, which was to understand the granularity of how something like this happens. I thought there was a larger story to be told, one that deserved to be told. I've had many people say to me something along the lines of, "I started your book thinking, I am never going to understand how something like this happens, but then, I did." Not because I've led them to firm conclusions! I merely take the pieces out, lay them on the ground, and invite you to look at them, to see how they fit together. If you leave with a different willingness to not look away from hard stories, I have done my job.
Last fall, you created a five-episode podcast called #MeNeither. In one episode, you commented on the Kavanaugh hearings this way: "In many cases, trauma is a choice. You get to decide whether that person that pinched your a** is going to dictate the next 15 years of your life."
How did you go from writing empathetically about a woman who threw her children off a bridge partially because she lived in a culture of toxic masculinity to discussing on a podcast how some women use sexual harassment as a way to be victims?
We do not all react to situations the same way, due to experience, age, temperament and any other number of variables. I don't like being told I have to react in a certain way because you do, or because a majority of people does, or because the government or whatever ideology says it is the right or acceptable or popular way to do so today. I get to decide, full stop.
The Brett Kavanaugh/Christine Ford hearings were one of the most partisan fights to occur in my lifetime. My co-host of the podcast, Leah McSweeney, questioned why what happened to Ms. Ford 40 years earlier had come to so impact and in some ways, restrict her life. That it did is Ms. Ford's decision to make, just as I am free to decide how I react to any situation. That's called agency, of which I am a huge proponent! This is what I meant when I said, in some cases, trauma is a choice. What you had in the hearings were people seeing through their own lenses for their own purposes: insisting Ford was by necessity a victim, saying she was not a victim but a plant, people bringing their own lies to the situation in order to juice things one way or the other. It was a grotesque example of the divisions in the country, and the willingness to take a situation that no one but the parties in the room that night decades ago are party to, and use it for political purposes. Really gross, as was the coverage by much of the media really, but don't get me started on the hot-takes that pass these days for fact-based journalism.
I'm not crazy about the term toxic masculinity, which I never heard until two years ago and is shorthand for I'm not sure what, which might be why I'm not sure it illustrates what Amanda went through with her ex-husband, Jason. Jason had serious and specific pathologies, as did Amanda. It makes sense that they were drawn to each other, but boy, did they bring out the worst in each other. I had five people refer to their relationship as "toxic," so there is that. Pretending that was not the case and covering up all manner of bad behavior, contributed to two kids eventually being thrown from a bridge.
Saying the podcast focused on people using sexual harassment, as a way to be victims, is not quite right, or rather, it was a small part of what we talked about. We did discuss how certain celebrities used their having experienced sexual assault to become the faces of #MeToo. The women we spoke about in the first episode, Asia Argento and Rose McGowan, both have histories of playing the media, i.e., Argento and JT Leroy calling the New York Post to say Argento was pregnant with JT's baby -- JT, the elusive author who didn't exist but for the young woman playing him in public. I personally don't care if, and maybe even expect, celebrities to do these sort of things; it's a form of entertainment and if the public wants to buy it, that's fine. I don't think #MeToo should be exploited this way. You have millions of women who have been assaulted, and to have Argento present herself as a selfless warrior for women, while having her boyfriend Anthony Bourdain pay off the young man she'd slept with when he was 17, struck Leah and me as not the face you want for #MeToo.
Your husband Din Johnson has owned a coffee roasting company in Portland, Ristretto Roasters, for 15 years. After your podcasts, Camila Coddou, a former manager at Ristretto, sent a letter signed by 30 former employees to local media saying, "Sexual abuse is not to be taken lightly ... for the people on the staff who are survivors of assault need to know they're employed by someone who negates their experience."
What was your reaction to her letter? Did you wonder whether using your first amendment rights to criticize the #MeToo movement may have been a smart thing to do in a city that prides itself on political correctness?
My reaction was sort of shock. I'd known and previously worked with Camila -- I helped my husband run various back-end parts of the business on and off until about 2017 -- and I did not understand why she did not come directly to me. As I have said before, she could have said to me, "Nancy, I think your ideas are garbage and I want to hash it out," and I would have said, let's do it. The whole point of the podcast was to have nuanced conversations about sensitive subjects. After the blow-up, I invited three or four people who expressed, both directly and indirectly, their displeasure, to speak with me on the podcast or one-on-one. That sounds naive in hindsight, to not have realized people were not interested in speaking about differences, they were interested in being outraged. So be it.
I've been a journalist and media commentator for more than 20 years. I've interviewed serial killers, I've written more than once about mothers who kill their children. I spent six months in a cop bar during the Rampart scandal in Los Angeles, a time during which the police wanted the press around about as much as they wanted a raging case of herpes. I've written about cult leaders and con artists and barflies and movie stars, and on nearly every story, someone says, "You can't write about that!" Yes, I can.
As for the idea that people might be hurt by our opinions, the only way to ensure that will not happen is to not say anything ever, not an option I think any of us want. We have to be free to disagree. Sometimes these disagreements will make us mad, but so long as they do not involve physical threat or intimidation, we must be free to engage. I'll quote here from Jonathan Rauch's Kindly Inquisitors: The New Attacks on Free Thought: "What is the right answer to the person who demands something because he is offended? Just this: 'Too bad, but you'll live.'"
In late February, you offered big picture reflections about the power of today's Internet mob in a piece for the LA Times, "Outrage culture is out of control." You wrote, "This is the current pitch of our culture, where voicing an opinion someone says she sees as a threat qualifies you for instant annihilation, no questions asked: Why ask questions, when it's more expedient, maybe more kickass, to turn anything you might disagree with into an emergency?"
What can those of us who care about first amendment rights do about this mob mentality and to protect open intellectual discourse?
We can keep talking, and having rational (and sometimes irrational!) conversations with people we might disagree with or even loathe, and wait to have the cold take before reacting, and read publications that have a different viewpoint from ours and be interested in finding out why. Don't live in an echo chamber, and don't be tribal. I had more than one media outlet come to me after the LA Times op-ed, wanting me to essentially be one more piece of kindling for their reactionary fire, to scream about how bad the "other side" is. No thanks, not doing it.
This year you also wrote an article for Reason highlighting the silliness of the Portland city council, "Portland Wants to Ban Hate Groups, Has No Idea of How to Define Hate Groups."
You said, "The city council wrote a statement that condemns hate groups, that fails to state how these hate groups will be identified (or not). The resolution does, however, contain a plan to educate 'all city staff on history and the impact of white supremacy, and how to identify white supremacy.'"
Why did you write the piece? Have we reached the limits of Portland's progressive fervor, or is there more to come?
I received a copy of the resolution by email and thought it was really odd, in that it banned alt-right and hate groups, without offering any way to identity what these groups are. I don't think I am going out on any limb to state that the intent of the measure was to ban Patriot Prayer and, maybe, Proud Boys from showing up at rallies, where for the past few years they've gotten into physical altercations, mostly with Antifa. Nobody wants violence on the streets -- well, a few people do -- but no one, including no one on the Portland City Council has a crystal ball that tells us who these people are. And sure, right now, you have "progressive fervor." But what happens when the fervor -- which Oregon is extremely good at, look at the rift right now between Gov. Brown sending the police to go retrieve Republican state politicians who refused to attend a vote, and one representative responding, "Come heavily armed ... I'm not going to be a political prisoner in the state of Oregon" -- tilts in the other direction, and you've okayed this law that allows the other team, so to speak, to outlaw what they deem is hateful? The power this resolution has to potentially limit free speech, and anything else, is overly broad, and to me, a bad precedent to set. You don't get a better, smarter community by banning people from the community; you need to let all citizens have a place at the table and let the bad ideas die and the good ones prevail.
You are a contributor to Reason magazine, whose tagline is "Free Markets, Free Minds." Describe your libertarian political views.
I grew up in New York City, in a very liberal environment. I have never had much interest in joining any party, and have voted across the ticket, including changing my party affiliation several times so I could vote in the primary of the person I liked running that year, for instance, Ron Paul in 2004. If I referred to myself as anything, it might be small-l libertarian, with opinions usually in line with my small-l friends, and often reflected in Reason: socially liberal, fiscally conservative, anti-interventionist. And before you ask: Would I vote for Justin Amash for president in 2020? Hell yes I would, but he'd have to run first, and that's still a question.
In September 2017 you wrote, "Taking My Ex Back In (for His Own Good)," which ran in The New York Times. You describe how you and your husband had your daughter's father, Tim Sampson, move in with you while he was undergoing cancer treatment. (Sampson is the son of Will Sampson, who played Chief Bromden in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.") How did that work for your family? How is Tim doing?
Thank you for asking. While Tim did beat the HPV-related neck cancer I wrote about in that "Modern Love" column, he is in hospice right now in our home. Last August, he was diagnosed with lung cancer and had a stroke -- in a two-day period! Our daughter came in from New York last August to be with her dad, and, except for a few weeks, has been here ever since helping to care for him. Tim was doing so poorly in October, in four days we arranged and had a wedding in our backyard for my daughter and her now-husband, Nick, so her dad could walk her down the aisle, or rather, our driveway! It was a beautiful day, including all 20 of us trucking down the street afterwards to Sloan's, a great low-key bar, where we sang to Stevie Nicks on the jukebox and my daughter played pool in her wedding dress. I've been tweeting a little about the experience of having her dad with us again and if people want to check in they can follow me on Twitter.
How hard is it to make a living as an independent journalist?
Well, it used to be easier! Though it also seems to come in waves. One cannot, I don't think, make a living as a freelancer for the Portland press, for whom I have not written for several years. Anyway, you just have to keep pushing, expanding, meeting new people, and writing for new outlets and creating your own opportunities. I've been lucky in that I like to do all these things; the book helps, too. In any case, I am moving back to New York City in August, where there's the largest media community in the world, lots of opportunity, including some new ones I'll be part of. Stay tuned!
