Katy Tur is an accomplished broadcast journalist at MSNBC, yet haters love to attribute her success to her former partner, commentator Keith Olbermann.
She writes about the relationship in her new memoir, Rough Draft, and in this bonus episode of The New Abnormal podcast she tells co-host Molly Jong-Fast how that early connection to the broadcaster has impacted her life since.
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“That relationship followed me for a long time in my career. To this day, when somebody tries to bring me down, they’ll bring up Keith Olbermann. I get it on Twitter every single day, a person telling me that I screwed my way to the top,” says Tur. “Now I don’t really care right now. I roll my eyes. But there was a time in my life where it really haunted me and it made me feel small and worthless.”
“It is so the playbook of diminishing women,” says Molly.
Tur tells Molly that the book also covers her very violent childhood, including anecdotes about her estranged father, Zoey Tur.
“I know it’s gonna be hard for her to read. It would be hard for anybody to read,” says Tur, who told Molly she refers to her father, who is a transgender woman, using the pronouns “she” and “her” unless she’s talking about her in the past.
Tur tells Molly that she found out her parents were getting a divorce on her college graduation day.
“It wasn't until much later when I asked [my mom]. I said, ‘You know, why that moment? Like, why did you choose my college graduation? Maybe, could you have waited till the next day?’ And she said, ‘I couldn’t,’ because the night before she had come home and my dad was working on an edit for a documentary and she asked my dad how it was going. And he turned around and punched her in the chest. And she said, ‘I’m done with this violence. This is it. I’m not doing it anymore.’”
Tur says she learned a lot while writing this book, and there’s a lot more in there besides her upbringing.
“The last chapter is about the insurrection,” she says.
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