- Tuesday, March 19, 2019

MOSTLY SUNNY: HOW I LEARNED TO KEEP SMILING THROUGH THE RAINIEST DAYS

By Janice Dean

Harper, $26.99, 256 pages

If psychoanalytic theory presupposes that victims are drawn to their aggressors and vice versa, and that a sadist senses his victim’s vulnerabilities and knows how to exploit them, at the same time there is a more holistic way to view the world. I find myself gravitating toward a more religious, Talmudic perspective. Namely that God is testing us and that we are never given a challenge that we aren’t up to, if only we have the courage to face it.

Someone with this courage in spades is weatherperson Janice Dean, whose new book, “Mostly Sunny: How I Learned to Keep Smiling Through the Rainiest Days,” is only partly about the weather and how to report on it. Janice is known for her upbeat personality and warmth, and her on-and-off air directness. She is sincere in a media world filled with insincerity.

What’s less known about her — and the book brings this to the fore — is the extent of her courage, her endurance, her survival instincts in the face of direct attack or the more subtle assaults on her psyche. She overcame her father’s leaving by focusing on her radio career, diverted an attempted rapist by making up imaginary jewelry he might steal, endured and survived brutal putdowns and gun-wielding challenges by a famous misogynistic radio host by honing her professional skills and sticking to them.

The “me too” movement is still growing. I have always thought I was ahead of the curve on this but I must admit I am still learning. I come from a long line of independent and uncompromised women, beginning with my grandmother, a political operative and fund raiser and suffragette a hundred years ago. Her strength has been passed down the generations to my daughter, a young Janice-type, who neither complies nor denies, but is a witness to an insensitive male culture. My daughter can learn from Janice who has done more than just witness, she has held onto her sense of humor while helping to form an opposition. A network of similar-minded women who learned to protest against those who tried to ignore their right to a vote in every instance.

As a physician, I am of course most impressed by her courage in the face of disease, which is really, after all, an extension of all the other forms of courage. In “Mostly Sunny,” Janice describes multiple sclerosis quite accurately in terms of both its symptoms, its weakness and numbness, its unpredictability and its devastation. Fox anchor Neil Cavuto plays an encouraging and supportive mentoring role, afflicted with the disease himself. He is another person of great courage.

Beyond courage, in her book Janice shows what it feels like to be a patient simultaneously facing the threat of MS as well as the insensitivity of her doctor. A dispassionate callous doctor looms large in the face of a patient’s sudden vulnerability. I need to never be that doctor. I need to re-learn from Janice that it matters not just the treatment you dispense but the way you dispense it as you try to help a patient fight her fear and uncertainty along with her illness.

Janice is an important part of a network of strong capable talented women (and men) who have risen up at Fox News in the wake of accusation and dark shadows. This is a back story at Fox which isn’t receiving the attention it should. From the senior vice president of morning programming and talent who gave Janice her chance as the “Fox and Friends” weather person, to the savvy and uncompromised president of news, to the new CEO, the only woman in charge of a major TV news organization, the new leadership — as Janice describes it — is calm, incisive, yet often kind.

Those who want to describe Fox News in terms that don’t include the emergence of the new leadership there are missing the forest from the trees.

• Marc Siegel, a physician, is a clinical professor of medicine and medical director of Doctor Radio at NYU Langone Medical Center. He is a Fox News medical correspondent.

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