Of Mouse and Women

Four other formidable women round out Schiff's list. None is a household name. Schiff wanted to add faces to the pantheon, not just praise those already enshrined.

We ask what she found most surprising about the lives of these nine women who fought racism, child labor, industrial poisoning and the indifference of society toward the needs of the poor? The answer comes with a short laugh.

"I was surprised -- and sort of oddly exhilarated -- by the venom in the established media toward them," Schiff says.

* * *

So far, so good. There's one thing that has been nagging at us, however, and we need to politely bring it up.

"Mainstream" is clearly one of Schiff's favorite words -- and it mostly carries a negative connotation. The women featured in "Lighting the Way" struggle constantly against mainstream politicians, the mainstream press and mainstream thinking in general.

But isn't there something slightly odd about this choice, coming as it does from the daughter of a man sufficiently mainstream to win the popular vote in a national election?

We're not criticizing dad , we assure her. Yet we're talking about the son of a U.S. senator, a Harvard-educated family scion seemingly born to high office. We're talking about a congressman, senator and then a vice presidential candidate who balanced a centrist presidential ticket by carefully tipping it neither left nor right. We're talking . . .

Schiff politely interrupts to say she sees her family legacy -- differently.

When she first became politically aware, she explains, it was the middle of the Reagan era. "He was immensely popular," she reminds us, yet her father was saying that "he's taking the country in the wrong direction, he's ignoring things that are truly important." This had a big impact, even on a teen soon to enter a rebellious phase. Another relevant bit of family history -- impressed on her "from early childhood" -- was her grandfather's U.S. Senate defeat in 1970 for being out of the Southern mainstream on Vietnam and civil rights. And by the way, have we checked out her dad's speech last month on wiretapping?

We promise to Google the speech later; we then shift gears slightly.