Dorothy Dix
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This article is about the journalist. For the 19th-century activist see Dorothea Dix.
Dorothy Dix (November 18, 1861 – December 16, 1951), was the pseudonym of U.S. journalist Elizabeth Meriwether Gilmer.
As the forerunner of today's popular advice columnists, Dorothy Dix was America's highest paid and most widely read female journalist at the time of her death. Her advice on love and marriage was syndicated in newspapers around the world. With an estimated audience of 60 million readers, she became a popular and recognized figure on her travels abroad.
Her name is the origin of the term Dorothy Dixer, a widely-used phrase in Australia meaning an obvious or easily-answered question.
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[edit] Journalism
Elizabeth was born on the Woodstock plantation located on the borders of Montgomery County, Tennessee and Todd County, Kentucky. Her journalism career began after a chance meeting with the owner of the New Orleans newspaper Daily Picayune in 1893. Elizabeth first used the pen name Dorothy Dix in 1896 for her column in the Picayune; Dorothy, because she liked the name, and Dix in honor of the old family slave Mr Dick who had saved the Meriwether family silver during the Civil War. Within months the column was renamed to Dorothy Dix Talks and under that name was to become the world’s longest-running newspaper feature.
The column's widespread popularity began in 1923 when Dix signed with the Philadelphia-based Public Ledger Syndicate. At various times the column was published in 273 papers. At its peak in 1940, Dix was receiving 100,000 letters a year and her estimated reading audience was about 60 million in countries including United States, UK, Australia, New Zealand, South America, China, and Canada. One of her most famous single columns was Dictates for a Happy Life, a ten-point plan for happiness, which had to be frequently reprinted due to popular demand.
As well as her newspaper columns, Dix was the author of books such as How to Win and Hold a Husband and Every-Day Help for Every-Day People.
On her passing in 1951 at the age of 90, Dorothy Dix was interred in the Metairie Cemetery in New Orleans, Louisiana.
[edit] "Dorothy Dixer"
Dorothy Dix's name has given rise to a widely-used term in Australia, where a "Dorothy Dixer" is an obvious or easily-answered question. It comes from Dix's reputed practice of making up her own questions for advice columns to allow her to publish more interesting answers. "Dorothy Dixer" has been used in Australian politics since the 1950s and has become increasingly common in everyday usage. However its Australian origin is unclear; the term is virtually unknown in other countries where Dix's column was equally popular.
The term is most commonly used in a derogatory sense in politics, to describe a 'planted' question asked of a minister by a backbencher from their own party. Often the question has been written by the minister or their staff rather than by the questioner, and is used to give the minister a chance to promote themselves or the work of the government, or to criticise the opposition party's policies, to raise the profile of the backbench member asking the question, or to consume the time available for questioning and thereby avoid tougher questions. It is a common and widely-accepted tactic used during question time in the House of Representatives and the Senate.
In his book An Introduction to Australian Politics Dean Jaensch observed on page 229:
"A growing number of questions are of the 'Dorothy-Dix' type (from the government backbench) and attempts to win political points (from both sides of the house)."
Similarly, Don Aitken and Brian Jinks observe in their book Australian Political Institutions on page 67:
"It is common practice for a minister to have a government backbencher ask a pre-arranged question which can be answered in such a way as to praise the government or exploit a weakness in the Opposition. Such 'Dorothy Dix' questions (after the syndicated 'advice' column which once appeared in popular magazines), are in effect occasions for ministers' speeches, rather than for parliamentary criticism of the executive."
[edit] References
Don Aitken & Brian Jinks, Australian Political Institutions, 3rd ed (South Melbourne: Pitman Publishing, 1985). ISBN 0 85896 156 3.
Dean Jaensch, An Introduction to Australian Politics, 2nd ed (Melbourne: Longman Cheshire, 1984). ISBN 0 582 68475 7.
[edit] Bibliography
Dorothy Dix, Fables of the Elite (New York: R. F. Fenno & Co, 1902).
Dorothy Dix, Mirandy (New York: Hearst's International Library, 1914).
Harnett Thomas Kane, Dear Dorothy Dix: The Story of A Compassionate Woman (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1952).
[edit] Links
- Dorothy Dix Collection housed in the University Archives and Special Collections at Austin Peay State University, includes full text of Dictates for a Happy Life.
- Dorothy Dix Digital Collection hosted by the Felix G. Woodward Library.
