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Your Letters: Working Women, Powerful Photos

RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:

Time now for Your Letters. Last Sunday, I spoke with NPR's national political correspondent Mara Liasson about the week in politics, and part of our conversation focused on a political the war of words. It started when Democratic consultant Hilary Rosen said that Ann Romney, the wife of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, quote, "has never worked a day in her life." Many listeners took issue with Mara's analysis of the gender gap between Mitt Romney and President Obama.

Debora Hoard of Greenwood, Virginia, wrote: As I got ready to go to work this morning - work I do in part so I can have some flexibility to be home during the week - I heard Ms. Liasson say Romney's problem is not with stay-at-home moms, but with educated women. Ouch. She writes: Are these really separate categories?

And Allaire Diamond of Williston, Vermont, adds: These groups are not mutually exclusive. I proudly count myself among the large group of college-educated women who have chosen to dedicate ourselves, full- or part-time, for a year or a lifetime, to the work of raising our children. A woman's life and career, especially when children are involved, is extraordinarily complex and it's insulting to have it reduced to these rough categories, especially by someone that I normally hold in high regard.

We asked Mara about the point she was making and here's her response.

MARA LIASSON, BYLINE: Our listeners are right. I misspoke and that's one reason why we corrected the interview for later feeds of the show. What I was trying to say was that while Romney has an overall deficit with women voters, his biggest disadvantage is with college educated women - wherever they work, at home, in an office, a store or a factory.

MARTIN: As Mara said, we re-recorded our interview for later feeds, and that is the interview of record at NPR.org.

Also at our website, many listeners responded to our story last week about photojournalist Tim Hetherington. He was killed last year in the besieged Libyan city of Misrata. And there's a new exhibit of his work at the Corcoran Gallery of Art here in Washington, D.C. Hetherington's friend and fellow photographer Mike Kamber was our guide.

MIKE KAMBER: He was just insanely curious. You know, he was constantly digging deeper. He wasn't content with putting the pictures where people expected them to be put. He didn't just want a picture in a magazine. You know, he wanted to bring his work into art galleries. He wanted to bring it into schools. He was constantly trying to push boundaries in a way that I've never seen before. Tim was different.

MARTIN: Ken Davis posted this comment: All of us sitting at home, safe and sound, owe Mr. Hetherington so much for bringing us these photos. The war is so far off to most of us that we can't fully appreciate what our service men and women are going through. We owe them our constant support, prayers and gratitude and much thanks for the journalists who cover them, some who end up making the ultimate sacrifice themselves.

We welcome your comments. Go to NPR.org and click on the link that says, Contact Us. You can also find us on Facebook and Twitter: @NPRWeekend, and you can reach me @RachelNPR. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.