Tracy Flick Can't Win

by Tom Perrotta

The truth is, we’re all prisoners of our historical context. Anybody who says morality is absolute, that right and wrong don’t change over time, you know what? They just haven’t lived long enough.

I was nobody. A woman. A lowly bureaucrat. A doctor in quotation marks. It didn’t matter that I was better than he was—smarter and more competent and harder working and more dedicated to the kids. I couldn’t win. They wouldn’t let me.