Columnist Parker leaves her small towns behind to join the ranks of talk-show pundits

Kathleen Parker, Pulitzer prize winner and a widely syndicated columnist, has joined former New York governor Eliot Spitzer as co-host of a talk show starting tonight on CNN, "Parker Spitzer." Parker told Keach Hagey of Politico.com that she grew up in "smallish town" Winter Haven, Fla., and has spent most of her life in the South. She describes her most recent move from Camden, S.C., to New York City as coming to "the humongous city," and the bureaucracy required for high-density living as "a fresh sort of hell."

Parker originally planned to become a Spanish professor, but after graduate school she started a career as a reporter at the now-defunct Charleston Evening Post. Subsequent jobs at the Florida Times-Union, the Birmingham Post-Herald and The Mercury News in San Jose took her all over the country. Her columnist career began at The Orlando Sentinel writing a column called "Women," as a counterpoint to a column called, "Men." She moved on to politics and public policy but in 2008 published a book, Save the Males: Why Men Matter, Why Women Should Care.

"Not only did I move from a small town in South Carolina via a relatively quiet neighborhood in Washington, I also left a solo writing operation to join CNN, an international organization with layers upon layers of human management,” she wrote in her Sept. 29 column. "Not that I'm complaining. Just sayin'." (Read more)